SLUGS AT ESSLLI

In August, the 31st European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) convened at the University of Latvia in Riga. Many of our own linguists decamped to the Baltics to participate, including PhD students Jack Duff, Lisa Hofmann, Morwenna Hoeks, and Stephanie Rich, and faculty member Maziar Toosarvandani.

More details on their exploits in logic, language and information are given below.

Lisa presented a talk titled “Sentential negativity and Polarity-Sensitive-Anaphora.”

Jack and Morwenna presented posters titled “The locus of commitment: Flipping judges in a commitment-based discourse model” and “The alternatives in disjunctive questions and where they come from.”

Maziar delivered a course titled “Semantics and pragmatics of temporal sequencing,” developed with Pranav Anand (Pranav also contributed to colleague Natasha Korotkova‘s (Konstanz) course “Speech reports”).

Pictured from left are Lisa Hofmann, Maziar Toosarvandani, Morwenna Hoeks, Jack Duff, and Stephanie Rich.

Pictured from left are Lisa Hofmann, Maziar Toosarvandani, Morwenna Hoeks, Jack Duff, and Stephanie Rich.

BENNETT IN GUATEMALA

Ryan Bennett spent 3 weeks in Guatemala carrying out fieldwork on two Mayan languages, Kaqchikel and Uspanteko. This research included the recording of narratives, data collection with electroglottography, a community workshop on language pedagogy, and the training of native speaker linguists in data collection and transcription.

ITO AND MESTER FEATURED IN INQUIRY@UCSC

This summer, Junko Ito and Armin Mester were profiled in the fifth issue of UCSC’s Inquiry magazine. The delightful article summarizes their impactful careers, from their pioneering work on the syntax-prosody interface in the 90’s to recent collaborations with Jenny Bellik, Nick Kalivoda, and spring 2019 visiting associate professor Gorka Elordieta using Bellik and Kalivoda’s SPOT (Syntax-Prosody in Optimality Theory) program.

SLUG SPRING MILESTONES

This spring saw a plethora of milestones. In addition to the previously posted qualifying exam passed by Tom Roberts and Jenny Bellik‘s successful PhD defense, an impressive list of students have completed milestones in their graduate careers.

Andrew Angeles defended his second qualifying paper, entitled, “The Historical Development of Initial Accent in Trimoraic Nouns in Kyoto Japanese.” His committee consisted of Junko Ito (chair), Ryan Bennett, and Grant McGuire. Congratulations, Andrew!

Richard Bibbs defended his first qualifying paper of the title, “Perceptual factors license vocalic contrasts in Chamorro.” His committee was made up of Ryan Bennett (chair), Junko Ito, and Sandy Chung. Congratulations, Richard!

Nick Van Handel defended his second qualifying paper, “Recursion and matching overt elements in Italian prosody.” His committee members were Junko Ito (chair), Gorka Elordieta, and Armin Mester. Congratulations, Nick!

Lisa Hofmann successfully defended her qualifying exam, which was titled, “Propositional anaphora and polarity.” Her committee consisted of Adrian Brasoveanu (chair), Chris Barker (external member), Donka Farkas, and Amanda Rysling. Congratulations, Lisa!

Andrew Hedding defended his second qualifying paper, entitled, “New information and the grammar of Focus: Evidence from San Martín Peras Mixtec.” His committee was made up of Ryan Bennett (chair), Gorka Elordieta, and Pranav Anand. Congratulations, Andrew!

Jake Vincent defended his qualifying exam, titled, “Relative clause subextraction in English.” His committee included Ivy Sichel (chair), Matt Wagers, and Maziar Toosarvandani. Congratulations, Jake!

Jérémie Beauchamp defended his first qualifying paper, “Correspondence and unmarkedness in Kĩsêdjê vowel epenthesis.” His committee members were Ryan Bennett (chair), Amanda Rysling, and Grant McGuire. Congratulations, Jérémie!

Netta Ben-Meir defended her second qualifying paper, entitled, “A case of opacity reconsidered: Epenthesis in Lebanese Arabic.” Her committee consisted of Junko Ito (chair), Ryan Bennett, and Amanda Rysling. Congratulations, Netta!

SANDERS TO UW

UCSC Language Studies alum Kevin Sanders (B.A., 2018) reports that he will begin a master’s program in computational linguistics in September at the University of Washington. He writes of the two-year program,

It covers computer science concepts, programming techniques, statistics, and linguistic theory. I’m excited to start! I’m happy to have an opportunity to carry the knowledge and experience I gained from the UCSC linguistics department with me to new environs.

Congratulations, Kevin!

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