Category: Student News

FELLOWSHIPS AVAILABLE FOR STUDENTS TO ATTEND THE LSA’S 2013 LINGUISTIC INSTITUTE

Applications will soon be available for student fellowships to attend the LSA’s 2013 Linguistic Institute, which will be held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from June 24 – July 19th. The LSA’s biennial Linguistic Institutes are the premier events of their kind in our field, bringing together hundreds of students and linguistics professionals for a weeks-long program of courses, workshops, mini-conference, lectures, social events, and special activities. Complete information about the 2013 Institute is available at http://lsa2013.lsa.umich.edu/.

The LSA and the Institute provide a number of fellowships for students to attend the Institute. Most fellowships cover tuition only, but a few “Named Fellowship” provide additional elements. More information about the application process is available at http://www.linguisticsociety.org/meetings-institutes/institutes/fellowships. Applications will be available beginning January 14, through login at the LSA website. The application deadline will be February 7. Please note, in particular, that the application requires two letters of recommendation to be submitted by February 14. You need only provide the names and e-mail addresses of your recommenders; the LSA will contact them separately to request the letters of recommendation. Note that applicants must be student members of the LSA. Nonmembers may join at http://www.linguisticsociety.org/join.

If you are interested in applying for a fellowship, the LSA suggests you review the information above now, so that you can 1) decide if you are interested in applying for one of the named fellowships; 2) familiarize yourself with what is required for the application, and; 3) notify your recommenders that they will be contacted separately by the LSA.

Questions about the Institute may be directed to lsa2013@umich.edu . Questions about the fellowship application may be directed to lsa@lsadc.org.

REPORT FROM THE LSA

This year’s annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America was held in Boston, MA. The weather was in the teens when the conference began, but in the balmy thirties by the end. (As good as Santa Cruz!)

Two of our graduate students gave talks. Katia Kravtchenko gave one called Effects of contextual predictability on optional subject omission in Russian, and Mark Norris’s was called Case matching in Estonian (pseudo) partitives. Posters were presented by Boris Harizanov, Bern Samko, Anie Thompson, and Matt Tucker.

Sandy Chung, former President of the LSA, presided over the Saturday evening awards ceremony. Former UCSC Linguistics major Eric Bakovic co-organized and presented at a symposium on “Open Access and the Future of Academic Publishing”, and PhD alumna Vera Lee-Schoenfeld did the same at a symposium called “Incorporating Linguistic Theory into a Language Curriculum”.

The conference was brimming with other UCSC alums, including Scott AnderBois (who gave a talk), Ryan Bennett, Vera Grivanov, Robert Henderson, Ruth Kramer, Anya Lunden, Kyle Rawlins, and Nathan Sanders. (Apologies to anyone not mentioned here!) This made for a fun traditional UCSC party on Saturday night.

FIVE (!) MAJORS RECEIVE UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH AWARDS

No fewer than five of our majors received Humanities Undergraduate Research Awards (HUGRAs) for this year. This is half of all the HUGRAs given out in the Division of Humanities. They are: Rachel Bodin, for The Use of Conditionals in Online Forums; Laura Gilmore, for Objectless Gerunds in English; Emma Peoples, for Italian Clitics; Nicholas Primrose, for his project Distribution of Numerals and Quantifiers in Japanese; and Scarlett Clothier-Goldschmidt, for Person-Animacy Constraints in Chamorro. In addition, Emma’s project was awarded the Bertha N. Melkonian Prize as the best of the Humanities proposals. Congratulations to all five of you!

GOOD NEWS FOR PETER FABIAN

From Peter: Over the break I got married! On 12/29/2012 I married my high school sweetheart Melody Pothier in Scotland, CT. We’re both out here now and she is studying hard to take her Occupational Therapy Board Exam soon!

ANIE THOMPSON PRESENTS IN SPAIN

The weekend before last Anie Thompson presented a talk called “Categorizing surface proforms in the typology of anaphora” at the Ellipsis 2012 workshop at the Universidade de Vigo. Former Santa Cruz linguists Nicholas LaCara (PhD program, University of Massachusetts), Jason Merchant (University of Chicago), and Luis Vicente (University of Potsdam) also presented. For more information (and some Galician), look here.

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.

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