SICHEL AT WCCFL

Last weekend, Ivy Sichel was among those who stampeded to WCCFL in Calgary, Alberta, where the Flames of linguistic enthusiasm burn bright. Ivy had this to say about the event:

“The beautiful thing about research in linguistics is that it is full of surprises. When you start studying something, you never know where you will end up. The paper I presented at WCCFL this past weekend is based on a joint project with Martina Wiltschko from UBC, in which we follow the lead of a curious “negative effect” sometimes associated with the use of demonstrative-pronouns in German and Hebrew. The study of its distribution revealed a surprising demonstrative-internal typology, in which deixis and anaphora are two sides of the same coin, rather than oppositional categories.

There was impressive variety in the talks at WCCFL this year, in terms of content, and also in terms of the wide array of languages that were discussed: Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian, Tagalog, Korean, Turkish, Algonquian, Japanese, French, Mi’gmaq, to name but a few.”