WHAT'S HAPPENING AT SANTA CRUZ

The Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago has been authorized to fill a tenure-track assistant professor position in syntax to begin Fall 2008. Applications are especially welcome from candidates whose work addresses issues of morphological and cross-linguistic interest; expertise in experimental or computational methodologies is also welcome. The successful candidate will complement existing strengths in the department but will also add to those strengths in substantive ways, as well as contributing breadth and depth to the undergraduate and graduate curricula. Candidates are expected to hold a Ph.D. by the start date.

To receive fullest consideration, applications and supporting materials should arrive by or on Friday, November 30, 2007. Please send a CV (indicating an e-mail address), statements of research and teaching interests, representative written work, and evidence of excellence in teaching, and the names of three references whom the applicant has asked to send a letter of reference (all letters will be treated as confidential). Candidates should arrange to have the letters of reference sent directly to the search committee. Send all materials to: Syntax Search Committee, Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, 1010 E. 59th St., Chicago, IL 60637. E-mail inquiries should be directed to merchant@uchicago.edu.

The first Linguistics colloquium of the year takes place at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, October 12, in the Silverman Conference Room (Stevenson College). The speaker is Armin Mester, and his title is Prosodic Categories and Recursion. An abstract for the talk is available here.

The Syntax Circle gets underway for 2007-8 with a presentation by Jim McCloskey, at 12:15 p.m. on Tuesday, October 9, in the Silverman Conference Room. Jim will speak on Movement, Agreement, and Beyond (in Irish).

This quarter, grad student Katrina Vahedi, who is the Linguistics Department’s Peer Advising Coordinator, will host two workshops for Linguistics undergraduate peer advisors and undergraduate student graders. The first workshop, to be held on October 17, is a Tutor Training session for new course graders; it will provide a forum to clarify and discuss the responsibilities of the position. The second workshop, to be held on November 7, is a training session for peer advisors in Application to Graduate School. This workshop will enable peer advisors to pass on valuable information to other undergraduates who intend to apply to a graduate program, either this Fall or in the future.

Sandy Chung is just back from an 8-day trip to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). In Luta (also known as Rota), she attended the Mina’dos na Konferensian Chamorro (2nd Chamorro Conference), where she presented a paper on Chamorro’s status as an endangered language. The conference was attended by Chamorro educators, students, government staff, and others interested in Chamorro language and culture; almost all of the presentations were in Chamorro. Thanks to Sandy’s co-author Manny Borja, who translated her talk beforehand, she too was able to give her paper in Chamorro. After the conference, Sandy and Manny ran a workshop for bilingual teachers in Saipan. Sandy’s and Manny’s trips were sponsored by the NMI Council for the Humanities. For some photos, go here.

UCSC linguists will deliver at least five papers at the 82nd annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, to be held January 3-6, 2008, at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel in Chicago. Vera Gribanova will present a paper on “The (Post-)Syntax of Russian Verbal Prefixes”. Jorge Hankamer will be presenting a paper titled “Ad-phrasal Affixes and Suspended Affixation”. (This is the same paper he will present in the Syntax Circle on November 20, with the title “Suspended Affixation”.) Ruth Kramer will present a paper on “Phase Impenetrability at PF and Amharic Definite Marking.” David Teeple will give a paper on “Avoiding Strong-Position Neutralization”. Sandy Chung will give a plenary session lecture titled “How Much Can Understudied Languages Really Tell Us About How Language Works?” An extraordinarily large number of LSA abstracts were submitted this year, and the selection process was far more rigorous than in previous years. If you’re presenting a paper but we don’t yet have your information, let us know!

The call for proposals for the 2007-8 Humanities Undergraduate Research Awards (HUGRA) has just been issued. There are ten awards ($500 each). Juniors and seniors are eligible to apply; they will need to provide a plan for a research project and a letter of recommendation from a faculty advisor. The deadline is Monday, November 5. Click here for the announcement and the application.