Praat (Boersma & Weenink 1991), an open source program for phonetic analysis and phonological grammar modeling, recently received its first logo redesign in nearly thirty years. The new version of the beloved mouth-above-ear logo is the work of our linguistics major Larry (Sichen) Lyu, class of 2022. Bravo, Larry!
Pictured: the old (left) and new (right) Praat logo.
Rosa Mantla (T???ch? Community Services Agency, Behchok??, NWT) and Leslie Saxon (University of Victoria) will present “Community and linguistics: What they mean to us” in the Linguistics colloquium series at 3:30 Friday October 16. An abstract follows. All are welcome!
Register here: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/91820615234
Abstract
We have collaborated for over three decades in work supported by our organizations. For both of us our focus has included research, documentation, and promotion of the T???cho? language, tied in in different ways with other responsibilities of our employment. After introducing ourselves, we will speak about how we have worked with each other on projects that are outside the specific expertise of one of us. Rosa’s role as T???cho? language and culture consultant with the Education branch of the T???cho? Community Services Agency (TCSA), and Leslie’s as a linguistics professor at the University of Victoria (UVic) have shaped the content and approaches we have taken in our collaboration. We will take turns describing one or two of our projects and give our perspective on the importance of our collaboration to the project’s success. The other person will then reply on what the project meant to her. We hope to learn something about our collaborative process and share that with our audience.
Shravan Vasishth (vasishth.github.io), University of Potsdam, will present “Twenty years of retrieval models” in the Linguistics colloquium series at 3:30 Friday September. An abstract follows. All are welcome!
Register here:
https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUldemurz4oGdAo6hV69nh4k3y82zRiLVZB
Abstract
After Newell wrote his 1973 article, “You can’t play twenty questions with nature and win”, several important cognitive architectures emerged for modeling human cognitive processes across a wide range of phenomena. One of these, ACT-R, has played an important role in the study of memory processes in sentence processing. In this talk, I will talk about some important lessons I have learnt over the last 20 years while trying to evaluate ACT-R based computational models of sentence comprehension. In this connection, I will present some new results from a recent set of sentence processing studies on Eastern Armenian.
Reference:
Shravan Vasishth and Felix Engelmann. Sentence comprehension as a cognitive process: A computational approach. 2021. Cambridge University Press. https://vasishth.github.io/RetrievalModels/
Min-Joo Kim (PhD 2004) was promoted to full professor at Texas Tech University. Congratulations, Min-Joo!
This year’s Annual Meetings on Phonology (AMP) will be zoomed from UCSC, Sep 18–20. The Annual Meetings on Phonology began as Phonology 2013 here at UMass.
Anne-Michelle Tessier (PhD 2007) will deliver a keynote talk: “Learning French liaison with Gradient Symbolic Representations: Child errors, adult wug-tests, predictions and consequences”. This is joint work with Karen Jesney (PhD 2011).
Emily Elfner (PhD 2012) will facilitate a workshop on intonational fieldwork with Anja Arnhold.
Students, faculty, and alumni will present talks and posters:
Lisa Green, professor of linguistics and preeminent expert on African American English (AAE), was among three UMass Amherst faculty members named Distinguished Professors following approval by the Board of Trustees at its Monday, July 20 meeting. The title Distinguished Professor is conferred on select, highly accomplished faculty who have already achieved the rank of professor and who meet a demanding set of qualifications.
https://www.umass.edu/hfa/news/lisa-green-awarded-distinction-board-trustees
Alice Harris has been named a British Academy Corresponding Fellow in recognition of her outstanding contributions to subjects within the humanities and social sciences. What an honor, Alice!
https://www.umass.edu/hfa/news/alice-harris-elected-british-academy-corresponding-fellow
Friday July 3 2020 (Today!) at 4pm EST (5pm Brasília time), Tom Roeper will present “The Explanatory Power of language acquisition in UG, Cognitive Science, and the evolving notion of Thought” at Abralin ao Vivo: https://aovivo.abralin.org/lives/tom-roeper/
Abstract:
We first explore the challenge of enriching the concept of interfaces between syntax, semantics and pragmatics: it is largely fixed, innate and governed by simpliciity (economy). Variation lies within modules, not across them. Then we argue: Grammar can provide notations for thought, (Chomsky (2014)) for instance, through an extension of X-bar theory to mathematics which demonstrates what a unifying notation for Cognitive Science can look like. The formalism of Generative grammar may also carry implications for political ideology and our view of personal integrity.
We argue that the acquisition path and actual acquisition evidence is the strongest source of insight for deep principles. Topics will include (briefly): ellipsis, quantification, wh-movement, recursion, Speech Acts, and the ingredients of False Belief reasoning. The experiments lead to specific suggestions for how linguistic theory can make the leap into the classroom, and inform our approach to multilingualism. dialects and language disorders.
Update: use this link to register for the talk: https://forms.gle/cSXf8Pp94WTLveZx8
On Friday July 3, 2020 at 8pm EDT (9am in Japan), Barbara Partee will give a Zoom plenary talk “in Japan” in an online colloquium series where (apart from Barbara) young scholars from the US and Europe are invited to tell about their research. The colloquium series, Keio X ICU LINC, is organized by Seunghun Lee at International Christian University and our own UMass PhD Shigeto Kawahara at Keio University. Barbara’s talk will be “The Intertwining Influences of Linguistics, Logic, and Philosophy in the History of Formal Semantics”.
After Barbara Partee’s wildly popular online keynote (>2000 views), the “Abralin ao Vivo” lecture series will feature two additional UMass linguists:
The Brazilian Linguistic Association (abralin.org), in a joint project with the Permanent International Committee of Linguists (ciplnet.com), the Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de América Latina (mundoalfal.org), the Sociedad Argentina de Estudios Lingüísticos (sael.com.ar) and the Linguistic Society of America (linguisticsociety.org) is organizing a virtual event: Abralin ao Vivo – Linguists Online. The event is designed to give students and researchers free access to state-of-the-art discussions on the most diverse topics related to the study of human language during this difficult quarantine period.
For more information about Abralin ao Vivo – Linguists Online, please visit: abral.in/aovivo. For updates on the event’s programme, follow Abralin at abral.in/insta. All the lectures are also available on Abralin’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/abralin.