WHAT'S HAPPENING AT SANTA CRUZ

On March 24-26, 2022, UCSC will (virtually) host the 35th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing [la conférence née CUNY]. The interdisciplinary organizing committee – with representatives from Linguistics, Languages and Applied Linguistics, and Psychology – is steered by Professors Amanda Rysling and Matt Wagers.

The program was released on February 15– a belated Valentine. It includes 27 plenary presentations, 278 poster presentations, and 6 invited presentations on the special theme of “Prosody, Gesture & Meaning.” Many UCSC linguists, past and present, are on the schedule. You will also find a bevy of papers on sentence processing in speakers whose languages are rarely studied in psycholinguistics, like Äiwoo, Tagalog and Indonesian.

Registration is free and open to all. Find out more at https://hsp2022.ucsc.edu.

Lisa Hofmann was awarded a three-year post-doctoral position at the University of Stuttgart, to collaborate on research on projective content with Judith Tonhauser, teach Linguistics classes, and pursue Lisa’s ongoing research on the interaction of Anaphora and Negation.

Jess Law has recently published a paper in Journal of Semantics, titled “The mereological structure of distributivity: a case study of binomial each.” It can be found at this link.

At 10:15 AM on Thursday 2/10, department members heard a cracking noise and watched as a cloud of smoke poured out from a lighting fixtures in 217. The room was swiftly evacuated and the syntax seminar relocated to the Cave, and soon after, the order came down to keep the lights off in that room until further notice. A riveting experience on a Thursday morning!

Whasc has gathered witness testimony from one of the attendees. Niko Webster, in his second year, writes: “a mildly terrifying experience that thankfully didn’t result in any serious concern- Lightbulb started smoking and making crackling noises. The smell was horrible and definitely toxic (hurray for wearing masks?). Luckily Sarah knew what to do – thanks Sarah!”

Lisa Hofmann defended her dissertation on Thursday, January 20th. Her dissertation is titled “Anaphora and Negation” and her committee consisted of Adrian Brasoveanu (chair), Jess Law, and Amanda Rysling.
Congratulations, Lisa!

We recently received an update from recent grad Karen Lowe, who was a double major in Linguistics and History. Karen spenther final quarter on the UCDC program in Washington, D.C., before graduating in December.

There she completed an internship with the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). She writes, “It’s amazing being able to work at the Federal level and see how the “sausage” gets made with environmental policy.”

In the new year, Karen plans to complete another internship, at the Georgetown Law Center.

1) Coming to Santa Cruz represents a return for you, as well. How have things changed since you were last here?

In the department, the biggest change has been the people. There are many faculty who arrived since I was a student here, and the staff have changed, and, of course, the students. It’s a great opportunity to get to know new people and learn about new threads of research. There also seems to be a lot of new wildlife on campus: a lot more deer and coyotes than I remember, and way more turkeys.

2) In light of the times, how has it been to adjust to life back in the department?

It’s been an adventure! Things have of course been limited by the pandemic, but it was terrific to be able to teach in person in the fall and to resume again just recently this quarter. Teaching in person has helped me to get to know a lot of the students in the department, both the graduates and the undergraduates. I’m delighted about the reopening of the Stevenson Coffee Shop, because it’s a great meeting place nestled among the redwoods and I really missed it when it was closed.

3) What’s on the horizon for the coming year – be it plans for research, for travel, or anything else?

On the research front, I’m working on analyzing acoustic data we collected for Ladin, a minority Romance language spoken in the Italian Alps. This research will help us to understand properties of the syllable structure of Ladin and pave the way for our future investigation of stress in the language. I’m also planning to continue investigating the temporal structure of liquids in syllable rhymes in different languages. On the recreational side, I’ve got lots of hikes and exploring around the area in mind when I get some free time!