Because of the holiday-shortened week, Whamit! has no news items to report. Enjoy the holiday and the long weekend! We’ll be back to the usual jam-packed life in the department next week.
Archive for November, 2008
Wexler to speak at Harvard Linguistics Theory Group - Tues 11/18
This Tuesday (11/18) Ken Wexler will speak at the Harvard Linguistics Theory Group.
Title: Clefts, Inverse Copulas, and Passives: Understanding Their Delayed Acquisition as Phasal Difficulties
Time: Tuesday, November 18th, 6 p.m. Boylston Hall Room 303
This Tuesday (11/18) Ken Wexler will speak at the Harvard Linguistics Theory Group.
Title: Clefts, Inverse Copulas, and Passives: Understanding Their Delayed Acquisition as Phasal Difficulties
Time: Tuesday, November 18th, 6 p.m. Boylston Hall Room 303
UMMM - 11/22 @ UMass
This year’s fall UMass/MIT Meeting in Phonology (UMMM) will take place this Saturday, Nov. 22, at UMass (Amherst), from 9:30am-6pm. If you are interested in attending, please contact Donca for details.
This year’s fall UMass/MIT Meeting in Phonology (UMMM) will take place this Saturday, Nov. 22, at UMass (Amherst), from 9:30am-6pm. If you are interested in attending, please contact Donca for details.
Phonology circle 11/19 - Jonah Katz
This week’s Phonology Circle presentation is by Jonah Katz.
Title: Phonetic similarity in an English hip-hop corpus
Time: Wed 11/12, 5pm, 32-D831
In this talk, I present preliminary results from a corpus study of hip-hop. Previous studies on half-rhyme in Romanian poetry (Steriade 2003) and Japanese hip-hop and imperfect puns (Kawahara 2007, 2008) have established that the frequency of specific imperfect rhymes varies with the phonetic distance between the correspondents involved in the rhyme. The current study extends that finding to English hip-hop. The complex nature of the data poses special challenges for data extraction and analysis. I’ll discuss in some detail how the corpus was constructed and what the proper statistical methods are for testing generalizations about half-rhymes.
This week’s Phonology Circle presentation is by Jonah Katz.
Title: Phonetic similarity in an English hip-hop corpus Time: Wed 11/12, 5pm, 32-D831
In this talk, I present preliminary results from a corpus study of hip-hop. Previous studies on half-rhyme in Romanian poetry (Steriade 2003) and Japanese hip-hop and imperfect puns (Kawahara 2007, 2008) have established that the frequency of specific imperfect rhymes varies with the phonetic distance between the correspondents involved in the rhyme. The current study extends that finding to English hip-hop. The complex nature of the data poses special challenges for data extraction and analysis. I’ll discuss in some detail how the corpus was constructed and what the proper statistical methods are for testing generalizations about half-rhymes.
Ling-lunch Nov. 20 - Vanja de Lint
Please join us for this week’s Ling-lunch:
Vanja de Lint
“Argument Structure in Classifier Constructions in ASL”
Thursday, Nov. 20
12:30-1:45
Room 32-D461
Please join us for this week’s Ling-lunch:
Vanja de Lint
“Argument Structure in Classifier Constructions in ASL”
Thursday, Nov. 20
12:30-1:45
Room 32-D461
Colloquium: Ora Matushansky
Ora Matushansky (University of Utrecht)
“Special Cases”
Friday, November 21st, 2008, 3:30pm
There will be a party in honor of Ora, beginning at 6:30pm. Directions to the party will be provided at the talk venue.
Ora Matushansky (University of Utrecht)
“Special Cases”
Friday, November 21st, 2008, 3:30pm
There will be a party in honor of Ora, beginning at 6:30pm. Directions to the party will be provided at the talk venue.
Phonology Circle 11/12 - Hrayr Khanjian: “Formerly stressed vowels in Western Armenian”
This week’s Phonology Circle will feature a presentation by Hrayr Khanjian.
Title: Formerly stressed vowels in Western Armenian
Time: Wed 11/12, 5pm, 32-D831
In this talk, I examine the stressed and unstressed vowels of related forms of Western Armenian. Stressed high vowels [i] and [u] either change to [ə], as seen in (1) or delete, seen in (2) and a stressed diphthong [uj] changes to [u], as seen in (3), when stress shifts off of them. The rest of the vowels and diphthongs (mostly) are unaffected.
-
- “letter” [kír] → [kər-él] “to write”
- “lie” [súd] → [səd-él] “to make false”
- “monkey” [gabíg] → [gabg-él] “to mime”
- “clean”[makúr] → [makr-él] “clean”
- “color” [kújn] → [kun-avór] “colorful”
- “culture” [məʃagújt] → [məʃagut-ajín] “cultural”
Many languages exhibit phonological differences between stressed and unstressed vowels.
There are languages, like Catalan, Bulgarian and Russian, where all unstressed vowels reduce.
In another set of languages, like Palauan, Romanian and Armenian, only a certain set of
vowels that once bore stress reduce when stress shifts.
Unlike Romanian and Palauan, Armenian has a phonological process of ə-epenthesis. I argue
that the surface schwas that seem to be corresponding to the once stressed high vowels are
also part of this epenthesis process. Without positing a new phonological mechanism to
account for the high vowel disappearance, I incorporate the derived environment effect into
the already present phonology of Western Armenian.
This week’s Phonology Circle will feature a presentation by Hrayr Khanjian.
Title: Formerly stressed vowels in Western Armenian
Time: Wed 11/12, 5pm, 32-D831
In this talk, I examine the stressed and unstressed vowels of related forms of Western Armenian. Stressed high vowels [i] and [u] either change to [ə], as seen in (1) or delete, seen in (2) and a stressed diphthong [uj] changes to [u], as seen in (3), when stress shifts off of them. The rest of the vowels and diphthongs (mostly) are unaffected.
- “letter” [kír] → [kər-él] “to write”
- “lie” [súd] → [səd-él] “to make false”
- “monkey” [gabíg] → [gabg-él] “to mime”
- “clean”[makúr] → [makr-él] “clean”
- “color” [kújn] → [kun-avór] “colorful”
- “culture” [məʃagújt] → [məʃagut-ajín] “cultural”
Many languages exhibit phonological differences between stressed and unstressed vowels. There are languages, like Catalan, Bulgarian and Russian, where all unstressed vowels reduce. In another set of languages, like Palauan, Romanian and Armenian, only a certain set of vowels that once bore stress reduce when stress shifts.
Unlike Romanian and Palauan, Armenian has a phonological process of ə-epenthesis. I argue that the surface schwas that seem to be corresponding to the once stressed high vowels are also part of this epenthesis process. Without positing a new phonological mechanism to account for the high vowel disappearance, I incorporate the derived environment effect into the already present phonology of Western Armenian.
Language @MIT - 11/12 - Stephanie Seneff
This week is the kick-off installment of a new talk series, Language @MIT.
Title: Spoken Conversational Systems
Speaker: Stephanie Seneff, Spoken Language Systems group, CSAIL
When: Wednesday Nov 12, 3-4:30pm
Where: 26-310
The Spoken Language Systems group in CSAIL has been developing multimodal
dialogue systems for over two decades. These systems typically provide
information on a specific topic such as flight scheduling, weather,
geographical information, calendar management, etc. Our goal has been to build
systems that engage in natural spoken conversation, using a so-called
“mixed-initiative” dialogue strategy. In this talk, I will first give a high
level overview of system architecture and components. The main content of the
talk will emphasize discourse and dialogue modelling, in the context of these
spoken dialogue systems. I will also describe techniques used to stress test the
system and guide system development, such as simulated dialogue interaction.
I will mainly use the multimodal restaurant domain and the telephone-access
flight scheduling domain as illustrative examples. Audio and video clips will
be played to demonstrate system capabilities.
This week is the kick-off installment of a new talk series, Language @MIT.
Title: Spoken Conversational Systems
Speaker: Stephanie Seneff, Spoken Language Systems group, CSAIL
When: Wednesday Nov 12, 3-4:30pm
Where: 26-310
The Spoken Language Systems group in CSAIL has been developing multimodal dialogue systems for over two decades. These systems typically provide information on a specific topic such as flight scheduling, weather, geographical information, calendar management, etc. Our goal has been to build systems that engage in natural spoken conversation, using a so-called “mixed-initiative” dialogue strategy. In this talk, I will first give a high level overview of system architecture and components. The main content of the talk will emphasize discourse and dialogue modelling, in the context of these spoken dialogue systems. I will also describe techniques used to stress test the system and guide system development, such as simulated dialogue interaction. I will mainly use the multimodal restaurant domain and the telephone-access flight scheduling domain as illustrative examples. Audio and video clips will be played to demonstrate system capabilities.
Ling-Lunch 11/13 - Claire Halpert
Please join us for this week’s Ling-lunch:
Claire Halpert
Thursday, Nov. 13
12:30-1:45
Room 32-D461
Please join us for this week’s Ling-lunch:
Claire Halpert
Thursday, Nov. 13
12:30-1:45
Room 32-D461
MIT went to NELS!
This week we welcome home our contingent of students who presented papers or posters at last weekend’s NELS conference at Cornell: Luka Crnic & Tue Trinh, Patrick Grosz, Jeremy Hartman and Gillian Gallagher. Recent alums with NELS papers this year included Julie Legate (PhD 2002), now on the faculty at Penn; Jon Gajewski (PhD 2005), now on the faculty at UConn (presenting a joint paper with his colleague Željko Boškovi?); and Ivona Ku?erová (PhD 2007), currently a post-doc at University College, London.
This week we welcome home our contingent of students who presented papers or posters at last weekend’s NELS conference at Cornell: Luka Crnic & Tue Trinh, Patrick Grosz, Jeremy Hartman and Gillian Gallagher. Recent alums with NELS papers this year included Julie Legate (PhD 2002), now on the faculty at Penn; Jon Gajewski (PhD 2005), now on the faculty at UConn (presenting a joint paper with his colleague Željko Boškovi?); and Ivona Ku?erová (PhD 2007), currently a post-doc at University College, London.
UMMM - 11/22 @ UMass
This year’s fall UMass/MIT Meeting in Phonology (UMMM) will be held on Saturday Nov. 22 at UMass (Amherst). Mark your calendars, and stay tuned for schedule and details!
This year’s fall UMass/MIT Meeting in Phonology (UMMM) will be held on Saturday Nov. 22 at UMass (Amherst). Mark your calendars, and stay tuned for schedule and details!
NECPhon @Yale - 11/15
The second annual Northeast Computational Phonology meeting will take place this Saturday at Yale. The preliminary schedule (including talks by our own Giorgio Magri, and Jennifer Michaels) can be viewed at:
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~gjs42/necphon08/
If you’re interested in attending but haven’t yet been in communication with Adam, please contact him ASAP for details.
The second annual Northeast Computational Phonology meeting will take place this Saturday at Yale. The preliminary schedule (including talks by our own Giorgio Magri, and Jennifer Michaels) can be viewed at:
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~gjs42/necphon08/
If you’re interested in attending but haven’t yet been in communication with Adam, please contact him ASAP for details.
¡Posicionales y Pasivos!
This week, Jessica Coon will be traveling from her temporary fieldwork home in Chiapas, Mexico to the Universidad de Sonora, where she will present a paper jointly written with Omer Preminger on Positionals and Passives in Chol at the X Encuentro Internacional de Lingüística en el Noroeste.
This week, Jessica Coon will be traveling from her temporary fieldwork home in Chiapas, Mexico to the Universidad de Sonora, where she will present a paper jointly written with Omer Preminger on Positionals and Passives in Chol at the X Encuentro Internacional de Lingüística en el Noroeste.
Links of the week
Strange VP ellipsis in the news (second email down the page).
Strange right node raising in the news.
Strange VP ellipsis in the news (second email down the page).
Strange right node raising in the news.
Music-Language Reading Group continues
The Music-Language reading group, which meets on Fridays at 3:30 when there is no colloquium, has a website on which readings and topics for our meetings are posted. Last Friday, we discussed grouping and meter in the context of West African drum music (Claire Halpert led the discussion) and in the context of clave patterns and related rhythmic phenomena (Jonah Katz led the discussion). At our meeting this Friday, we will discuss aspects of the syntax of tonal harmony.
The Music-Language reading group, which meets on Fridays at 3:30 when there is no colloquium, has a website on which readings and topics for our meetings are posted. Last Friday, we discussed grouping and meter in the context of West African drum music (Claire Halpert led the discussion) and in the context of clave patterns and related rhythmic phenomena (Jonah Katz led the discussion). At our meeting this Friday, we will discuss aspects of the syntax of tonal harmony.
Ling-lunch 11/6 - Jeremy Hartman
Please join us for this week’s Ling-lunch:
Thursday, Nov. 6
12:30-1:45
Room 32-D461
Jeremy Hartman
“The Semantic Effects of non-A’ Traces: Evidence from Ellipsis Parallelism”
A central puzzle in the syntax/semantics interface concerns the interpretation of movement. A-bar movement has evident semantic consequences, but the status of A-movement and head-movement is less evident—with the result that some authors have called these types of movement into question, or relegated them to the phonological component of the grammar. This talk presents evidence from ellipsis parallelism that all three types of movement have effects on semantics.
Takahashi and Fox (2005) and Merchant (2008) propose that ellipsis is subject to a constraint “MaxElide” that prefers a larger elided constituent over a smaller one, within a given Parallelism Domain determined by semantic identity to an antecedent. I examine new data concerning the interactions of MaxElide with wh-adverbials, embedded clauses, and T-to-C movement. I present and account for an expanded MaxElide paradigm by arguing that all types of traces (A-traces, A-bar traces, and traces of head movement) count towards the calculation of the Parallelism Domain.
Please join us for this week’s Ling-lunch:
Thursday, Nov. 6
12:30-1:45
Room 32-D461
Jeremy Hartman
“The Semantic Effects of non-A’ Traces: Evidence from Ellipsis Parallelism”
A central puzzle in the syntax/semantics interface concerns the interpretation of movement. A-bar movement has evident semantic consequences, but the status of A-movement and head-movement is less evident—with the result that some authors have called these types of movement into question, or relegated them to the phonological component of the grammar. This talk presents evidence from ellipsis parallelism that all three types of movement have effects on semantics.
Takahashi and Fox (2005) and Merchant (2008) propose that ellipsis is subject to a constraint “MaxElide” that prefers a larger elided constituent over a smaller one, within a given Parallelism Domain determined by semantic identity to an antecedent. I examine new data concerning the interactions of MaxElide with wh-adverbials, embedded clauses, and T-to-C movement. I present and account for an expanded MaxElide paradigm by arguing that all types of traces (A-traces, A-bar traces, and traces of head movement) count towards the calculation of the Parallelism Domain.
Judy Kegl at UMass Boston - 11/5
On Wednesday, November 5, Prof. Judy Kegl will give a talk at UMass Boston. The title of her talk is “Four Instincts that Lead us to Language.”
Sponsored by the Hispanic Studies Department, the Undergraduate Program in Linguistics, and the Friends of Healey Library of the University of Massachusetts Boston, the event will be from 3:30 to 5:00 at the Center for Library Instruction, Healey Library, 4th floor, UMass Boston.
The UMass Boston campus is accessible by public transportation. For directions, go to http://www.umb.edu/parking_transport/directions.html.
For disability services, please contact the Customer Service at least 48 hours in advance at 617-287-4000 or via email at customter.service@umb.edu.
For further information, you can contact Luis Alonso-Ovalle (luis.alonso-ovalle@umb.edu) or Wanda Rivera-Rivera (wanda.rivera-rivera@umb.edu).
On Wednesday, November 5, Prof. Judy Kegl will give a talk at UMass Boston. The title of her talk is “Four Instincts that Lead us to Language.”
Sponsored by the Hispanic Studies Department, the Undergraduate Program in Linguistics, and the Friends of Healey Library of the University of Massachusetts Boston, the event will be from 3:30 to 5:00 at the Center for Library Instruction, Healey Library, 4th floor, UMass Boston.
The UMass Boston campus is accessible by public transportation. For directions, go to http://www.umb.edu/parking_transport/directions.html.
For disability services, please contact the Customer Service at least 48 hours in advance at 617-287-4000 or via email at customter.service@umb.edu.
For further information, you can contact Luis Alonso-Ovalle (luis.alonso-ovalle@umb.edu) or Wanda Rivera-Rivera (wanda.rivera-rivera@umb.edu).
Possible dates for SNEWS
SNEWS (”Southern New England Workshop in Semantics”) has been moved from the
fall to the spring semester. The Amherst organizers would like to hold it on
one of the four Saturdays of March:
March 07
March 14
March 21
March 28
If you would like to attend but have a conflict any of these days, let
Giorgio (gmagri@mit.edu) know. The SNEWS website is still up at the following
address:
SNEWS (”Southern New England Workshop in Semantics”) has been moved from the fall to the spring semester. The Amherst organizers would like to hold it on one of the four Saturdays of March:
March 07
March 14
March 21
March 28
If you would like to attend but have a conflict any of these days, let Giorgio (gmagri@mit.edu) know. The SNEWS website is still up at the following address:
Cable dissertation to become OUP book
Writing from his new home as an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at UMass/Amherst, Seth Cable (MIT PhD 2007) informs us that a book manuscript based on his MIT dissertation The Grammar of Q has just been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press. Seth’s dissertation developed results from his NSF-funded fieldwork on Tlingit to argue that pied-piping does not exist as an independent phenomenon, but follows from the right theory of the syntax and semantics of questions. Congratulations, Seth!!
Writing from his new home as an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at UMass/Amherst, Seth Cable (MIT PhD 2007) informs us that a book manuscript based on his MIT dissertation The Grammar of Q has just been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press. Seth’s dissertation developed results from his NSF-funded fieldwork on Tlingit to argue that pied-piping does not exist as an independent phenomenon, but follows from the right theory of the syntax and semantics of questions. Congratulations, Seth!!