Category: Alumni News

ALUMNA INTERVIEW: LOTUS GOLDBERG

After hearing about the Linguistics and Computational Linguistics Program at Brandeis, the WHASC Editors had a chance to sit down with UCSC alumna Lotus Goldberg (BA 1993, MA 1998), who received her PhD from McGill University in 2005 and is currently Associate Professor at Brandeis.

WHASC: How have you been involved in Linguistics and Computational Linguistics at Brandeis?

Lotus: When I came to Brandeis in 2005, it was to work in the undergraduate Linguistics Program here, which is (and was) just focused on theoretical linguistics. James Pustejovsky, who is now the Chair both of the undergrad program and our Computational Linguistics (CL) MA Program, was here in the Computer Science Department and had PhD students doing CL with him. A couple of years later, he had the idea of starting an MA program focusing on CL that would take students who hadn’t necessarily studied Computer Science (CS) as undergraduates.

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REPORT FROM LSA

Linguists from UCSC were well represented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Washington, DC. There were several grad students who presented papers: Lauren McGarry, Jason Ostrove, Bern Samko, and Erik Zyman. Many alumni of the department were also in attendance, including Pete Alrenga (BU), Eric Bakovic (UCSD), Boris Harizanov (Stanford), Ruth Kramer (Georgetown), Nick LaCara (UMass Amherst), Eric Potsdam (Florida), and Matt Tucker (NYU), among others. (Apologies if you were not mentioned!)

ALUMNA INTERVIEW: RACHELLE BOYSON

WHASC recently interviewed Rachelle Boyson (B.A. 2015), who graduated with honors in Linguistics, about life after graduation.

WHASC: What have you been doing since graduation (Spring 2015)?

Rachelle: I spent April through July in Santa Cruz, working on the sluicing project with Jim and Pranav and generally treating myself to some time off (it’s amazing what kind of “soul searching” gets done when there are no scholarly/professional obligations). I did some job hunting in July, but got more serious about it once I moved back home to the Bay Area in August. Since moving home I’ve job hunted and done a lot of wine tasting…and now I’m working at Yahoo!
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ALUMNUS REPORT: NICHOLAS ILACQUA

Nicholas Ilacqua (B.A. 2002), who graduated with a double major in Linguistics and Philosophy, is now working at UC Davis. He sent in this update:

I’m starting a lead java developer position for the Vet School at UC Davis, re-architecting their internal systems. Though I didn’t go further into Linguistics, the training I had at UCSC has made me a much better engineer, in particular being able to analyze a problem more completely instead of just regurgitating a forum post. Also, this round of job hunting people were to my surprise trying to fit me into more lead positions. Based on questions asked, I think part of it was because I do have a background other than just Computer Science.

If you’d like to get in touch with Nicholas, contact WHASC for his e-address.

CALL FOR PAPERS: WSCLA 21

The call for papers has been issued for the 21st Workshop on Structure and Constituency of Languages of the Americas (WSCLA 21), to be held April 1-3, 2016, at UQAM in MontréaL. WSCLA brings together linguists who are engaged in research on the formal study of the aboriginal languages of the Americas. Abstracts are invited for papers in any area of formal linguistics within any theoretical framework, including papers that address diachronic, sociolinguistic, or applied topics from a formal perspective, and papers seeking to correlate the interests of formal linguists and the concerns of indigenous communities. One of the invited speakers is alum Ryan Bennett (Ph.D. 2012; now Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Yale). More about abstract submission can be found here. The submission deadline has been extended to December 20, 2015.

CALL FOR PAPERS: SULA 9

The call for papers has been issued for the 9th conference on Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas (SULA 9), to be held May 6-8, 2016, at UCSC. SULA is a venue for researchers working on languages or dialects spoken in the Americas that do not have an established tradition of research in formal semantics. Submissions are encouraged from those who do primary fieldwork or experimental work, as well as analysis. One of the five invited speakers is alum Line Mikkelsen (Ph.D. 2004). Instructions for submission of abstracts can be found here. The submission deadline is January 15, 2016.

UCSC SEMANTICISTS AT CUSP

UC Santa Cruz Linguistics was well represented last weekend at the 8th annual California Universities Semantics and Pragmatics workshop (CUSP), hosted this year by Stanford University. Friday’s sessions kicked off with a presentation by Kelsey Kraus on her recent work on German modal particles. This was followed, after the break, by a presentation by Deniz Rudin on scalar and non-scalar implicatures of might and some. Tom Roberts opened the final session of the day with a talk on propositional attitudes in Estonian.

On Saturday, the Department’s CUSP presence was impressive: a visually impenetrable block of seats in the room was filled by UCSC linguists. The morning included a talk by Hitomi Hirayama, whose work on ignorance inferences of wa in Japanese left us anything but ignorant about what this contrastive marker denotes. The day was rounded out in style by a presentation from the LaLoCo group–Deniz Rudin, Karl DeVries, Karen Duek, Kelsey Kraus and Adrian Braseoveanu–on the semantics of correction. The presentation sparked lively debate, uh sorry, conversation which extended well past the official end of the workshop.

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