Category: Events

UC Santa Cruz Linguists at CreteLing

There was a large UCSC contingent at CreteLing 2022 this year, the annual linguistics summer school hosted at the University of Crete in beautiful Rethymno. Two current faculty members, Professors Ivy Sichel and Donka Farkas, and incoming faculty member Professor Roumyana Pancheva, taught classes over the two-week program. Nine students from UCSC, both undergraduate and graduate, attended these classes and others. Here are some quotes from participants about their favorite part of the program:

UCSC linguists at the Port of Rethymno

UCSC students and professors at the Port of Rethymno. From left clockwise: Owen O’Brien (senior), Sophia Stremel (PhD), Sadie Lewis (senior), Donka Farkas (faculty), Eli Sharf (PhD), Jackson Confer (alum), Matthew Kogan (MA), Roumyana Pancheva (faculty), Ivy Sichel (faculty), and Niko Webster (PhD).

“Easily, the best part was getting to know so many brilliant professors and students from around the world, both in the classroom and out. Conversations with new friends were consistently insightful and rewarding, and I loved being able to explore the island during down time and end the days with good food and night swims in such great company.” – Jackson Confer, alum

“At CreteLing, I enjoyed many of the meals we shared together, lunch between classes, and late-night dinners, where everyone was welcome and we seemed to keep cramming chairs around the table. Some of the most exciting conversations were had over a great meal and a view of the Mediterranean.” – Sadie Lewis, senior

“I really enjoyed going out with our big Santa Cruz cohort to enjoy the tremendous food and culture in Crete. I was quite excited to be thinking about Linguistics with everyone in this very vacation-esque setting.” – Matthew Kogan, 2nd year MA

Donka and Sabine at the final dinner.

Donka Farkas, Professor Emerita at UCSC and Sabine Iatridou, Professor at MIT and Co-Director of CreteLing

“It was pure joy to be in a real classroom with real live students again.  I loved interacting with the large and lively UCSC contingent, in class, at Brew your Mind cafe, on the bus, or even during a brief forced march from the classroom to the bus station.” – Donka Farkas, Professor Emerita

“I enjoyed dancing: whether in the club or in the streets!” – Owen O’Brien, senior

“Wednesday was our off-day in the middle of the week. I loved going to the local beach and swimming in the warm Mediterranean on this day, having some time to enjoy the sun and think about ideas I learned in class the previous few days.” – Eli Sharf, 2nd year PhD 

Delaney Gomez-Jackson on a bus.

UCSC MA student Delaney Gomez-Jackson enjoying the bus ride back to downtown Rethymno after a long day of classes

UCSC linguists at the Final Dinner

UCSC students celebrating at the dinner and dance party hosted on the final night of the program. From left clockwise: Sadie Lewis (senior), Sophia Stremel (PhD), Matthew Kogan (MA), Jackson Confer (alum), Owen O’Brien (senior), Elifnur Ulusoy (MA), Niko Webster (PhD), and Eli Sharf (PhD).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures of the University of Crete

A collage of film photos of the Rethymno campus taken by Delaney Gomez-Jackson.

Hangout out in Crete

Niko Webster (left), Owen O’Brien (right, back), and Sadie Lewis (right, front) hang out and drink coffee in front of the common room during a class break.

 

 

 

 

 

John Rickford to give Stevenson College Distinguished Alumni Lecture

Professor John R. Rickford

Professor John R. Rickford

John R. Rickford, who is J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities at Stanford University, will give a Stevenson College Distinguished Alumni Lecture on Wednesday, October 19 at 3:00-4:30 pm in the Fireside Lounge. 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.

The Department of Linguistics maintains the John Rickford Undergraduate Development Fund to recognize his “distinguished intellectual achievements and for his unstinting commitment to marginalized communities and the languages that they speak.” The Fund provides new academic opportunities for distinguished undergraduates by supporting research projects, travel to conferences, and undergraduate linguistics club activities.

Contributions to the Rickford Fund can be made directly online or by mail.

Welcome back!

2022 Fall Welcome Event

Linguistics graduate students and faculty reconnecting after a busy summer of research

The Department gathered for its annual fall welcome event this past Friday (September 23) at the Cowell Provost House. The warm, sunny weather and spectacular views of the Monterey Bay provided the perfect setting for returning faculty and graduate students to catch up — and for them to welcome the department’s newest members to campus. 

This fall, five new graduate students joined the Department: Ian Carpick, Yağmur Kiper, and Richard Wang started on the PhD track, and Duygu Demiray and Larry Lyu on the MA track. In addition, the Department officially welcomed Delaney Gomez-Jackson, Matthew Kogan, and David Tuffs to the MA program, after their completion of the graduate coursework as BA students.

The Department also welcomed two new faculty members: Mia Gong, who started as Assistant Professor this fall, and Haoze Li, who is serving as Visiting Assistant Professor this academic year.

Students and faculty had a lot to share with each other, after what sounded like some busy summers of research. In the coming weeks, we will be sharing updates about what they were up to with you. Stay tuned!

LURC 2022

Today marks the annual meeting of the Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference (LURC). This year’s lineup featured four excellent talks by our undergraduates: (1) Animacy in Globally Ambiguous Sentences, by Briana Bugarin, Jackson Confer, Joyce Hong, Owen O’Brien, and Isabel Pacheco, (2) Local Syntactic Coherence Effects across Lexical Categories, by Sarah Lee, Sadira Lewis, Haley Okumura, (3) T-Glottalization in Utahn English, by Kim Tan, and (4) English Inversion and the EPP, by Emilio Gonzalez. All of this was followed up by another talk by distinguished alum Eric Baković: Vowel Harmony Functions, Complexity, and Interactions. The conference was a great success, and WHASC extends a congratulations and a thank you to everyone who organized and/or participated in this event. The full details can be found here.

AMP’D UP SLUGS

The Annual Meeting on Phonology happened just last weekend (Oct 1-3, 2021; hosted by Toronto), and it was positively infested with banana slugs.

Jaye, Ryan, Grant, and Máire Ní Chiosáin of University College Dublin presented their poster “Russian Palatalization is [back, high], not [ATR]”.

Ben Eischens presented a poster titled “Phonology is Phonetically Grounded but not Phonetically Detailed”, and Yaqing Cao presented “Revisiting Tone Sandhi Domain in Xiamen Chinese”.

In addition, alums Anya Hogoboom (UCSC Ph.D. 2006, William & Mary College), Eric Bakovic (UCSC B.A., 1993, UC San Diego) and Nathan Sanders (UCSC Ph.D., 2003, U of Toronto) participated in the AMP Teaching Workshop.

BANANA SLUGS AT CAMP 4

This weekend, many UCSC psycholinguists presented at the CAMP 4 (California Meeting on Psycholinguistics) hosted virtually by the University of California Irvine. Here were the projects presented by Banana Slugs:

“A mighty Maze! Revisiting strategic underspecification using the Maze task,” by Jack Duff, Shayne Sloggett, Nick Van Handel, Kelsey Sasaki, Stephanie Rich, Wesley Orth, Pranav Anand, Adrian Brasoveanu, and Amanda Rysling.

“Decomposing the focus effect: Evidence from reading,” by Morwenna Hoeks, Maziar Toosarvandani, and Amanda Rysling.

“Guiding Implicit Prosody with Delexicalized Melodies: Evidence from a Mismatch Task,” by Nick Van Handel, Matt Wagers, and Amanda Rysling.

“Ask Me Nicely,” by Elise Duffau and Jean E. Fox Tree.

“Hedging words in conversation,” by Allison Nguyen and Jean E. Fox Tree.

“WH-as-Intervener or Focus-as-intervener: A case study of Mandarin,” by Yaqing Cao and Jess Law.

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