Category: Student News

PHI BETA KAPPA ELECTIONS

Once again this year, an impressive number of seniors with linguistics or language studies majors have been elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest undergraduate honors organization in the United States. Graduands are invited to join on the basis of their academic records, which must include a broad program of study in the liberal arts and sciences. Seven linguistics majors were elected to Phi Beta Kappa this year: Francisco Delgado, Mansi Desai, Zaid Aaron Galvez, Zoe Kirsh, Tyler Lewis, Katie Rees, and Mark Takehana. An equal number of language studies majors were also elected: Laura Bates, Lilian Buschmann, Ysabel King, Jason Marrott, Tenavi Erin Nakamura-Zimmerer, Rebekah Wilson, and Benjamin Youngstrom. Congratulations and best wishes to all of them!

SAMKO SUCCESSFULLY DEFENDS DISSERTATION

Also last Wednesday (May 18), Bern Samko endured her final trial in the long journey towards the doctorate. Bern defended (successfully and in style) her dissertation — “Syntax and information structure: The grammar of English inversions” — before a large crowd of well-wishers and critics. The dissertation investigates some important theoretical questions about the driving forces of movement and, more broadly, about how syntactic processes and discourse-centered information structural processes interact with one another. The questions are addressed by way of a focus on some non-canonical word orders in English (participle preposing and VP preposing) and is notable both methodologically (it combines theoretical work with large-scale corpus work) and theoretically (informed equally by current strands in minimalist thinking about syntax and by the work in theoretical pragmatics that the SPLAP group has been reading and doing). Bern has been a leading member of SPLAP since its inception and her presence at its meetings will be sorely missed.

MARGULIS MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP ESTABLISHED

The Departments of Philosophy and Linguistics and the Summer Session office recently announced the creation of the Matthew Margulis Memorial Scholarship. Established in honor of Matthew, a linguistics and philosophy double major who passed away unexpectedly last November, the scholarship will provide $500 to three students enrolled in summer session classes. All eligible students will be automatically entered into consideration: additional information can be found here.

HIRAYAMA, KRAUS, AND RUDIN SUCCESSFULLY DEFEND QPS, MILLER MA THESIS

This past week saw several succesful qualifying paper and MA thesis defenses:

  • Hitomi Hirayama: “Parasitic gaps in Japanese” (Maziar Toosarvandani, chair, Jim McCloskey, and Matt Wagers)
  • Kelsey Kraus: “Sluicing under code switching” (Jorge Hankamer, chair, Sandy Chung, and Maziar Toosarvandani)
  • Chelsea Miller: “Limited syntactic reactivation in noun phrase ellipsis” (Matt Wagers, chair, Pranav Anand, and Adrian Brasoveanu)
  • Deniz Rudin: “Head based syntactic identity in sluicing” (Jim McCloskey, chair, Pranav Anand, and Sandy Chung)

Congratulations to all four!

SAMKO TO DEFEND DISSERTATION

Graduate students Bern Samko will defend her PhD dissertation this Wednesday (May 18). It is entitled “Syntax and information structure: The grammar of English inversions”:

The goal of this dissertation is to discern the patterns of interconnectedness between syntax and pragmatics by way of a close examination of participle preposing and VP preposing (VPP) in English. For the latter, I argue that what we call VPP is the accidental confluence of three independent components: verum focus, feature-driven movement to the left periphery, and, optionally, an intonational contour that contributes emphasis. In doing so, I bring together two analytic traditions that have rarely commented on one another: a syntactic tradition that has used VPP as a diagnostic tool rather than considering its properties sui generis, and a pragmatic one that has listed discourse effects without considering why those effects are associated with the particular form of VPP. I propose an analysis in which the familiar pragmatic G[ivenness] feature participates in the syntax as a driver of movement. This approach holds the promise of allowing a better understanding of why the properties of VPP cluster as they do, an understanding that goes beyond simply listing the relevant properties.

The defense will take place at 1:30 pm in Humanities 2 (Room 259).

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