WHAT'S HAPPENING AT SANTA CRUZ
A weekly digest of linguistics news and events from the University of California, Santa Cruz
A number of UCSC faculty, students, and affiliates attended the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences in Melbourne, Australia. These included Linguistics faculty members Amanda Rysling, Ryan Bennett, and Grant McGuire; Applied Linguistics faculty member Mark Amengual; post-doc Jenny Bellik; graduate students Maho Morimoto and Andrew Hedding; former PhD student Robert Henderson (PhD, 2012); and former LRC affiliate Haruo Kubozono.
Tom Roberts spent the summer writing, reading, and thinking about attitude verbs and clausal complementation, including several weeks of fieldwork and travel in Estonia. There, in addition to unraveling the mysteries of complementizers, he was able to see a moving Arvo Pärt concert in the rural island province of Hiiumaa, alongside 2018 PhD alum and Estonian choral music enthusiast Kelsey Kraus. The event took place in the historic Pühalepa Church, the island’s oldest at a respectable 764 years old, just shy of the median age of concert attendees.
In August, the 31st European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) convened at the University of Latvia in Riga. Many of our own linguists decamped to the Baltics to participate, including PhD students Jack Duff, Lisa Hofmann, Morwenna Hoeks, and Stephanie Rich, and faculty member Maziar Toosarvandani.
More details on their exploits in logic, language and information are given below.
Lisa presented a talk titled “Sentential negativity and Polarity-Sensitive-Anaphora.”
Jack and Morwenna presented posters titled “The locus of commitment: Flipping judges in a commitment-based discourse model” and “The alternatives in disjunctive questions and where they come from.”
Maziar delivered a course titled “Semantics and pragmatics of temporal sequencing,” developed with Pranav Anand (Pranav also contributed to colleague Natasha Korotkova‘s (Konstanz) course “Speech reports”).
Pictured from left are Lisa Hofmann, Maziar Toosarvandani, Morwenna Hoeks, Jack Duff, and Stephanie Rich.
This spring saw a plethora of milestones. In addition to the previously posted qualifying exam passed by Tom Roberts and Jenny Bellik‘s successful PhD defense, an impressive list of students have completed milestones in their graduate careers.
Andrew Angeles defended his second qualifying paper, entitled, “The Historical Development of Initial Accent in Trimoraic Nouns in Kyoto Japanese.” His committee consisted of Junko Ito (chair), Ryan Bennett, and Grant McGuire. Congratulations, Andrew!
Richard Bibbs defended his first qualifying paper of the title, “Perceptual factors license vocalic contrasts in Chamorro.” His committee was made up of Ryan Bennett (chair), Junko Ito, and Sandy Chung. Congratulations, Richard!
Nick Van Handel defended his second qualifying paper, “Recursion and matching overt elements in Italian prosody.” His committee members were Junko Ito (chair), Gorka Elordieta, and Armin Mester. Congratulations, Nick!
Lisa Hofmann successfully defended her qualifying exam, which was titled, “Propositional anaphora and polarity.” Her committee consisted of Adrian Brasoveanu (chair), Chris Barker (external member), Donka Farkas, and Amanda Rysling. Congratulations, Lisa!
Andrew Hedding defended his second qualifying paper, entitled, “New information and the grammar of Focus: Evidence from San Martín Peras Mixtec.” His committee was made up of Ryan Bennett (chair), Gorka Elordieta, and Pranav Anand. Congratulations, Andrew!
Jake Vincent defended his qualifying exam, titled, “Relative clause subextraction in English.” His committee included Ivy Sichel (chair), Matt Wagers, and Maziar Toosarvandani. Congratulations, Jake!
Jérémie Beauchamp defended his first qualifying paper, “Correspondence and unmarkedness in Kĩsêdjê vowel epenthesis.” His committee members were Ryan Bennett (chair), Amanda Rysling, and Grant McGuire. Congratulations, Jérémie!
Netta Ben-Meir defended her second qualifying paper, entitled, “A case of opacity reconsidered: Epenthesis in Lebanese Arabic.” Her committee consisted of Junko Ito (chair), Ryan Bennett, and Amanda Rysling. Congratulations, Netta!
Undergraduate Linguistics major Brianda Caldera was recently awarded a 2018-2019 Chancellor’s award for her project, “Anglicisms: Use and Perceptions in the Tijuana-San Diego Border,” the same project which earned her a 2018-2019 Dean’s Undergraduate Research Award. Congratulations, Brianda!
Undergraduate Linguistics major Corey Pessin has been selected as a recipient of the David A. Kadish Humanities Scholarship, which recognizes an undergraduate student who displays a strong interest in the humanities. Congratulations, Corey!
In June, a new group of UCSC students is set to receive their Bachelor’s degrees, and among these are several who will be awarded departmental honors. Language Studies majors Annie Stert and Vienna Chan will receive this distinction, as will Linguistics majors Ivona Borissova, Jared Crawford-Levis, Melanie Gounas, Sarah Oertel, Azusena Orozco, and Corey Pessin. Congratulations, graduates!