DEVRIES AWARDED DISSERTATION YEAR FELLOWSHIP
Karl DeVries was recently selected to receive a quarter-long Dissertation Year Fellowship for 2016-2017. Congratulations, Karl!
Category: Announcements
KALIVODA ADVANCES TO CANDIDACY
Congratulations to Nick Kalivoda, who advanced to candidacy last Friday (May 27) by passing his Qualifying Exam. Nick’s committee consisted of Jim McCloskey (chair), Armin Mester, and Junko Ito, along with Arto Anttila (Stanford). Junko will chair Nick’s dissertation committee, while Armin and Jim will constitute its other members.
LURC 2016
This year’s Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference (LURC) will take place on Wednesday (June 1). It will feature talks by five current students:
- Dhyana Buckley: “Ramarama: A phonological analysis on suffix interaction with English loan words”
- Jacob Chemnick: “Vowel epenthesis in Muyang: Accounting for free variation in OT”
- Drew Knochenhauer: “Unbounded dependencies and specifier competition in varieties of Spanish”
- Lydia Werthen: “Wh-continuation: A neglected puzzle”
- Anissa Zaitsu: “Tough movement: Exploring mixed syntactic movement and argument structure”
Shayne Sloggett (BA, 2010), who is currently a graduate student at UMass Amherst, will give the Distinguished Alumnus Address on “Do comprehenders violate binding theory? Depends on your point of view.” The conference will run from 12:45 to 4:45 pm in the Stevenson Fireside Lounge. The complete program can be found here.
GREENWOOD TO DEFEND DISSERTATION
This Friday (June 3), Anna Greenwood will defend her dissertation, entitled “An experimental investigation of phonetic naturalness”:
The goal of this dissertation is to use experimental methods to investigate the driving force behind typological asymmetries that are based on phonetic naturalness. It has been widely observed that patterns that are grounded in phonetics are common, whereas the unnatural equivalents of these patterns are either rare or unattested. I argue that these observed naturalness asymmetries can be explained entirely by perception and production, as opposed to an ingrained learning bias against unnatural patterns. The experiments in this dissertation support this: participants do struggle to learn the unnatural pattern, but not when the experimental stimuli are exceptionally clear. This account also provides some explanation for the discrepancies between previous research on naturalness in the lab. The findings of this dissertation pave the way for a better understanding of how to accurately recreate naturalness-based asymmetries in the lab.
The defense will take place at 2 pm in Humanities 1 (Room 210).
PHI BETA KAPPA ELECTIONS
Once again this year, an impressive number of seniors with linguistics or language studies majors have been elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest undergraduate honors organization in the United States. Graduands are invited to join on the basis of their academic records, which must include a broad program of study in the liberal arts and sciences. Seven linguistics majors were elected to Phi Beta Kappa this year: Francisco Delgado, Mansi Desai, Zaid Aaron Galvez, Zoe Kirsh, Tyler Lewis, Katie Rees, and Mark Takehana. An equal number of language studies majors were also elected: Laura Bates, Lilian Buschmann, Ysabel King, Jason Marrott, Tenavi Erin Nakamura-Zimmerer, Rebekah Wilson, and Benjamin Youngstrom. Congratulations and best wishes to all of them!
SPRING UNDERGRADUATE HONORS
Honors in the major were awarded to three seniors who are graduating this spring: Mansi Desai (Linguistics), Lyndsey Olsen (Linguistics), and Benjamin Youngstrom (Language Studies). Congratulations!
CHUNG SELECTED AS FACULTY RESEARCH LECTURER
On Wednesday (May 18), the Committee on the Faculty Research Lecture announced their selection of Sandy Chung as Faculty Research Lecturer for 2016-2017. The nomination cites how Sandy’s research “combines theoretical analysis with field research and documentation” and her “pioneering” work with Matt Wagers in exploring “syntactic questions by means of psycholinguistic behavioral experiments with Chamorro participants.” It also recognizes Sandy’s “outstanding” teaching and the Excellence in Teaching and Innovations in Teaching awards that she has received. We look forward to this “world-renowned researcher and teacher’s” lecture next year!