Category: Events

FOLEY IN GEORGIA

Steven Foley, who is just back from a trip to Tbilisi, reports:

Having been studying the Georgian language in one way or another since I was in middle school, it’d been high time for me to actually visit the place it’s spoken. And I finally got my excuse this summer, when I had a paper accepted to the 11th Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language, and Cognition (TbiLLC). I arrived in the capital city two weeks before the conference to see some of the country I’ve been interested in for so long — and Georgia did not disappoint. It’s a land of rugged beauty, delicious cheap food, intimidating hospitality, and (of course) linguistic richness. Tbilisi itself is quite charming, if you manage to avoid being run over by speeding taxis. Just around the corner from one another are ancient churches, stark Soviet monuments, and modern homes of new oligarchs. I also got a few chances to trek outside the city. One such excursion was to Vardzia, an 11th century cave city hewn into a mountainside. Oh, and the conference was pretty fun. I presented in a workshop on obligatoriness organized by UMass’s Rajesh Bhatt & Vincent Homer. Also on the TbiLLC program were some enlightening tutorials on semantic fieldwork by UBC’s Lisa Matthewson, a presentation on a syntactically- & morphologically-annotated Georgian corpus I’m itching to use, and some logic talks. But undoubtedly the best part of my trip was the food. I gorged myself daily on exquisite produce, hearty fist-sized dumplings, eggplant slathered with walnut paste, tarragon soda, fried garlicky chicken, tannic orange wines fermented in clay pots, and all manner of cheese-filled breads. After a 20-hour blur of travel it’s hard to believe I’m already back in Santa Cruz. It sure took me a while to finally get to Georgia, but I don’t think it’ll be long before I’m there again.

FALL WELCOME

The Department’s Fall welcome reception, on Friday September 25, was a most amiable and convivial event. Grad students, faculty, staff, and visitors gathered on the lawn behind the Cowell Provost’s house to talk, bask in the late afternoon sun, admire the scenery, and enjoy an excellent dinner catered by Mortal Dumpling. This pop-up restaurant, owned and operated by B.A. alum Noah Kopito, has been making quite a splash on the Santa Cruz restaurant scene; for reviews, visit here and here.

LURC 2015

LURC (Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference 2015) took place on Friday May 29th, under the stewardship of Adrian Brasoveanu and with the presence of guest alumnus speaker  Aaron Steven White of the University of Maryland. Pictures of the event are now available here courtesy of grad student Scarlett Clothier-Goldschmidt.

SALT 25 AT STANFORD

SALT 25 took place from Friday May 15th to Sunday May 17th, on Stanford’s ostentatiously beautiful campus. Work by current, former, and future Cruzites was presented—–a talk coauthored by incoming PhD student Tom Roberts (On double access, cessation and parentheticality; joint work with Daniel Altshuler, Valentine Hacquard and alumnus Aaron White); a talk coauthored by alum Louise McNally (The -ing dynasty: rebuilding the semantics of nominalizations, joint work with Scott Grimm); and a rockstar invited talk by Adrian Brasoveanu (Incremental and predictive interpretation: Experimental evidence and possible accounts), joint work with Jakub Dotlačil. There was a poster by alumn Chris Kennedy, co-authored with Helena Aparicio and Ming Xiang. Daniel Büring, a former UCSC visiting professor, was among the invited speakers. Many Cruzites past and present were in attendance as well. A non-exhaustive list includes: Donka Farkas, Amy Rose Deal, Christine Gunlogson, Chris Potts, Peter Alrenga, Boris Harizanov, Bern Samko, Karen Duek, Hitomi Hirayama, and Veronika Richtarcikova. With Chris Gunlogson/Kennedy/Potts all present, there was a quorum of UCSC Chris semanticists in attendance and a nearly complete reunion of the Four Chris(s)es of Alumni Conference fame. Honeydew and banana bread were consumed in startling quantities. Meaning was discussed. Much was learned.

SALT 25 at STANFORD

SALT 25 will be taking place at Stanford over the coming weekend (Friday May 15th to Sunday May 17th). Among this year’s invited speakers is Adrian Brasoveanu. Adrian’s talk is on Saturday May 16th at 5:30pm and it is entitled Incremental and Predictive Interpretation: Experimental Evidence and Possible Accounts (joint work with Jakub Dotlačil). The abstract is available here. Opening the conference will be a jointly-authored paper by incoming PhD student Tom Roberts and undergraduate alummus Aaron White along with Daniel Altshuler and Valentine Hacquard (On double access, cessation and parentheticality). Alumna Louise McNally will also be presenting (Sunday May 17th at 1:30) with Scott Grimm on The -ing dynasty: rebuilding the semantics of nominalizations. The full program is available here.

50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

The UCSC Linguistics Department is almost as old as the campus itself. So as the campus celebrates its 50th Anniversary this year, it seemed like the right time to celebrate the history of the department and at the same time to look forward to its future. To that end, there was a gathering in the Stevenson Fireside Lounge on Saturday April 4th to do just that. Current faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, alumni, visitors, and friends gathered to hear talks by Judith Aissen, Maziar Toosarvandani, Amy Rose Deal , Grant McGuire, Matt Wagers and Junko Ito , introduced and coordinated by Pranav Anand. The program for the event is here and pictures (by Jim Clifford) can be viewed here. The themes of the event turned out to be the interweaving of methodologies (traditional and emerging), the relation between theoretical work and documentary work, and the importance of `giving back’ to the communities whose languages linguists mine for theoretical insight. The project was initiated and coordinated by Department Manager Ashley Hardisty, to whom warm thanks and congratulations are due.

1 … 25 26 27 28 29 … 39