Category: Alumni News

Alum Paul Jensen an Assistant Professor at Hiroshima Shudo University

Paul Jensen received a BA and an MA (the last in 2007) from the department. He has kept busy since then, and we recently received word of his endeavors.

In April 2012 I’ll be starting a tenure-track position as an assistant professor teaching English in the Economic Sciences department at Hiroshima Shudo University in Hiroshima City, Japan.

I started working as an English instructor for kids and adults in Hiroshima immediately after completing the Linguistics M.A. program at UCSC in 2007. During the past four plus years I’ve met a lot of interesting people through my job (including my wife). I’ve also learned a lot about teaching, as well as how to put my linguistics skills to practical use in the classroom. My students really seem to
appreciate having an instructor who can explain the ins and outs of language, and I’m really grateful to the professors at UCSC for giving me the tools to analyze and describe language to others.

Congratulations, Paul!

Floris Roelofsen and Marcin Morzycki Publish in Linguistic Inquiry

The most recent issue of Linguistic Inquiry (42.4, Fall 2011) contains a short paper by Floris Roelofsen on ‘Free Variable Economy’. Floris was an LRC Associate in 2010—11 and will be returning to UCSC in the same capacity in January 2012 to resume his collaboration with Donka Farkas and with Adrian Brasoveanu.

The same issue of the journal also contains a paper by undergraduate alumnus Marcin Morzycki. Marcin went on to the doctoral program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is now Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Michigan State University. His LI paper (‘Quantification Galore’) is on the semantic properties of the little-studied element galore in English.

ALUMNA ARIANNA PUOPOLO TELLS US ABOUT THE TEACHING ASSISTANT PROGRAM IN FRANCE

Recent undergrad alum Arianna Puopolo is spending a year in France on the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF). If you might be interested in an opportunity like this after graduating, read on! When not working in a French classroom Arianna has been traveling to Poland, Switzerland, Belgium,… Not the worst way to spend your time.

Arianna writes:

The French Ministry of Education actually created TAPIF. English assistants (like me) in France work for the French government and qualify for a work visa and social security. It’s pretty cool! The official websites are https://www.tapif.org/ or http://www.frenchculture.org.

Qualified English assistants must be college graduates, demonstrate some level of competency working as an organizer or leader, and have some proficiency in French (fluency and/or complete proficiency is not a requirement). There are no minimum GPA or work experience requirements.

Applicants must submit a personal statement, provide two letters of recommendation (one attesting to the applicant’s competency in French and the other should speak to his/her/their ‘leadership skills’), a resume and official university transcripts.

France is divided into several “academies” (kind of like school
districts). Applicants may indicate the three academies they would most like to be placed in. I would strongly recommend that applicants NOT apply to the Lille academy. The Lille Academie is the third largest in France and the majority of it comprises small (NOT quaint) former coal mining districts. The small towns here are anything but provincial. Many have very weak economies and (because they were founded for industry rather than on the whim of a developing community) lack a city center or other points of interest. I know. I’m here.

Applicants are paid something like 960 euro every month, but after taxes, the net salary is 790 euro. Contracts are seven months long, and, in those seven months, there are eight weeks of school vacation. Assistants are paid for the entire month regardless of the number of vacation days during that month.

It’s a pretty wonderful program, if you ask me.

In Memoriam Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjergarson

Gunnar
Hrafn Hrafnbjergarson was a visiting graduate student in the UCSC department, under the auspices of the Linguistic Research Center, for a good part of the academic year 2003-4. While in Santa Cruz he worked especially with Judith Aissen on topics in OT syntax and was engaged in many other aspects of the life of the department. He earned the BA in linguistics from the University of Iceland in 1999, then studied with Sten Vikner, first in Stuttgart, then at Aarhus, in Denmark, where he earned the PhD in 2004, not long after his return from Santa Cruz. He held a faculty position in linguistics at the University of Lund, in Sweden. Sadly, we learned recently that Gunnar passed away in August. He died in a drowning accident while diving with friends near the Swedish side of the bridge connecting Copenhagen with Malmø. Gunnar was a fine linguist (known especially for his contributions to the Scandinavian Dialect Syntax project) and a kind and thoughtful person; he will be much missed. Øystein Vangsnes of Tromsø, who was a close friend, has written an essay in Gunnar’s memory, which is available on
his blog.

UCSC at the LSA

The preliminary program of the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, to be held January 5-8, 2012, in Portland, Oregon, has now been posted. WHASC’s first reading of it reveals an unusually hefty UCSC presence. Among those delivering papers are grad students Ryan Bennett, Nick Deschenes, and Matt Tucker, and faculty members Amy Rose Deal, Wendell Kimper, and Geoffrey Pullum (emeritus). Bill Ladusaw will be the discussant on a panel about the undergraduate major in Linguistics. Grad student Robert Henderson will present a joint poster with alum Scott AnderBois (Ph.D. 2011, now University of Connecticut). Many other alums will be presenting papers, including Ph.D. alums Pete Alrenga (Boston University), Vera Gribanova (Stanford), Chris Kennedy (Chicago), Ruth Kramer (Georgetown), Vera Lee-Schoenfeld (University of Georgia), Anya Lunden (University of Georgia), Jason Merchant (Chicago), and Rachel Walker (USC), as well as B.A. alums Joseph Sabbagh (University of Texas, Arlington) and Mark Sicoli (University of Alaska, Fairbanks). On Friday evening, Jorge Hankamer will be inducted as a member of the 2012 class of LSA Fellows. On Saturday evening, the Presidential address will be delivered by Sandy Chung, Manuel F. Borja, and Matt Wagers.

Judith Aissen and Scott Anderbois in Texas

Judith Aissen and Scott AnderBois (PhD 2011, currently Assistant Professor in Residence at the University of Connecticut) were in Austin, TX last weekend to participate in the fifth CILLA (Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America). Judith spoke on passive and agent focus in Tzotzil (“El pasivo y el enfoque de agente en tzotzil”), Scott on attitude reports in Yucatec Mayan (“Las atribuciones actitudinales en maya yucateco: Sintaxis y semántica”). High points of the conference included a keynote by Roberto Zavala (LRC visitor in Spring 2006), reporting on a newly discovered Zoquean language spoken in Chiapas, Mexico (Jitolteco), and one by Frank Seifart (MPI, Leipzig) on Manguaré, communication by drums among the Bora of the Amazons. CILLA is held every two years, always at UT. Spanish is the preferred language for the conference, with English and Portugese as alternatives.

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