Category: Events

DEO COLLOQUIUM

This Friday, October 6th, at 4:00 pm in Humanities 1, Room 210, there will be a colloquium by Ashwini Deo (Ohio State University). Her talk is entitled “Alternative circumstances of evaluation and the ser/estar distinction in Spanish,” and the abstract is given below:

The Spanish copulas ser and estar have distributional and interpretational patterns that have resisted an adequate analysis. In this talk, I work towards a unified analysis that treats the two copulas as being presuppositional variants that are differentially sensitive to properties of the circumstances at which the truth of the copular sentence is evaluated. On the proposed analysis, estar presupposes that the prejacent is boundedly true at the evaluation circumstance. The prejacent’s bounded truth at a circumstance i at a given context of use c depends on two conditions:

(a) there are no-weaker alternative circumstances i′ accessible at c where the prejacent is false, and

(b) i is a maximal verifying circumstance at c.

Central to the analysis is the notion of a strength ordering over alternative circumstances of evaluation — a circumstantial counterpart to the more familiar ordering over alternative propositions. Assuming that this content is conventionally associated with estar allows for an account of its distinct flavors and readings with a range of predicates. ser is shown to be associated with its own inferences that derive from its status as the presuppositionally weaker, neutral member of the pair.

WELCOME RECEPTION

Our official first week back culminated in a lovely reception catered by none other than our beloved Viva’s, where we welcomed old and new to the department.

Two new faculty members have joined the department:

Ryan Bennett (Ph.D. UCSC, 2012) comes to us from Yale, where he has been Assistant Professor, and joins the department as Assistant Professor.

Amanda Rysling (Ph.D. UMass, Amherst, 2017) joins us as Assistant Professor as well.

Our incoming graduate class for Fall 2017 consists of two Ph.D. students and four M.A. students:

Jeremie Beauchamps received his B.A. and M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Ottawa. His thesis was on posture locatives and existential expressions in Mẽbengokre. This reflects both a broader interest in the syntax-semantics interface, and commitment to original fieldwork on Mẽbengokre and other Jê languages.

Benjamin Eischens received a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Minnesota, after which he served with AmeriCorps. He has investigated Northern Azeri – the focus of his senior thesis being its light verb constructions. He is primarily interested in syntax, with broader interests in Turkic and Semitic.

Joining us as new MA students are Richard Bibbs (B.A. with honors in Linguistics, UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2017), Dhyana Buckley (Former B.A./M.A.), Lydia Werthen (Former B.A./M.A.), and Anissa Zaitsu (Former B.A./M.A.).

Welcome also to the newest members of the BA/MA Program: Jacob Chemnick and Anny Huang (both of whom you may remember from their past presentations at LURC).

At the reception we also had the opportunity to welcome four undergraduate exchange students from ICU in Tokyo, Japan.

THREE CAREERS ALIKE IN DIGNITY: PELLUCID, FORMIDABLE, AND SHIBUI

On Saturday, the department gathered en masse to celebrate and appreciate the many many contributions of three faculty retiring this year, Sandy Chung, Bill Ladusaw, and Armin Mester. The festivities were chaired by Judith Aissen, who began by assuring the retirees that the Other Side was in many ways better (free parking!) and then oversaw a procession of faculty (Jim McCloskey, Jaye Padgett, and Matt Wagers) and former students (Chris Barker, Vera Gribanova, Louise McNally, and Rachel Walker) whose tributes evoked the wit, the wisdom, and the warmth of the honorees. Between the stories swapped, the pictures shared, and the old friends who joined us to celebrate three remarkable careers, it was an event both joyous and (in Judith’s words) a touch mournful. Thanks go to the organizers, Adrian Brasoveanu, Ashley Hardisty, Junko Ito, and Maria Zimmer for putting together an event at once so spontaneously heartfelt and carefully orchestrated. (Take that, Tonys.)

The vignettes offered–of Armin contemplating the true nature of optimality theory in his in-deck hot tub, of Sandy daring Matt Wagers to just try to run an experiment outside laboratory confines, of the veritable Ars Linguistica Bill has imparted to students across the years (an audience favorite regarding including a bit of formalism in a general talk: It’s good to show a glint of steel beneath the velvet glove.)–vividly reminded the audience of the personalities the department will soon miss. But we will miss much more. The various encomiums heaped upon the three sounded the same themes over and over: a gift for teaching and mentoring; a dedication alongside research to university service; and, above all, a striving for lasting insight beyond the technical, modish, or easy that inspired students and colleagues alike. This last characteristic is the goal every Santa Cruz linguist aspires to, and Armin, Bill, and Sandy have played instrumental roles in imprinting that desire on several generations of scholars.

For their countless contributions to the fields of Phonology, Semantics, and Syntax, to the students who their words and their acts inspired, to the university which owes greatly to their probity and grace, and, ultimately, to the department they called home for three decades (and then some), we thank them.

May the next phase be even better!

DUEK DISSERTATION DEFENSE

Karen Duek will be defending her dissertation at 11:30am on Monday, June 19th, in HUM 1 Room 210. Karen’s dissertation is titled “Sorting a complex world: an experimental study of polysemy and copredication in container and committee nominals.” The committee consists of Adrian Brasoveanu (chair), Donka Farkas, and Pranav Anand.

WLMA SYMPOSIUM ON OAXACAN LINGUISTICS

Capping off the inaugural year of the Workshop on the Languages of Meso-America is the Symposium on Oaxacan Linguistics on Monday, June 12 from 9am-5pm in Hum 1, Room 210. The symposium will feature talks on a variety of languages by invited speakers Christian DiCanio (SUNY Buffalo) Emiliana Cruz (UMass Amherst), and Eric Campbell (UCSB), as well as UCSCers Jason Ostrove, Steven Foley, Nick Kalivoda, and Kelsey Sasaki. For more information, see the full program here.

ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL LURC!

One of the standout features of our department is the special way in which undergraduate research is encouraged and acknowledged. LURC this year represented a diversity of interests, with excellent talks delivered by Richard Bibbs, Brianda Caldera, Justin Talbott, Anny Huang, and our Distinguished Alumna speaker Maura O’Leary (UCLA), on topics in syntax, diachronic linguistics, morphophonology, sociolinguistics and semantics, in a variety of languages from Chamorro and Polynesian languages, to Spanish-English border slang, to Mandarin Chinese and English.
LURC presenters
Front Row: Ivy Sichel, Maura O’Leary
Back Row: Anny Huang, Brianda Caldera, Richard Bibbs, Justin Talbott
(Photo by Kelsey Sasaki)

LURC 2017

This year’s Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference
(LURC) will take place on Friday, June 2, featuring talks by four current students:

  • Richard Bibbs: “Chamorro Agent Reduplication”
  • Brianda Caldera: “Border Slang”
  • Justin Talbott: “Polynesian Pull Chains & Factorial Typology”
  • Anny Huang: “The Event Structure of Mandarin Chinese Resultatives”

The Distinguished Alumna Address will be given by Maura O’Leary (BA, 2013), currently a PhD student at UCLA, on “Constraints on Noun Phrase Evaluation Times.” The conference will begin at 12:45pm on Friday in the Stevenson Fireside Lounge–see the full program here.

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