Category: Student News

Another successful LURC

LURC Presenters, standing in front of log in Stevenson CourtyardOn June 2, students and faculty in the department gathered for the Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference (LURC). This annual conference celebrates the groundbreaking research of Language Studies and Linguistics majors and is always a highlight of the department’s academic year calendar. 

This year’s LURC was no exception, featuring nine posters on a range of topics in phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, syntax, and semantics:

  • Cal Boye-Lynn, Killian Kiuttu, and Mackenzi Rauls: Everyone loves complements: Complementizer-determiner ambiguity and acceptability
  • Tony Butorovich, Claire Wellwood, and Max Xie: Production of English /r/ by prosodic position
  • Sophie Green, Shaya Karasso, and Josh Lieberstein: Ambiguity Advantage Effect in Wh-questions
  • Nicholas Hanson: Conveyances of sarcasm in written language
  • Colin Hirschberg: Affectedness in passives
  • Sadira Lewis: Events and ambiguity in -er nominals: An experimental approach
  • Stephen Migdal: “At least,” QUD, and Pragmatic Enrichment of NNPs
  • Wilson Wenhao Sun: OT account for consonant clusters in Cantonese loanword phonology
  • Nishant Suria: A phonetic investigation of the retroflex approximant in Tamil

After brief presentations and a discussion period, the Distinguished Alumna Speaker Caroline Andrews (BA, Linguistics, 2011) spoke on “Optionality and commitment: Sentence planning in an ergative language.” Dr. Andrews received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2019, and she is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich.

Bennett at HISPhonCog

Last week, Professor Ryan Bennett presented a talk at HISPhonCog in Seoul, entitled “Syllable position in secondary dorsal contrasts: an ultrasound study of Irish.” While there, he had the opportunity to catch up with some past and future students in the department. Maho Morimoto (PhD, 2020) also presented at the conference, and incoming PhD student Hanyoung Byun was in attendance as well.

HisPhonCog

Maho Morimoto, Hanyoung Byun, Ryan Bennett (from left to right)

Alyssa Scarsciotti begins Peace Corps service

Alyssa Scarsciotti

Alyssa Scarsciotti

Alumna Alyssa Scarsciotti (BA Linguistics, 2020) is embarking on a tour in Costa Rica for the Peace Corp, as part of the first cohort of volunteers to serve overseas after the pandemic. Her journey from Stevenson College to Latin America was featured in a recent news article. Alyssa credited many professors for transforming her academic journey,  including Linguistics faculty Pranav Anand, Jorge Hankamer, Junko Ito, Ivy Sichel, and Maziar Toosarvandani.

Bibbs receives Hankamer Award

On May 19, Richard Bibbs was honored as this year’s recipient of the Jorge Hankamer Outstanding Graduate Instructor in Linguistics.  From the award citation:

This award, given to one graduate student TA each year, is named after Professor Emeritus Jorge Hankamer, whose dedication to pedagogy within Linguistics and the University at large has been an inspiration to and cornerstone of our department for many years. In recognition of his numerous contributions to teaching, course design, and mentorship of his fellow TAs.

Richard Bibbs

Richard Bibbs, Professor Ryan Bennett (Graduate Program Director), Professor Matt Wagers (Chair) (from left to right)

Humanities Fellowships Awarded to Linguistics Graduate Students

The outstanding research of several graduate students in Linguistics was recently recognized by the Humanities Division.

Fifth-year PhD students Jack Duff and Morwenna Hoeks were each awarded one-quarter Dissertation Completion Fellowships for the 2023-2024 academic year. Jack’s dissertation, “On the timing of pragmatic inferences in comprehension,” profiles how narrative conventions like prototypical cause-and-effect plot structure invite readers to draw inferences that go beyond what is said in a text and explores how the reader’s path to those inferences is mediated by the external pressure facing them as they read. Morwenna’s dissertation, “Alternatives in context: Investigations on the processing of focus,” uses the interpretation of focus—a grammatical device all languages have for highlighting important information—to build psycholinguistic theories of language comprehension and prediction.

In addition, the Humanities Institute (THI) awarded summer research fellowships to fourth-year PhD student Vishal Arvindam and second-year PhD student Jonathan Paramore. Vishal’s award will support travel to India this summer to perform fieldwork for his dissertation, “Processing of anti-local reflexives in Telugu.” Jonathan’s award will support his travel to Pakistan to perform fieldwork for a research project on nasalization in Punjabi and Mankiyali.

Nguyen accepts psychology position at Illinois State

Allison

Professor Allison Nguyen

Allison Nguyen, an MA student in the department, has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Experimental Psychology at Illinois State University, starting next fall. A PhD student in the Department of Psychology, Allison’s dissertation examines how conversational participants negotiate meaning, including how they explicitly signal entering and exiting the negotiation process using expressions like kinda, as well as how misinformation and hyperpartisanship spread. As an MA student in Linguistics, Allison is also completing a thesis: this aims to unify embedded and unembedded rising declaratives by proposing a strategy-based account.

Congratulations, Professor Nguyen!

Colin Hirschberg receives Dean’s Undergraduate Award

Colin Hirschberg, who received a BA in linguistics in Fall 2022, has been awarded a Dean’s Undergraduate Award for his thesis on “Restrictions on Mandarin bei-passives,” supervised by Professor Jess Law. Only 10 Dean’s Awards, which come with a $100 prize, are made in the Humanities Division each year. 

The WHASC Editor asked Colin to briefly describe what he discovered in his thesis research:

“This thesis examines Mandarin passive sentences, demonstrating that they have an additional requirement not shared with active sentences. Passive verbs must be marked for a change of state, though, this requirement seems to be relaxed when the subject describes a sentient individual, like a human. This work attributes the constraints on passives to a general notion of affectedness. An individual is affected when they undergo a change of state. Sentient individuals can undergo more types of abstract changes of state than non-sentient ones, so despite the ostensibly relaxed affectedness requirement, a passive sentence does express a change of state, just an abstract emotional one rather than a physical one like in. That passive subjects are more constrained by affectedness than the corresponding active objects not only refutes the meaning equivalence between active and passive sentences; this also reaffirms a longstanding observation in linguistics that the subject position is structurally prominent.”

Congratulations, Colin!

Colin Hirschberg

Colin Hirschberg

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