Month: May 2017

LIN COLLOQUIUM

This Friday, May 26th, at 2:40pm in Humanities 2, Room 259, there will be a colloquium by Susan Lin (Berkeley). Her talk is entitled “Gradience from variation in articulatory magnitude and timing,” and the abstract is given below:

Gradient synchronic variation in speech has long been proposed to be at the root of most sound change, whether through the generation of phonemically ambiguous speech or the creation of phonological innovations available to language learners. However, there exists a disconnect between this form of gradient variation and its typically discrete resulting phonological form. In this talk, I examine two articulatory factors thought to contribute to gradient variation: the magnitude and relative timing of articulations. Using ultrasound data, I focus on the relationship between articulatory magnitude and timing in post-vocalic laterals in English, while exploring some of the factors, including lexical frequency and speech speed, which contribute to that relationship.

ALTSHULER AT S-CIRCLE/LALOCO

In a special joint meeting of S-Circle and LaLoCo, we have this week a talk by Daniel Altshuler (Hampshire College/UMass Amherst) at 11:45am on Tuesday, May 23rd, in Stevenson 217. He’ll be presenting on “Temporal cataphora and revision,” details of which can be found in the abstract below:

Inferring a rhetorical relation between two discourse units (DUs) is non-monotonic: given a discourse context C and two DUs π1, π2 to be related by a relation R, it may be that C makes R(π1, π1) the most plausible inference, but an extension of C may make it more plausible that a distinct R'(π1, π1) is preferred (Asher and Lascarides 2003). Since rhetorical relations often entail temporal constraints, anaphoric connections between eventualities often undergo revision. This is especially apparent in the French novella, Sylvie, where, famously, the reader chooses a resolution strategy that she later finds to be incoherent and is thus forced to revise. The goal of this talk is to derive the incoherence and model the revision that the reader is forced to make. To do so, we extend Haug’s (2014) PCDRT to the temporal domain and to temporal cataphora in particular, taking important strides to synthesizing this framework with Asher and Lascarides’s (2003) SDRT, something that we think is necessary to model (in)coherence and the provisional nature of phoric expressions

POLIĆ RECEIVES OUTSTANDING STAFF AWARD

This year’s UCSC Outstanding Staff Award goes to Irena Polić, managing director of UCSC’s Institute for Humanities Research. Irena has long been a major part of our department, both as a student (BA 2001, MA 2003) and for her countless hours of work connecting linguists to the many opportunities afforded by the IHR, which supports much of the work done by students and faculty alike. Read more about Irena’s journey, and why she believes the humanities still play a vitally important role in our society, here.

WE FIND THIS WORKSHOP FUN

This weekend, Deniz Rudin was in the Windy City for the Subjectivity in Language and Thought workshop at the University of Chicago. Deniz objectively had these subjective thoughts to share on the experience:

“Various semanticists and philosophers gathered in a smoke-filled back room and participated in under-the-table deals guaranteed to define the landscape of the theory of subjectivity in natural language for years to come. Santa Crucians will be happy to hear that their lobby commands significant influence within the deep state—our own Deniz Rudin, in conspiracy with Phil Crone of Stanford University, presented on “Assessor-Relativizable Predicates”, and Pranav Anand’s work was on display via a talk delivered by co-conspirator Natasha Korotkova of Tübingen, titled “Acquaintance inferences and the grammar of directness.” Daniel Lassiter, an honorary Santa Crucian by virtue of his place of residence, delivered a polemical and compelling presentation about Mathematical counterfactuals. The ultimate testament to the iron grip our community exerts on the subterranean mechanisms of intellectual governance, however, is that the entire event was organized by PhD alum Chris Kennedy (who says hi), in conspiracy with Malte Willer, both of U. Chicago. Spirited debate was followed by communal indulgence in food and drink, graciously paid for by Neubauer Collegium, which helped us to set aside our differences and replace them with a feeling of primal solidarity.”

DEN AVHANDLINGEN KÄNNER VI DEN LINGVIST SOM HAR FÖRSVORAT

Former LRC Visiting Scholar (2013-14) Filippa Lindahl defended her dissertation Extraction from relative clauses in Swedish last weekend, May 13th at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. A few Santa Crustaceans were in attendance for the festivities (Nick Kalivoda, Kelsey Kraus and alum Paul Willis), and they all agree that Filippa did an outstanding job during the defense, fielding thoughtful and theoretically sound questions from Opponent Peter Sells as well as from an audience trained in various generative and non-generative syntactic traditions. The photo here is of Filippa and Elisabet after a toast to a successful defense. Grattis, Filippa!

Filippa Lindahl and Elisabeth Engdahl
Filippa with her advisor, Elisabet Engdahl

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