Category: Student News

Andrew Kato at Cornell

Kato at Cornell

Andrew Kato (second from the right) with fellow presenters

Andrew Kato, a second-year undergraduate student in the Linguistics major, recently returned from the 17th Annual Cornell Undergraduate Linguistics Conference (April 21-23). He filed the following report with WHASC:

“With presenters from UMass Amherst, NYU, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Northeastern University, I ended up being the only one hailing from a university outside the New England area. Posters and oral presentations included topics such as Massachusetts regional dialects, compound verb constructions in Japanese, and spatiotemporal perception among Mandarin Chinese speakers. My talk was on gender-neutral logophoricity in discourse. External keynote speaker Professor Renée Blake of NYU spoke about Black embodied communication, and internal keynote speaker Professor Helena Aparicio spoke on recalibrating interpretations of vague predicates.”

 

Incoming graduate cohort

Four new PhD students will be joining the UC Santa Cruz linguistics department in the Fall of 2023:

🎉 🎉 🎉

Hanyoung Byun (Seoul National University)

Aidan Katson (New York University)

Emily Knick (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

Ruoqing Yao (College of William and Mary)

🎉 🎉 🎉

A warm welcome to Aidan, Emily, Hanyoung, and Ruoqing — we look forward to seeing you in Santa Cruz soon!

Banana Slugs at UC Berkeley

Andrew Kato and Sadie Lewis, both undergraduate students in the linguistics major, recently returned from UC Berkeley where they presented at the 7th Annual Berkeley Undergraduate Linguistics Symposium, on April 15. They filed the following report with the WHASC Editor:

“With an international group of presenters, topics ranged from American Sign Language phonology to Polynesian thematic suffixes. Sadie’s talk was on eventive ambiguities with noun-adjective pairings, and Andrew’s talk was on discourse-sensitive semantic gender in the DP domain via definite specific singular they. The keynote speaker, Professor Darya Kavitskaya, spoke in detail about her extensive fieldwork on the history of Crimean Tatar.”

Fascinating work, Andrew and Sadie! 

Andrew Kato and Sadie Lewis

Sadie Lewis (left) and Andrew Kato (right) at UC Berkeley

2023 Graduate Research Symposium

Symposium Presenters

Symposium presenters (from left to right): Matthew Kogan, Jun Tamura, Eli Sharf (not present: Jonathan Paramore and Elifnur Ulusoy)

Our annual graduate student research and professionalization seminar (a.k.a. LING 290) culminated this year in a series of presentations by seminar participants on Saturday, April 15. The program included:

  • Eli Sharf “Identificational Appositives in English”
  • Jun Tamura “Compounding Words in the Syntax can Produce Phrasal Phonology: Evidence from Aoyagi Morphemes”
  • Matthew Kogan “The Role of Specifiers in a Content-Addressable Retrieval Mechanism”

Two other participants in LING 290 were unfortunately unable to present at this year’s symposium due to illness. Their planned talks were titled:

  • Jonathan Paramore “Codas are Universally Moraic”
  • Elifnur Ulusoy “The Role of Syntactic Connectivity in Agreement Attraction: Evidence from Turkish”

Congratulations to all the participants in LING 290 for the wonderful progress they’ve made on their research this year!

research symposium

Audience members attentively listening.

Kintz to attend graduate program in speech-language pathology next fall

Photograph of Jane Kintz

Jane Kintz

Jane Kintz, a linguistics major graduating this year, has been accepted to the MS program in speech-language pathology at San José State University and plans on attending in the fall. The WHASC Editor sat down with Jane after the good news to talk about her experience at UC Santa Cruz and her future career.

WHASC Editor: How did you decide to go into speech pathology?

Kintz: I’ve had a passion for languages for many years. While I was living in South Korea studying Korean, I was teaching English to young children and older adults. I realized during that time that although I loved studying languages, I felt most fulfilled sitting with people and helping them develop their ability to communicate and ultimately leaving a lasting impact on people’s lives. Speech pathology is this beautiful area where you use your linguistic knowledge to help improve the quality of people’s lives.

WHASC Editor: How do you think the Linguistics major prepared you for applying and getting accepted to the MS program at SJSU?

Kintz: Being a linguistics major prepared me in a lot of ways. The emphasis on development of critical thinking skills and writing clear analytical essays prepared me for the heavy writing portion of the application process. These skills helped me write a clear, concise and compelling personal statement, which is of major consideration for the program. Also, the content in linguistics classes have direct application to the program. This gives me an interdisciplinary advantage that allows me to bring different perspectives to the program, which I believe helped me get accepted.

WHASC Editor: Do you have a favorite linguistics class? What was it and why?

Kintz: It’s a tie between Phonology 2 and Phonetics 2. I loved Phonology because it almost felt like solving puzzles. And I loved Phonetics because I really enjoyed analyzing spectrograms and learning about sound production.

WHASC Editor: What will you miss most about UCSC?

Kintz: The redwoods for sure. But truly the entire linguistics department, faculty and students. To be in a program with professors and students who are both passionate about the field and deeply curious has been such a gift. I am so grateful for my time here, and UCSC will always hold a special place in my heart.

Best of luck in your future pursuits, Jane!

Another successful LASC

On March 6, the Department hosted its annual Linguistics at Santa Cruz (LASC) conference, attended by prospective graduate students and current students, faculty and alumni. The program included presentations by several graduate students and alumna Anya Hogoboom (PhD, 2006), now Associate Professor at the College of William and Mary. 

The student presentations showcased recent research going on in the department, and sparked lively and insightful discussion during the Q & A:

  • Jack Duff led off the presentations with a talk on “Restricted restriction in the relative clauses of Santiago Laxopa Zapotec.”
  • Niko Webster followed with a talk on “Eventive nominals in Korean and the nature of argument structure.”
  • Lalitha Balachandran and Morwenna Hoeks presented a talk entitled “Does memory for focus structure interfere with memory for prosody?”
  • Dan Brodkin concluded the student presentations with his work on “Locality and extraction in Mandar.”

The Distinguished Alumna Speaker was Professor Anya Hogoboom, whose presentation “Making sense of word-final strength and weakness” argued that strong and weak behavior in final syllables is sensitive to word-final lengthening and is dependent on the role of duration in the phonological phenomenon. 

The LASC dinner and celebration that followed, on the lawn at the Cowell Provost House, was marked by delightful conversations, excellent food, and sweeping views of the Monterey Bay. 

Thank you to all of the students, staff, and faculty who contributed to making this event a success!

LASC presenters

LASC presenters pictured from left to right: Dan Brodkin, Jack Duff, Morwenna Hoeks, Lalitha Balachandran, Niko Webster, and Anya Hogoboom.

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