Incoming graduate cohort

Four new PhD students will be joining the UC Santa Cruz linguistics department in the Fall of 2023:

🎉 🎉 🎉

Hanyoung Byun (Seoul National University)

Aidan Katson (New York University)

Emily Knick (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

Ruoqing Yao (College of William and Mary)

🎉 🎉 🎉

A warm welcome to Aidan, Emily, Hanyoung, and Ruoqing — we look forward to seeing you in Santa Cruz soon!

WCCFL 41 at UC Santa Cruz: May 5-7, 2023

Download the WCCFL 41 Program

The 41st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL), pronounced [wɪkfəl], will take place in and around Stevenson College on May 5-7. One of the premier international conferences on formal linguistics in North America, WCCFL has been held annually since 1982. The first WCCFL was at Stanford University, and UC Santa Cruz has hosted the conference four times before, in 1984, 1993, 2002, and 2012. 

Over the years, WCCFL has featured much groundbreaking research in the formal study of human language, and this year’s conference will be no exception. Conference attendees will hear from three invited speakers — Luke Adamson (Rutgers University), Dorothy Ahn (Rutgers University), and Eva Zimmermann (University of Leipzig), and other linguists from around the world will present 42 talks and 39 posters, on a wide range of topics in theoretical phonology, syntax, and semantics. These will include two special sessions: one on deixis and anaphora (How does human language make reference to the physical and linguistic context?) and one on phi-features (What semantic domains are represented featurally in human language, and how are these features represented in the syntax and morphology?)

The program for WCCFL 41 has just been posted, and conference information — including registration fees — can be found on the conference website.

Rickford Lecture Re-Scheduled for February 28

John R. Rickford, who is J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities at

Rickford

Professor John R. Rickford

Stanford University, will give a Stevenson College Distinguished Alumni Lecture on Tuesday, February 28 3:30-5:00 pm in the Stevenson College Library. (Note: This event was re-scheduled from the fall.) He will be speaking about his autobiography Speaking My Soul: Race, Life and Language. The lecture, which is co-sponsored by the Department of Linguistics, will be followed by a reception and book signing outside on the patio. 

Professor Rickford received his BA in sociolinguistics at UC Santa Cruz in 1971, with highest academic honors and honors from Stevenson College. He has been on the faculty at Stanford since 1980. Professor Rickford’s research has been recognized by an American Book Award, a Language and the Public Award from the Linguistic Association of America, and the Best Paper in Language Award, among other honors. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017 and was President of the Linguistic Society of America in 2015.

 

UCSC Linguists at the 2023 LSA Linguistic Institute

The 2023 LSA Linguistic Institute, “Linguistics as Cognitive Science: Universality and Variation,” will be held June 19-July 14 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Two of the Institute’s courses will be taught by UC Santa Cruz faculty or alumni: Field Psycholinguistics (course 220) will be taught by Professor Matt Wagers and Jed Sam Pizarro-Guevara (PhD, 2020) and Advanced Pragmatics (course 211) will be taught by Maria Biezma and Kyle Rawlins (PhD, 2008).

Syntax & Semantics at Santa Cruz, Volume 5 released

SynSem at UCSC Vol 5

The cover of Volume V of Syntax & Semantics at Santa Cruz

The fifth volume of Syntax & Semantics at Santa Cruz (SASC) — the Department’s working paper series on syntax and semantics — was just released. Edited by PhD students Lalitha Balachandran and Jack Duff, it features four articles by current and recently graduated students and faculty:

The volume is available both online and in print.

Professor Roumyana Pancheva joins the department

Roumyana Pancheva, who is currently Professor of Linguistics and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Southern California, will be joining the Department of Linguistics in Winter 2023.

Professor Pancheva’s research is in syntax, semantics, and their interface. She uses formal models to investigate synchronic linguistic variation and diachronic change, with a particular focus on Bulgarian and other Slavic languages. Professor Pancheva has made important contributions to the theories of degree expressions, person and perspective, tense and aspect, evidentiality, and clitics and clause structure. Her research is also innovative for integrating formal modeling with experimental methods, in particular brain imaging.

Her papers have appeared in a range of influential journals, including Linguistic Inquiry, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, the Journal of Semantics, and Brain and Language. Professor Pancheva has been supported by a prestigious New Directions Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation, as well as grants from the National Science Foundation.

Congratulations, Roumi, and welcome to Santa Cruz!

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