The weekly newsletter of The Department of Linguistics, The University of Massachusetts, Amherst

WHISC
What's Happening In South College

December 11, 2003
Issue 1:5

Archived at http://www.umass.edu/linguist/about/whisc/

For a plain-text version: email.txt

OVERVIEW

Colloquium
Acquisition workshop
Dissertation defense
Faculty work
End-of-semester luncheon
Post-colloq bash
UMass linguists on the Net
Correction

COLLOQUIUM

The Graduate Linguistics Student Association presents:

Epistemic Modals and Conditionals Revisited

a colloquium presentation by Kai von Fintel (MIT).

Friday, Dec. 12, 3:30 pm, Machmer W-26

The colloquium will be followed by a reception in South College. There will also be a dinner with Kai that evening at the home of Chris Potts (directions will be available at the colloquium and reception).

The abstract in plain-text

ACQUISITION WORKSHOP

The {Smith, UConn, UMass} Acquisition Workshop was postponed until Saturday, December 13, due to heavy snowfall last Saturday. We hope the delay gave participants plenty of time to develop handouts and snowmen.

Click on the schedule below for a PDF version.
UUSLAW-program, available in PDF at ./UUSLAW-program.pdf

DISSERTATION DEFENSE

Ji-yung Kim
Scope: The View from Indefinites

Tuesday, December 16, 2003, 3:30 pm
Machmer W-26

FACULTY WORK

The cover of Compositionality in Formal Semantics: Selected Papers of Barbara Partee Barbara Partee's new collection hits bookshelves soon:

Compositionality in Formal Semantics:
Selected Papers of Barbara Partee
In the series: Explorations in Formal Semantics
Blackwell Publishing

Follow this link for a table of content, endorsements from linguistics celebs, and ordering information:

END-OF-SEMESTER HOLIDAY LUNCH

Yesterday (December 10), the department held its annual end-of-semester holiday lunch. The highlight of the party was the dessert: a cake decorated with a frosting-image of Barbara Partee's new book, reported on just above. The cake was tasty, and a fitting way to mark Barbara's last pre-big-sabbatical semester of teaching at UMass.

Barbara signing the cake
Barbara signs the cake, while
Lisa Selkirk and department
founder Don Freeman look on.
Lisa Selkirk cuts the cake while Barbara looks on.
Lisa Selkirk cuts the cake
while Barbara looks on.
A close-up of the cake
A close-up of the cake
From left: Uri Strauss, Volodja Borschev, and Barbara
From left: Uri Strauss, Volodja Borschev, and Barbara
Barbara, when the frosting was revealed
Barbara, when the
frosting was revealed
[Thanks to Francesca Foppolo, Liane Jeschull, Angelika Kratzer, Lisa Selkirk, and Peggy Speas for the photos.]

LAST WEEK'S POST-COLLOQ BASH

The chefs at the December 5 colloquium party: Yoshi Yamada, Koichiro Nakamura, Wakako Nakamura, Liane Jeschull, and Francesca Foppolo, with Anna Verbuk The party at Joe Pater's house following Adamantios Gafos's colloquium was noteworthy for, among other things, its delicious international fare. The visitors team (Yoshi Yamada, Koichiro Nakamura, Wakako Nakamura, Liane Jeschull, and Francesca Foppolo) did the cooking, to everyone's gastronomic delight.

The first page of the menu for the December 5 colloquium party The second page of the menu for the December 5 colloquium party

UMASS LINGUISTS ON THE NET

With Kai von Fintel about to visit, it seems fitting to report on some of the linguists involved in noteworthy Net endevours.

Kai tops the list. For years, he has maintained an archive of Semantics Web Resources with links to semanticists' homepages, to online journals, and to similar database pages. What's more, his weblog semantics etc. is the source for news on what is happening in linguistic semantics and pragmatics. Kai also maintains the weblog Geek Notes which reports on new technologies, especially those pertaining to Web publishing, LaTeX typesetting, and Mac OS X.

* * * * *

Chris Potts is a contributing member of the newish weblog Language Log. Chris contributes only occasionally due in small part to time constraints and in large part to his being intimidated by the star-power of the others on the list, some of whom appear regularly in The New York Times (Nunberg, McWhorter), win fancy awards (Jurafsky, Pullum), and seem to think only post-worthy thoughts (Liberman, who posts about three cool things per day):

David Beaver Steven Bird Lila Gleitman
Dan Jurafsky Mark Liberman Norma Mendoza-Denton
John McWhorter Geoff Nunberg Bill Poser
Chris Potts Geoff Pullum Sally Thomason
Arnold Zwicky

* * * * *

Kyle Rawlins, UMass undergrad alum and current UCSC Linguistics graduate student, maintains a very useful webpage devoted to Computational Semantics Information.

CORRECTION

Last week's WHISC reported that Emmon Bach was soon to give a talk on "Western Abenaki serial verb constructions". Emmon wrote: "I am talking about Western Abenaki verbal constructions at Cambridge, no serial involved. I am sure it would be a sensation in the Algonquianist world if I discovered serial verbs there."

We at WHISC are unsure how "serial" made its way into the description. The editors repeatedly blocked attempts by independent investigators to uncover the source of the error. When their obstructionism began to strain under scrutiny, they launched the DELUXE WEB VERSION as a diversion. Finally, they decided to blame an intern who specializes in West African languages.
To The WHISC archive      To The UMass Department of Linguistics      To UMass Amherst