Category Archives: Newsletter

New NSF grant to Alice Harris

Alice Harris has just been awarded a new three-year NSF research grant “Perception and production of clitics”. The purpose of the grant is to analyze, in collaboration with Arthur Samuel of Stony Brook University and the Basque Center for Cognition, Brain, and Language, the processing and production differences among clitics in different positions, and to test whether differences are the same cross-linguistically.  This is part of a larger project that will also include differences among affixes and will compare affixes with clitics. The grant will also support her continued fieldwork on the endangered Caucasian language Udi.

Paula Menéndez Benito to Tübingen

Paula Menéndez Benito (2005 UMass PhD) writes that the paperwork for her tenured position at the University of Tübingen, one of Germany’s designated Universities of Excellence, has just come through. Paula will be joining one of the most lively and high-powered semantics scenes in Europe. Interdisciplinary semantic research in Tübingen is fed by several departments and a collaborative research center on the Constitution of Meaning directed by Sigrid Beck. Paula is currently a visiting professor in Göttingen. From September 2014 to September 2016, she was a Marie Curie Fellow at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Her Marie Curie project investigated the expression of modality in the determiner domain. Continuing this research agenda, Paula’s current work “aims to situate modal determiners in a typology of modal expressions by undertaking a systematic comparison between determiner and verbal modality.”

SCiL and “Perceptrons and Syntactic Structures at 60” at the 2018 LSA

The Society for Computation in Linguistics, founded by UMass faculty Gaja Jarosz and Joe Pater, will have its inaugural meeting in conjunction with the annual meeting of LSA in Salt Lake City Jan. 4-7 2018. The call for papers is now out, with a deadline of August 1 (further details available at the link above). It will include a special session on “Perceptrons and Syntactic Structures at 60” (see the poster below for speakers), funded by an NSF conference grant to UMass (Pater PI, Brendan O’Connor of CICS co-PI).

Pater receives collaborative NSF grant for interdisciplinary research with Moreton, Pertsova, and Sanders

Joe Pater is the UMass PI for a new collaborative NSF grant “Inside Phonological Learning”, which will begin this fall, and last for three years. The aim of the grant is to better understand the contribution of implicit and explicit processes in laboratory studies of phonological learning, and it will use both behavioral and ERP studies in pursuit of that goal. At UMass, Pater is collaborating with co-PI Lisa Sanders of Psychological and Brain Sciences on the ERP studies, and PhD student Brandon Prickett will be the RA for the upcoming year. Pater and Sanders are working together with PI Elliott Moreton (UMass PhD 2002) and co-PI Katya Pertsova of UNC Chapel Hill on the behavioral studies. The total award for the UMass portion of the gramt is $378,432.

Jeff Runner to become Dean at Rochester


Jeff Runner (1995 UMass PhD) has been named the new Dean of the College in Arts, Sciences and Engineering at the University of Rochester. Here is how he describes his vision for his new role:  “What makes the College so special is our emphasis on integrating academic and co-curricular experiences to allow students to develop into the thinkers and leaders of tomorrow. I’m interested in enriching students’ classroom experience by increasing opportunities for independent research, community-based learning, and international experience. Diversity and inclusion is a center piece in my vision for the College. We have a growing multicultural campus community—a kind of microcosm of the world outside the College—which can help both domestic and international students to learn to adapt to a multicultural world. I plan to continue to create opportunities for students from all different backgrounds to succeed in the College, to have opportunities to learn—from each other, from our faculty, from the Rochester community, and from the world—and to grow into critical thinkers who can contribute to the larger community in many ways.” Source: University of Rochester Newscenter.

Fifteen UMass Semanticists at SALT

This year’s SALT (Semantics and Linguistic Theory 27) was held at the University of Maryland. Fifteen current and former UMass students and faculty gave talks, presented posters, or just were there to support their own students. At the banquet everyone posed for a group picture. First row (from left to right): Angelika Kratzer, Maribel Romero, Chris Baron. Second row: Paul Portner, Florian Schwarz, Valentine Hacquard (2006-2007 Barbara Hall Partee Visiting Professor), María Biezma, Luis Alonso-Ovalle, Deniz Özy?ld?z, Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten, Bernhard Schwarz, and Marcin Morzycki. Last row: Daniel Altshuler, Kyle Rawlins, and Satoshi Tomioka.

Graduating Linguistics Majors Honored at Senior Recognition Ceremony

The College of Humanities and Fine Arts held this year’s Senior Recognition Ceremony on Saturday May 13th. At this ceremony, graduating seniors in the College were honored by their respective programs.

The Linguistics Department faculty were represented by Seth Cable and Peggy Speas, who congratulated the graduating Linguistics majors in attendance:

– Savannah Champion

– Jenni Coppola

– Amanda Doucette

– Brandyn Evora-Rosa

– Ria Geguera

– Eric Gomes

– Carla Anne Guthrie

– Alicia LeClaire

– Tran Leeman

– Kazuki Moriguchi

– Patrick Murphy

– Samantha Sexton

– Megan Sorel

– Gabrielle Mae St. Pierre

– Abigail Williams

And, a heartfelt congratulations to all our majors in this year’s graduating class! Please stay in touch and keep us informed of all your incredible accomplishments!

Nazarov at commencement

Alex Nazarov returned to UMass on Friday to participate in graduate commencement. He is pictured here with his dissertation supervisors, Gaja Jarosz and Joe Pater. This was the last ceremony officiated by Graduate Dean John McCarthy, who will be full-time Senior Vice-Provost next year.

LaCara to Toronto

I’m very happy to announce that I’ve accepted a position as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto for the coming academic year. —Nick LaCara