Category: Events

Another successful LURC

LURC Presenters, standing in front of log in Stevenson CourtyardOn June 2, students and faculty in the department gathered for the Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference (LURC). This annual conference celebrates the groundbreaking research of Language Studies and Linguistics majors and is always a highlight of the department’s academic year calendar. 

This year’s LURC was no exception, featuring nine posters on a range of topics in phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, syntax, and semantics:

  • Cal Boye-Lynn, Killian Kiuttu, and Mackenzi Rauls: Everyone loves complements: Complementizer-determiner ambiguity and acceptability
  • Tony Butorovich, Claire Wellwood, and Max Xie: Production of English /r/ by prosodic position
  • Sophie Green, Shaya Karasso, and Josh Lieberstein: Ambiguity Advantage Effect in Wh-questions
  • Nicholas Hanson: Conveyances of sarcasm in written language
  • Colin Hirschberg: Affectedness in passives
  • Sadira Lewis: Events and ambiguity in -er nominals: An experimental approach
  • Stephen Migdal: “At least,” QUD, and Pragmatic Enrichment of NNPs
  • Wilson Wenhao Sun: OT account for consonant clusters in Cantonese loanword phonology
  • Nishant Suria: A phonetic investigation of the retroflex approximant in Tamil

After brief presentations and a discussion period, the Distinguished Alumna Speaker Caroline Andrews (BA, Linguistics, 2011) spoke on “Optionality and commitment: Sentence planning in an ergative language.” Dr. Andrews received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2019, and she is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich.

WCCFL 41 takes place at UC Santa Cruz

This past weekend (May 5-7) saw over 125 linguists from around the world convene in and around Stevenson College for the 41st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 41). They presented 42 talks and 39 posters, on a wide range of topics in theoretical phonology, syntax, and semantics. Two special sessions brought together specialists on phi-features and deixis and anaphora; one virtual poster session enabled presenters not able to attend in person to participate; three invited speakers gave plenary talks on social gender and nominal structure, locality at the morphology-phonology interface, and demonstrative expressions.

The photo gallery below captures the lively spirit of the conference, which featured a conference dinner and other social events, alongside the talks and posters. For some attendees, the conference ended in a visit to the giant redwoods at Henry Cowell State Park, where a special session on “root structure” was held (video courtesy of fourth year PhD student Dan Brodkin).

In addition to many current faculty and students, alumni Andrew Hedding (PhD, 2022), Aaron Kaplan (PhD, 2008), and Line Mikkelsen (PhD, 2004) were present. Some other past members of the department were also in attendance, but were not captured photographically, including Vera Gribanova (PhD, 2010) and Boris Harizanov (PhD, 2014).

One person appears in only a couple of these photos, because she was behind the camera, fourth-year PhD student Yaqing Cao.

WCCFL 41 was made possible by the generous support of the Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz and the Department of Linguistics, as well as the tremendous dedication and hard work of many linguistics graduate students and LRC Coordinator Maria Zimmer.

Nido de Lenguas in April

Nido de Lenguas, the collaboration between linguists at UC Santa Cruz and local Oaxacan cultural organization Senderos, continued this April with two Pop-Up events at a film screening (Historias de Culturas: Oaxaca in Santa Cruz) in downtown Santa Cruz on April 8 and the annual Guelaguetza festival at the Branciforte Small Schools on April 16. The latter event was attended by over 2,400 people, where UCSC linguists had the opportunity to share the Indigenous languages of Oaxaca with many festival goers.

The Guelaguetza was covered by the Santa Cruz Sentinel and local TV station KSBW.

Nido De Lenguas

Senderos Co-Founder Fe Silva Robles (left) and UC Santa Cruz graduate students (from left to right), Delaney Gomez-Jackson, Jack Duff, Matthew Kogan, and Eli Sharf, at Historias de Culturas: Oaxaca in Santa Cruz

Pi(e) party

The Department recently inaugurated a new tradition, with its first annual Pi(e) Party, which was held not on 3/14, due to inclement rain, but on March 16. The event saw a serious lineup of pies, including some more expected fare — several berry and apple pies — as well as a somewhat more exotic buttermilk pie, and both sweet and savory empanadas.

The WHASC Editor didn’t get a chance to taste every flavor this year, but looks forward to trying next year.

pie 3    pie 2

pie 1

Pi(e) party attendees (behind the camera and not pictured: Roumi Pancheva).

WCCFL 41 at UC Santa Cruz: May 5-7, 2023

Download the WCCFL 41 Program

The 41st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL), pronounced [wɪkfəl], will take place in and around Stevenson College on May 5-7. One of the premier international conferences on formal linguistics in North America, WCCFL has been held annually since 1982. The first WCCFL was at Stanford University, and UC Santa Cruz has hosted the conference four times before, in 1984, 1993, 2002, and 2012. 

Over the years, WCCFL has featured much groundbreaking research in the formal study of human language, and this year’s conference will be no exception. Conference attendees will hear from three invited speakers — Luke Adamson (Rutgers University), Dorothy Ahn (Rutgers University), and Eva Zimmermann (University of Leipzig), and other linguists from around the world will present 42 talks and 39 posters, on a wide range of topics in theoretical phonology, syntax, and semantics. These will include two special sessions: one on deixis and anaphora (How does human language make reference to the physical and linguistic context?) and one on phi-features (What semantic domains are represented featurally in human language, and how are these features represented in the syntax and morphology?)

The program for WCCFL 41 has just been posted, and conference information — including registration fees — can be found on the conference website.

Rickford Lecture Re-Scheduled for February 28

John R. Rickford, who is J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities at

Rickford

Professor John R. Rickford

Stanford University, will give a Stevenson College Distinguished Alumni Lecture on Tuesday, February 28 3:30-5:00 pm in the Stevenson College Library. (Note: This event was re-scheduled from the fall.) He will be speaking about his autobiography Speaking My Soul: Race, Life and Language. The lecture, which is co-sponsored by the Department of Linguistics, will be followed by a reception and book signing outside on the patio. 

Professor Rickford received his BA in sociolinguistics at UC Santa Cruz in 1971, with highest academic honors and honors from Stevenson College. He has been on the faculty at Stanford since 1980. Professor Rickford’s research has been recognized by an American Book Award, a Language and the Public Award from the Linguistic Association of America, and the Best Paper in Language Award, among other honors. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017 and was President of the Linguistic Society of America in 2015.

 

UCSC Linguists at the 2023 LSA Linguistic Institute

The 2023 LSA Linguistic Institute, “Linguistics as Cognitive Science: Universality and Variation,” will be held June 19-July 14 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Two of the Institute’s courses will be taught by UC Santa Cruz faculty or alumni: Field Psycholinguistics (course 220) will be taught by Professor Matt Wagers and Jed Sam Pizarro-Guevara (PhD, 2020) and Advanced Pragmatics (course 211) will be taught by Maria Biezma and Kyle Rawlins (PhD, 2008).

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