Author Archives: Michael

UMass linguists and alumni at AMP 2020

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:

  • Michael Becker will present “The incoherent stress system of Kuikuro” with Bruna Franchetto & Andrija Petrovic
  • Bethany Dickerson will present “Investigating phonotactic illusions with an auditory lexical decision task”
  • Brandon Prickett & Gaja Jarosz will present “Modeling the acquisition of phonological interactions: Biases and generalization”
  • Elliott Moreton (PhD 2002), Brandon Prickett, Joe Pater & Lisa Sanders will present “Learning reduplication, but not syllable reversal” with Katya Pertsova and Josh Fennell
  • Andrew Lamont will present “Sidestepping the problems of alignment in iterative footing”

Lisa Green, Distinguished Professor

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

Roeper Abralin talk, July 3 at 4pm EST

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.

Partee plenary talk Friday July 3, 8pm (now with link)

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”.

UMass linguists at Abralin

After Barbara Partee’s wildly popular online keynote (>2000 views), the “Abralin ao Vivo” lecture series will feature two additional UMass linguists:

  • Michael Becker will participate in the panel “Desafios teóricos e descritivos para a morfologia na atualidade” with Alina Villalva, Ana Paula Scher, and Luiz Schwindt, Wednesday, June 17 at 9am EDT. Link to the live transmission.
  • Luiz Amaral will present “Revitalização, retomada e manutenção de línguas ameaçadas: estratégias para a realidade brasileira” the same day, Wednesday, June 17 at 6pm EDT. Link to the live transmission.

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.

Incoming class of 2020

We are delighted to introduce to you our very accomplished incoming class! Here they are:

  • Özge Bakay, who says:
    “I am Özge from Istanbul, Turkey. I work on Turkish and Laz. My interests are in psycholinguistics, prosody and computational linguistics.” 
     
  • Alessa Farinella, who says:
    “I’m Alessa, former backpacker and sometimes singer from New York. My interests are in prosody, especially in Austronesian, as well as fieldwork and documentation.”
     
  • Angelica Hill, who says:
    “I’m Angelica (Jelly, for short). I’m originally from Rochester New York but I’m currently finishing my MSc Logic in Amsterdam. I like verbs and Beyonce.”
     
  • Cerys Hughes, who says:
    “I’m Cerys, and I’m from Cincinnati, Ohio. I just graduated with my bachelor’s in linguistics and computer science from Ohio State, and I really enjoy computational linguistics, phonology, and phonetics.”
     
  • Polina Kasyanova (HSE), who says:
    “I’m Polina and I’m from Moscow. I do field research on several languages but mainly on Chukchi. I like linguistic typology, polysynthesis (whatever this is supposed to mean), and trying out things just out of curiosity. Yesterday I found out that putting Tabasco sauce into your coffee is not as bad as it seems, though I probably won’t do this again.”
     
  • Mari Kugemoto, who says:
    “I’m Mari Kugemoto. I studied at UC San Diego last year as an exchange student and recently graduated from International Christian University, Japan. I like singing in a choir and studying psycholinguistics. “
     
  • Jia Ren (UCL/CUHK), who says: 
    “Hi I’m Jia from the northeast part of China. I do syntax and stay open to the possibilities of it. I live and err with a love for wisdom.”
     

Partee keynote, Wednesday May 13 at 6pm

Barbara Partee will be giving a streamed public lecture as part of the project described below on Wednesday, May 13, at 7pm Brazilian time, 6pm EDT. The topic is “Formal semantics and pragmatics: Origins, issues, impact.” The link to the live transmission is https://youtu.be/h8x-5eEyDjc. (On the YouTube site that the link takes you to, you can comment and ask questions, and see other people’s comments and questions. The moderators will pick a selection of questions to ask in the discussion period.)
 
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.

Linguistics graduation ceremony

Last Thursday, April 30, we celebrated our graduating linguistics majors. We feel privileged to have had such accomplished students, and we are proud to send them out into the world.

Please join us in congratulating:

  • Allison Chen
  • Yicun Deng
  • Carter Gallati
  • Margaret Gehm
  • Alexander Griffith
  • Theo Honigmann
  • Risa Komatsu, senior thesis title: ‘Ambiguous pronominal reference in Mandarin pronoun production’ with Prof. Brian Dillon
  • Anna Moffat
  • Christian Muxica, senior thesis title: ‘Acceptability Response Patterns as a Window into Parsing Behaviour’ with Prof. Brian Dillon
  • Elizabeth Nisayas
  • Noah Sullivan
  • Liat Shapiro
  • Austin Tero