Category: Student News

UCSC LINGUISTICS REPRESENTED AT NELS

The 43rd North Eastern Linguistic Society (NELS) conference took place on October 19-21, 2012, at the City University of New York (CUNY). This is one of the most prestigious conferences in linguistics, and our department was well represented. Allan Schwade presented a poster titled “Modality matters: What online adaptations can tell us about loanwords”; Boris Harizanov and PhD alumna Vera Gribanova (Stanford) presented a poster titled “Inward sensitive contextual allomorphy and its conditioning factors”. Two other alums were also there: Matthew Barros (BA and MA alum; currently, 5th grad student at Rutgers): “Else-modification as a diagnostic for pseudosluicing”; and Aaron Steven White (BA alum; currently, 3rd year grad student at University of Maryland): “Discovering classes of attitude verbs using subcategorization frame distributions” (joint work with Rachel Dudley, Valentine Hacquard and Jeffrey Lidz). Finally, Karen Duek (1st year UCSC grad, formerly at CUNY) was present as one of the graduate student organizers of the conference, all of whom ensured the smooth running of the conference.

5TH CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITIES SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS WORKSHOP TAKES PLACE

The fifth California Universities Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop (CUSP 5) was held this past weekend at UC San Diego. The workshop featured a number of excellent talks, including two by our own Donka Farkas and Karl DeVries. Donka launched the second day of the conference with “Assertions and polar questions: Default and non-default cases” (joint work with frequent LRC visitor Floris Roelofsen), and Karl gave the penultimate talk of the conference, “Number words and aspectual modifiers.” Oliver Northrup drove and sampled every flavor of muffin at the conspicuously well-stocked snack table. The department’s legacy was also well-represented: PhD Alumnus Chris Potts (Stanford) chaired a session, and undergraduate alumna Lauren Winans (UCLA) presented on “Inquisitive and non-inquisitive disjunctions.” CUSP 6 will be closer to home, at either Berkeley or Stanford.

LURC A SUCCESS

This year’s Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference (LURC) was an inspiring look at the excellent work accomplished by some of our majors (and a recent alum). Congratulations to Donez Horton-Bailey, Kelsey Kraus, Maura O’Leary, Nastassja Myer, and Nataliya Munishkina for their excellent presentations. And congrats and many thanks to recent alum Gabrielle Halberg, who presented on her current work as a Ph.D. student in Computer Science.

OTHER RECENT DEFENSES

Many congratulations to the following graduate students for the milestones they have recently passed!

Oliver Northrup successfully defended his second Qualifying Paper, “Working backward: Back-transliteration as a diagnostic for loanword adaptation processes”, on May 16th, 2012. His QP committee consisted of Junko (chair), Wendell, and Grant.

Setting a departmental record for QP-to-QE turnaround, Oliver then passed his Qualifying Examination on May 31st, with a work titled “Bias as uncertain authority”. His QE committee was Donka Farkas (Chair), Pranav, Adrian, and Marilyn Walker (Professor, Computer Science, UCSC).

Bern Samko successfully defended her second Qualifying Paper, “Participle preposing”, on May 23rd, 2012. Her QP committee was Jim (chair), Pranav, and Amy Rose.

Kendra Buchanan successfully defended her first Qualifying Paper, “Perspectives on Quantity-Sensitivity and Decomposed Scalar Constraints: A View from Hindi Stress”, on June 8th, 2012. Her QP committee was Junko (chair), Wendell, and Armin.

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