Category: Announcements

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!

Slugs at the LSA

Many past and present UCSC linguists will be presenting at the up-coming Annual Meeting of the LSA (6-9, January 2022). In chronological order:

Friday (January 7)

D-linking and the effects of contextual set restriction (poster session)

Yuki Seo^^ (University of Delaware) & Rebecca Tollan (University of Delaware)
^^UCSC exchange undergrad from Japan, 2016-17^^

The Development of Vowel Length as a Subphonemic Cue (in-person presentation)

Abigail Fergus (College of William and Mary), Kaitlyn Harrigan (College of William and Mary), & Anya Hogoboom** (College of William and Mary)
**PhD Alum**

Saturday (January 8)

The Irreducible Uncertainty of Ranking and Ordering (poster session)

Eric Bakovic^^ (University of California, San Diego) & Jason Riggle^% (University of Chicago)
^^UCSC BA^^ and %%MA%%

Pre-nominal mí in San Martín Peras Mixtec (poster session)

Lisa Hofmann~~ (University of California, Santa Cruz) & Jason Ostrove** (University of California, Santa Cruz)
~~Current PhD student~~ and **PhD Alum**

Competence meets performance: New perspectives on information structure (hybrid presentation)

Andrew Hedding~~ (University of California, Santa Cruz) & Morwenna Hoeks~~ (University of California, Santa Cruz)
~~Current PhD students~~

Welcome to James Funk

WHASC extends a warm editorial welcome to James Funk, our new graduate advisor and graduate program coordinator. Per Department Manager Sarah Amador:

 

James earned his PhD in English at UC Irvine, and joins us at UC Santa Cruz after working as an adjunct professor at UC Riverside and Clemson University. He brings a wealth of experience in teaching and mentoring students to his new role, and I know that his multi-faceted and nuanced understanding of graduate student advising and program management will serve us all well in Linguistics.

 

We’re very glad to have you join us, James.

Ch-ch-changes

Fall 2021 marks a season of unprecedented change not only in the wider world, but here in the halls of Stevenson College. Some of our colleagues, like Junko Ito and Ashley Hardisty, have moved into different roles. But we’ve welcomed many new denizens, like Professor Rachel Walker, new Department Manager Sarah Amador, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Scholar Jaime Perez Gonzalez, and new Graduate Coordinator James Funk (q.v. sup.). And the Cave once again teems with life with our large incoming class of Ph.D., M.A., and B.A./M.A. students (and can we rightly call it a cave anymore, after the pre-pandemic reno? The Grotto, anyone?).

 

In view of all this, WHASC is pleased to announce its series “New Faces in Stevenson,” featuring a few capsule interviews each issue to better get to know our new colleagues. Keep your eyes peeled for the first instal(l)ment in the next issue!

LAW JOINS LINGUISTICS FACULTY

Jess H.-K. Law, doctoral student in Linguistics at Rutgers University, will be joining the Department of Linguistics at UCSC as Assistant Professor in the coming academic year! Jess works in theoretical and experimental linguistics, with a focus on semantics and pragmatics. Specifically, she enjoys puzzling over distributivity, plurality, dynamic semantics, speech acts, bare noun phrases. She writes,

There is no better home for my research and teaching than Linguistics at UC Santa Cruz, and there is no better home for my family than the beautiful city of Santa Cruz. I eagerly look forward to working alongside all the brilliant linguists at the department to push the boundary of linguistics.

Congratulations, Jess!

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