Category: Events

Max Corbin graduated with the BA in Linguistics in Spring 2014 and has been building a career in data analysis ever since. Max will give a career talk for undergraduate majors in Linguistics and Language Studies on Monday, February 23rd from 5-6pm in the Stevenson Fireside Lounge. Max describes the plan for the talk as follows:

I’m currently working as a data collections assistant, report writer, and analyst at the Santa Cruz Women’s Health Center, here in downtown Santa Cruz. I’ll be talking broadly about the growing need for analysts for all kinds of data in many industries, and we’ll drill down to discuss the speech technology industry as an exciting case study that is likely to be of particular interest to our undergraduate linguists. I’ll also cover some of the skills students will need to work as a data analyst; some are taught as part of the degree program, but others they may have to pick up as they go.

Light refreshments will be served, and a reception will be held afterward in the Fireside Lounge. All are welcome; no RSVP required.

We have been asked to spread the word about a conference to be held in Vancouver between April 24th and April 26th 2015. Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at Simon Fraser University, the title of the conference is Language at the Interface and the invited speakers include Peter Carruthers (Maryland), Wolfram Hinzen (Barcelona and Durham), Friederike Moltmann(CNRS and NYU), and Anna Papafragou (Delaware). Detailed information is available here but in brief the aim of the workshop is to explore a wide range of questions at the intersection of linguistics, psychology, and philosophy that might be raised in connection with the place of language in the architecture of the mind. The organizers (Ashley Atkins (SFU) and James Martin(Princeton/SFU)) invite 1—-2 page abstracts on any topic related to the language-mind interface, broadly construed. The abstract submission deadline is January 15, 2015. Anonymized abstracts should be sent to latkins@sfu.ca; the email message should include personal information (name, institution, contact information). More information is available at the conference website.

Angelika Kratzer has asked us to help get the word out about two Summer Institutes (in 2015 and 2016) co-organized by Angelika and Manfred Krifka. These are SIAS Summer Institutes, co-sponsored by the National Humanities Center in the US and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in Germany. Both will bring together scholars working in (a) Theoretical Linguistics, especially Semantics and its interfaces with Pragmatics, Syntax, and Phonology, (b) Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, and (c) Linguistic and Anthropological Fieldwork. Their goal is to foster the development of scholarly networks and collaborative projects among young scholars from the United States and Europe. They are open to scholars who have received a Ph.D. within the past five years and Ph.D. candidates who are now studying or teaching at a European or American institution of higher education. Each institute is built around two summer workshops, one held in the United States and another in Europe. The first will take place in Berlin in July 2015, the second at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina in July 2016. The application deadline for the 2015 institute is January 6th 2015 and application materials and further information are available here. Information is also available here.

The program for the 89th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (in Portland, Oregon, January 8-11, 2015) was recently announced. Among those presenting at the meeting are faculty members Sandy Chung and Matt Wagers (Filler-gap order and online licensing of grammatical relations: evidence from Chamorro, with Manuel F. Borja), along with graduate students Nate Arnett (Interference effects in subject-verb attachment: Case, position, and clause-finiteness), Anna Greenwood(Substance bias in stress pattern learning), and Bern Samko (The emphatic implicature of English verb-phrase preposing.

Also presenting at the meeting are many alumni of the graduate program, including Matt Tucker (NYU), Chris Potts (Stanford University), Rachel Walker (University of Southern California), Andy Wedel (University of Arizona), and Adam Ussishkin(University of Arizona). Among undergraduate alumni presenting are Lauren Winans (UCLA), Aaron White (University of Maryland), Joseph King (New York University), and Eric Bakovic (University of California, San Diego). Former visiting graduate student Filippa Lindahl (University of Göteborg) is also on the program.