Whamit!

We have following summer news from students and faculty:

• The biennial Summer Institute of the Lingusitic Society of America took place at the University of Kentucky from July 5 – August 1. Several faculty members and alumni taught classes:
  • Adam Albright (faculty): Phonology
  • Michel DeGraff (faculty): Creole Studies at the Intersection of Theory, History, Computation and Education
  • Claire Halpert (PhD ‘12, now at Minnesota): Clausal Arguments in Bantu and Beyond
  • Giorgio Magri (Phd ‘09, now at CNRS): Computational Phonology
  • David Pesetsky (faculty): Introduction to Syntax
  • Norvin Richards (faculty): Prosody and Syntax: Introduction to Contiguity Theory
  • Coppe van Urk (PhD ‘15, now at QMUL): Movement in Minimalism
  • Igor Yanovich (PhD ‘13, now at Tübingen): Statistical Inference for the Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Past
  Elise Newman (2nd-year) and Danfeng Wu (2nd-year) were attendees, and Danfeng also TAed David’s syntax class. Elise shares this group picture of some of the attendees, including MIT-ers Danfeng, Coppe, Norvin, Elise, Claire and David, and David shares this picture of a bourbon distillery.
• The CreteLing Summer School took place at the University of Crete in Rethymnon from July 10 to July 21, and many MIT faculty and alumni taught courses. Shigeru shares the picture below showing the view of Rethymnon from the accomodations at CreteLing.
  • Eulàlia Bonet (PhD ‘91, now at UAB): Introduction to Morphology
  • Kai von Fintel (faculty): Modals and Conditionals
  • Gillian Gallagher (PhD ‘10, now at NYU): Inductive learning of phonology
  • Sabine Iatridou (faculty): Introduction to Syntax
  • Meltem Kelepir (PhD ‘01, now at Boğaziçi): Syntactic Approaches to Interrogatives in Sign Language
  • Joan Mascaró (PhD ‘76, now at UAB): Phonology and its interface with Syntax, Morphology, and Phonetics
  • Shigeru Miyagawa (faculty): Agreement Beyond Phi (week 1) and Language and animal communication in evolution (week 2)
  • Douglas Pulleyblank (PhD ‘83, now at UBC): Introduction to Phonology
  • Rajesh Bhatt (Umass Amherst), Kai von Fintel, Sabine Iatridou, Roumi Pancheva (USC), and Tim Stowell (PhD ‘81, now at UCLA): Aspect
  Marie-Christine Meyer (PhD ‘13, now at ZAS Berlin), Despina Oikonomou (PhD ‘16, now at Humboldt), and Uli Sauerland (PhD ‘98, now at ZAS Berlin) gave talks at the associated workshop. Rafael Abramovitz (3rd-year), Ömer Demirok (4th-year), and Maša Močnik (3rd-year) were TAs at CreteLing, while Snejana Iovtcheva (6th-year), and Tatiana Bondareko (1st-year) and attended. In addition, former visiting faculty Elena Anagnostopoulou (Crete) and Hedde Zeijlstra (Göttingen) also taught courses.
• The European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLII 2017) took place at the University of Toulouse from July 17-28. Among the course instructors were:
  • Roger Schwarzschild (faculty) and Daniel Altshuler (Hampshire College): Underlying States
  • Sam Alxatib (PhD ‘13 now at CUNY) and Yael Sharvit (UCLA): Introduction to the semantics of tense and aspect
  • Philippe Schlenker (PhD ‘99, now at Institut Jean Nicod/CNRS and NYU): Super Semantics
  Philippe also gave an evening lecture on the scope of the field of semantics. Keny Chatain (2nd-year), Yadav Gowda (2nd-year), and Maša Močnik (3rd-year) attended, and Maša also presented a poster at the student session. Roger, who shared the picture of the ferris wheel to the right, reports “The school was well organized. The location, Toulouse, France, did not disappoint nor did the students and fellow lecturers. If the 2017 instantiation of ESSLLI was representative and you have an opportunity in the future to participate, grab it!”.
• Some MIT linguists who happened to be in Toronto in August presented at the Dog Days VI Syntax Workshop at the University of Toronto. Bridget Copley (PhD ‘02, now at CNRS/Paris 8), Neil Banerjee (2nd-year), and Tova Rapoport (PhD ‘87, now at Ben Gurion) gave talks, while Bronwyn Bjorkman (PhD ‘11, now at Queen’s University) was a co-author on a talk and gave a keynote as well.
• For the third year in a row, MIT has participated in the Congresso Internacional de Estudos Linguísticos (VI CIEL) at the University of Brasília. From August 23-25, Shigeru Miyagawa, Kai von Fintel, and Maria Luisa Zubizaretta (PhD ‘82, now at USC) taught mini-courses.
• Maya Honda (Wheelock College) and Wayne O’Neil (faculty) have published an article in Revista LinguíStica. The article summarizes the past thirty years of their teaching linguistics, generally in non-traditional settings. The journal is open-access, and the article is available online here.
• In June, David travelled to Utrecht University to participate in a dissertation defense by Heidi Klockmann, who was a visitor to the department in Fall 2014. Heidi’s dissertation is available here.
• In August, the Workshop on Quirks of Subject Extraction was held at the National University of Singapore. The workshop was organized by Mitcho Erlewine (PhD ‘14, now at NUS). David was an invited speaker, and former visitors Nico Baier (UC Berkeley) and Amy-Rose Deal (UC Berkeley) also presented at the workshop.
• Congratulations to Pritty Patel-Grosz (PhD ‘12) who has been promoted to the rank of full professor at the University of Oslo!
• Colin Phillips (PhD ‘96, now at Maryland) was elected a 2018 Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America! Colin joins 37 other MIT linguistics alumni and faculty members who have been similarly honored. Congratulations to Colin and the other 2018 Fellows!