Category: Events

Six Slugs A-sinnin’!

According to Wiktionary, a collective of slugs may be referred to as a cornucopia. With all due emphasis on that modal, there’s no denying that Banana Slugs were copious at last month’s edition of Sinn und Bedeutung. Held at Goethe University Frankfurt, SuB30 featured presentations from many community members:

You can see most of these folks pictured below!

(l to r): Sharf, Knick, Hofmann, Unidentified Frankfurter, Li, Tamura. Not pictured: Cao.

Spring 2025 End-of-year celebration

On Thursday, June 12, the Linguistics Department held its End-of-Year Celebration in the Stevenson Fireside Lounge for our graduating students. The event brought together faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, friends, and family from across the UCSC linguistics community.

Here are a few highlights from the celebration:

  • Undergraduate Advising and Program Coordinator Gwyn Vandevere
  • Professor and Undergraduate Program Director Maziar Toosarvandani
  • Professor and Department Chair Matt Wagers

 

 

LURC 2025

The 2025 Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference (LURC) took place on Friday, May 30. One of the longest running traditions in the Department, the conference featured the largest number of student presenters ever — 31! A total of 13 posters were presented by undergraduates on their original research across six subdisciplines: phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, semantics, sociolinguistics, and syntax.

Every year, the conference features a Distinguished Alumnus/a Speaker, and this year was no exception. Anissa Zaitsu (BA, 2017; MA, 2018), currently a PhD student at Stanford, gave the keynote talk: “When negative concord fails: Focus, alternatives, and the semantics of double negation.”

Anagnostopoulou colloquium and mini-course

The past couple weeks have seen the exciting presence of Professor Elena Anagnostopoulou (University of Crete and IMS-FORTH) around the department. Elena gave a colloquium two Fridays ago on “Rethinking clitics: A view from Greek”, as well as a mini-course last week on testing models of parametric change with phylogenetic tools and methods. Many students and faculty also had the chance to talk with her one-on-one in meetings and in several dinners.

Professor Li Nguyen Gave Talk at UCSC

On May 15, Professor Jess Law and incoming LAAL Professor Ariel Chan co-organized a talk by Professor Li Nguyen (Nanyang Technological University) entitled “Bilingualism on the ground: Insights from the Canberra Vietnamese-English Corpus”. The event drew attendees from across our campus as well as several linguists from nearby institutions.

Professor Li Nguyen giving talk at UCSC

Successful BayPhon 2025

On May 10, 2025, UCSC Linguistics hosted BayPhon, a meeting that brought together about 35 faculty and students in the broader Bay area (San José State, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Cruz) to present their work on phonetics and phonology. 

Those in attendance enjoyed a day of abundant sun, with exceptional views across Monterey Bay during lunch, and basked in the light of 11 inspiring presentations and warm conversations. Many thanks to the students and faculty who organized the event, especially the primary organizers: PhD students Hanyoung Byun, Richard Wang, and Professor Rachel Walker. 

UCSC researchers were among those presenting at the workshop:

  • Myke Brinkerhoff presented a talk titled “The acoustics landscape of voice quality.”
  • Hanyoung Byun presented a poster titled “Lenis obstruent voicing in Seoul Korean: Phonological or phonetic?”
  • Ian Carpick presented a talk titled “Deriving vowel reduction from a law governing human motion.”

Thanks to Jungu Kang for taking photos throughout the workshop. Some highlights are below:

  • PhD Student Ian Carpick
  • PhD Student Hanyoung Byun
  • PhD Student Myke Brinkerhoff
  • Professor Rachel Walker at the poster session with presenters

Nido de Lenguas at the Guelaguetza

Poster for the Guelaguetza

Nido de Lenguas continued its annual tradition of tabling at Senderos’ Vive Oaxaca Guelaguetza to raise public awareness about the Indigenous languages of Oaxaca. In addition to PhD students Max Kaplan, Matthew Kogan, and Maya Wax Cavallaro and undergraduate students Alexa Ballesteros and Jackie Torres (BA, Linguistics), this year’s team included students from the Estudiantes Oaxaqueños de Ahora, an interest group which aims to build a supportive community for Oaxacan students on campus. Its volunteers reported having a phenomenal time talking to guests about the languages and dialects they speak!

Raul Hernandez, Alexa Ballesteros, Jackie Torres, Lizbeth Ortiz, and Daisy Lopez (from left to right)
Raul Hernandez, Alexa Ballesteros, Jackie Torres, Lizbeth Ortiz, and Daisy Lopez (from left to right)
Nido de Lenguas table at the Guelaguetza
Nido de Lenguas table at the Guelaguetza
Maya Wax Cavallaro, Max Kaplan, Daisy Lopez, Alexa Ballesteros, Lizbeth Ortiz, and Jackie Torres (from left to right)
Maya Wax Cavallaro, Max Kaplan, Daisy Lopez, Alexa Ballesteros, Lizbeth Ortiz, and Jackie Torres (from left to right)
Nido de Lenguas table at the Guelaguetza
Nido de Lenguas table at the Guelaguetza
Matthew Kogan at the Nido de Lenguas table
Matthew Kogan at the Nido de Lenguas table
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