Category: Alumni News

VERA LEE-SCHOENFELD RECENTLY TENURED

Vera Lee-Schoenfeld earned the PhD at UCSC in 2005 with a dissertation on the syntax of German (Beyond Coherence: The Syntax of Opacity in German), which in 2007 was published in revised form as a book in the Linguistik Aktuel series from Benjamins. Vera’s initial position was at Swarthmore College but she has been at the University of Georgia since 2010. Vera recently wrote to WHASC with an update and some very good news:

I wanted to share that, in my 5th year as the main syntactician of the Linguistics Program at the University of Georgia, I found out that my tenure and promotion review was successful. So, starting this August, I will be Associate Professor! My home department is still Germanic and Slavic Studies, as the UGA Linguistics Program is in the process of becoming its own department.

This summer, I will be in Germany, teaching a seminar on argument structure at the Leibniz Universität Hannover and continuing joint research with Gabriele Diewald. We are working on a book taking a trans-theoretical approach to argument structure in German and English with particular focus on arguments that, in German, are prone to being dative-marked.

I’m also continuing joint work with fellow UCSC alumna Anya Lunden (William and Mary) on the syntax, information structure, and prosody of German VP-fronting.

ROBERT HENDERSON MOVES TO THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

Robert Henderson completed the PhD in Linguistics at UCSC in 2012 with a dissertation on Ways of Pluralizing Events. Following the dissertation, Robert spent a postdoctoral year at McGill University, and was then appointed Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Wayne State University. We are very happy to announce that Robert has been offered and has formally accepted a new position: a tenure-track position in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. Robert will join fellow alumni Adam Ussishkin (PhD 2000) and Andy Wedel (PhD 2003) on the faculty there.

AISSEN IN HAWAII

Judith Aissen will be travelling to Honolulu in Hawaii between February 26th and March 1st to take part in the 4th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC). The theme of this year’s conference is Enriching Theory, Practice and Application, a theme which is meant to highlight the need to strengthen the links between language documentation (practice), deep understanding of grammatical structure (theory), and methods for teaching endangered languages (application). Judith will be among a number of distinguished scholars who have been invited to teach Master Classes at the conference. Judith’s Master Class is on Elicitation and Documentation of Topic and Focus Constructions/Processes and is designed to provide a set of skills and tools that will better enable participants to identify and understand topics and foci in texts and in elicitation contexts.

KAUFMAN AT GOOGLE

Brianna Kaufman earned the MA in Linguistics in 2014 with a thesis on the learning of unproductive processes such as emphatic reduplication in Turkish. Brianna very recently accepted an offer to work as an Analytical Linguist at Google. She will be joining fellow UCSC alum Oliver Northrup (PhD 2014) on Google’s LA campus.

ALUMNA INTERVIEW: ROBYN PERRY

Robyn Perry graduated with the BA in Linguistics in Spring 2008, earning Honors in the major and highest honors in Italian Studies. Having worked initially for Powerset, she embarked on a path of further training and education. We recently caught up with her and asked about her current projects and plans.

WHASC : What has been your career-path so far, Robyn, or where are you professionally at this point?

I’m in the second year of the Master of Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley’s School of Information. Interestingly, the program ties together my linguistics background and my foray into nonprofit technology work quite nicely. Before this, I worked at the Progressive Technology Project, a small organization that supports grassroots organizing groups and their needs, through technology and communications. While at the School of Information, I’ve focused on getting better at data analysis in many domains. I’m particularly interested in developing tools that enable more informed civic participation, especially in urban settings.Continue Reading ALUMNA INTERVIEW: ROBYN PERRY

BRASOVEANU AND ONG IN CSSP

CSSP 10 (Colloque de Syntaxe et Sémantique à Paris) took place in Paris in September 2013 at l’Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7. The papers from that conference have just been published on-line and among them is a paper by Adrian Brasoveanu and MA alumnus Matthew Ong. The paper (which builds on Matt’s 2013 MA thesis Strict and Sloppy Reflexives under VP Ellipsis) argues for a discourse-based theory of strict and sloppy readings of reflexive pronouns under VP Ellipsis. It is available here.

ALUMNUS ANTHONY SHORE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

Anthony Shore graduated from UCSC with a degree in Linguistics in 1990 having written a senior thesis with Armin Mester on the historical phonology of Latin. He has for many years been a leading figure in the growing field of naming and branding and has advocated strongly for this as a rewarding career path for those with linguistic training (he returned to the department in January 2009 to give a career workshop on the topic). Anthony and his work were recently featured in an essay in the New York Times Magazine about professional namers—the kind of work they do and how they do it.

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