WHAT'S HAPPENING AT SANTA CRUZ

Jon Ellis, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and a co-Director of the Santa Cruz Language and Linguistics Group (SCLL) will give a Psychology Department colloquium on November 7, 3:30-5:00 p.m. in 121 Soc Sci 2.

Grad student Robert Henderson traveled down to Texas last week to give a talk at the Congreso de Idiomas Indígenas de Latinoamérica, held between Oct 25-27 at the University of Texas, Austin. Robert’s talk was on La sintaxis de la extracción de los adjuntos en Kaqchikel (Maya). The talk went off without a hitch, or just to have something in Spanish in every sentence, sin contratiempos.

Besides pursuing the major in Language Studies, Cody Townsend is a world class skier who regularly travels around the world to take part in major competitive skiing events. Cody placed first in the Chinese Downhill at the Red Bull Cold Rush at Big Mountain, British Columbia last February, and second at the Big Mountain Pro freeski event in Switzerland last March. You can see what Cody gets up to when not doing his phonology assignments here.

Cody will be performing closer to home shortly. On November 20 and 21, the legendary ski film producer Warren Miller will be at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz to show his newest ski movie, Playground, a film in which Cody plays a starring role.
Cody reports:

I had the chance to go to the Todrillo Mountains in Alaska with Warren Miller this past Spring to ski and explore some of the biggest and baddest mountains this planet has to offer, all while catching it on film for this year’s ski movie, `Playground’. You see, I have been taking the Winter quarters off for the past three years to pursue my career as a professional skier. In between the Fall and Spring quarters jam-packed with Syntax and Semantics, I depart for the snowy lands to film movie segments, compete in big mountain skiing competitions and travel the world in search of winter perfection. So come one, come all (or don’t come at all) down to Warren Miller’s `Playground’ at the Rio Theatre on Nov. 20 and Nov 21 to check out some sick skiing from around the world and see what someone from the Linguistics Department does in between derivations and propositional logic.

Have a look at the movie’s tour schedule Cody Townsend is a world class skier who regularly travels around the world to take part in major competitive skiing events. Cody placed first in the Chinese Downhill at the Red Bull Cold Rush at Big Mountain, British Columbia last February, and second at the Big Mountain Pro freeski event in Switzerland last March. You can see what Cody gets up to when not doing his phonology assignments here.

Cody will be performing closer to home shortly. On November 20 and 21, the legendary ski film producer Warren Miller will be at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz to show his newest ski movie, Playground, a film in which Cody plays a starring role.

Cody reports:

I had the chance to go to the Todrillo Mountains in Alaska with Warren Miller this past Spring to ski and explore some of the biggest and baddest mountains this planet has to offer, all while catching it on film for this year’s ski movie, `Playground’. You see, I have been taking the Winter quarters off for the past three years to pursue my career as a professional skier. In between the Fall and Spring quarters jam-packed with Syntax and Semantics, I depart for the snowy lands to film movie segments, compete in big mountain skiing competitions and travel the world in search of winter perfection. So come one, come all (or don’t come at all) down to Warren Miller’s `Playground’ at the Rio Theatre on Nov. 20 and Nov 21 to check out some sick skiing from around the world and see what someone from the Linguistics Department does in between derivations and propositional logic.

Have a look at the movie’s tour schedule here, and at the trailer here.

Olga Kagan will join the Department as Visiting Assistant Professor for the Winter and Spring quarters, 2008. A semanticist, Olga trained with Edit Doron and Malka Rappaport Hovav at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her dissertation, on genitive-accusative case marking alternations in Russian and in other Balto-Slavic languages, explores some of the semantic correlates of the use of the genitive: non-specificity, narrow scope, and the absence of existential entailment.

Olga will teach a seminar based on her dissertation research in Winter 2008. In the Spring, she will teach Pragmatics (Ling 117) as well a new course on the structure of Russian. We look forward to welcoming her to UCSC’s linguistics community.

Psychology Professor Dominic W. Massaro would like to record a female voice articulating the sound segments of English for a project on learning to read. A stipend will be given. If you are interested in participating, please contact him at: Massaro@ucsc.edu .

The Department of English at Arizona State University has advertised a position for an Assistant Professor in Linguistics whose specializations include Native American linguistics and formal semantics. Proficiency in one or more Native American languages is desired. The application deadline is November 9. For further information, go here.

Last week’s WHASC inadvertently gave a non-current affiliation for bioethicist Jonathan Moreno. He is now at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the David & Lyn Silfen University Professor and Professor of Medical Ethics and of History and Sociology of Science.