ALUMNUS ANTHONY SHORE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

Anthony Shore graduated from UCSC with a degree in Linguistics in 1990 having written a senior thesis with Armin Mester on the historical phonology of Latin. He has for many years been a leading figure in the growing field of naming and branding and has advocated strongly for this as a rewarding career path for those with linguistic training (he returned to the department in January 2009 to give a career workshop on the topic). Anthony and his work were recently featured in an essay in the New York Times Magazine about professional namers—the kind of work they do and how they do it.

BARKER RETURNS TO S-CIRCLE

Chris Barker graduated with the PhD in Linguistics from UCSC in 1991, his dissertation topic being Possessive Descriptions (published by University of Chicago Press in 1995). Chris is now Professor and Chair of Linguistics at NYU. He will return to the department on Wednesday January 21st for a day-long visit, along with Dylan Bumford and they will give a joint presentation to a specially convened meeting of S-Circle at 1 pm in the Linguistics Common Room (LCR). The title of Dylan and Chris’ talk is Incremental quantification for adjectives of comparison and the abstract is available here.

MRG RETURNS FOR WINTER QUARTER

The Morphology Reading Group (MRG) is back in full force after a brief hiatus in the Fall Quarter. The group, which was spearheaded by Jorge Hankamer and Line Mikkelsen as a response to a curious analysis of Norwegian definite marking in a graduate Syntax squib, has been a force to be reckoned with since its first meeting in 2005.  It has been since used as a sounding board for multiple publications in Distributed Morphology, as the birthplace of many recent dissertations (including those by Ruth Kramer, Vera Gribanova, Matt Tucker, Boris Harizanov, and Mark Norris), and as an informal venue for those interested in DM to discuss (often quite passionately) current analyses and theories in this framework. For all those interested, this quarter’s meetings will be held on Fridays at 9:45am in the LCR.

PADGETT, MCGUIRE AND NÍ CHIOSÁIN ON THE RADIO

Media interest in the department’s NSF Project on palatalization in Irish continues apace. On Thursday January 15th PI’s Jaye Padgett and Grant McGuire, along with Co-PI Máire Ní Chiosáin of University College Dublin, were interviewed at length on the morning news show of NPR’s Monterey affiliate KAZU. They spoke about the goals of the project and the work that is to be done. You can listen to the interview here and (among other things) hear Máire patiently instruct the interviewer on the niceties of producing palatal consonants in Conamara Irish.

ANAND TO SPEAK AT BERKELEY WORKSHOP

Pranav Anand will be one of four speakers presenting at a workshop to be held in the Department of Philosophy at UC Berkeley on January 31st. The workshop will explore issues in the interaction between speech acts and propositions.  Other speakers at the event will be John Searle, Cleo Condoravdi, and Friederike Moltmann. Pranav’s talk (which will open the event) is on A Factive Split in Reporting Beliefs and Assertions. Program, abstracts, and further information are available here.

BLS 41

Also at Berkeley, the 41st Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society will take place on the weekend of February 7th and February 8th. The program is available here. Grad students Nick Kalivoda and Erik Zyman will be presenting at the conference (a joint paper on The Derivation of Relative Clauses in Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec), as will recent alumnus Mark Norris (Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Oklahoma), who will present on Case-Marking on Estonian Pseudopartitives.  Also on the docket with a co-authored paper is alumnus Scott AnderBois (Assistant Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown University), who will be presenting on Fieldwork Game Play: Masterminding Evidentiality in Desano.

UNDERGRADUATES WIN RESEARCH AWARDS

It was announced late last week that four undergraduate majors in Linguistics have been honored with HUGRA Awards for 2014-2015. These awards are given by the Humanities Division at UCSC to support and recognize excellence in research by undergraduate students. The awards are made on the basis of a research proposal submitted to the Institute for Humanities Research and adjudicated by a panel of faculty members from across the division. Francisco Delgado won an award for his project on Chamorro Loanword Morphology (advised by Sandy Chung); Eileen O’Neill was recognized for her project on Phonetic and Phonological Change and the Influence of English on Modern Irish (advised by Jaye Padgett); Valery Vanegas was recognized for her project A Study in Voice Quality Using Accelerometers (advised by Grant McGuire) and Jake Vincent for his project on Chamorro Head-Internal Relative Clauses and the Linker (also advised by Sandy Chung). In addition, Jake Vincent’s project was selected to receive the Bertha N. Melkonian Prize, which goes to the most highly rated research proposal in the HUGRA competition each year. Warm congratulations to all.

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