============================ WHISC ============================ What's Happening In South College December 11, 2003 Issue 1:5 Archived at http://people.umass.edu/potts/whisc/ =============================================================== ========================== OVERVIEW =========================== Visit the DELUXE WEB EDITION of this week's WHISC: http://people.umass.edu/potts/whisc/whisc-2003-12-11.html -- Colloquium (Kai von Fintel) -- Acquisition workshop -- Dissertation defense (Ji-yung Kim) -- Faculty work (Barbara Partee) -- End-of-semester luncheon -- Visitors cooking team: Short report -- UMass linguists on the Net (von Fintel, Potts, Rawlins) -- Correction (hungry intern?) =============================================================== ========================= 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). Check out the abstract at the DELUXE WEB EDITION of this week's WHISC: http://people.umass.edu/potts/whisc/whisc-2003-12-11.html =============================================================== ==================== 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. The DELUXE WEB EDITION of this WHISC has the full program: http://people.umass.edu/potts/whisc/whisc-2003-12-11.html =============================================================== ===================== DISSERTATION DEFENSE ==================== Ji-yung Kim Scope: The View from Indefinites Tuesday, December 16, 2003, 3:30 pm Machmer W-26 =============================================================== ======================== FACULTY WORK ========================= 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: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=1405109343&site=1 =============================================================== ================ 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'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. =============================================================== ================= LAST WEEK'S POST COLLOQ BASH ================ 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. Visit the DELUXE WED EDITION of this WHISC for the complete menu and a shot of the chefs: http://people.umass.edu/potts/whisc/whisc-2003-12-11.html Scrumptious! =============================================================== ================= 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 (http://web.mit.edu/fintel/resources.html) with links to semanticists' homepages, to online journals, and to similar database pages. What's more, his weblog semantics etc. (http://semantics-online.org/blog/) is THE source for news on what is happening in linguistic semantics and pragmatics. Kai also maintains the weblog Geek Notes (http://semantics-online.org/geek/) which reports on new technologies, especially those pertaining to Web publishing, LaTeX typesetting, and Mac OS X. * * * * * Christopher Potts is a contributing member of the newish weblog Language Log (http://www.languagelog.org/). 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 graduate student, maintains a very useful webpage devoted to resources in computational semantics: http://people.ucsc.edu/~krawlins/clsbib/ =============================================================== ========================== CORRECTION ========================= Last week's WHISC reported that Emmon Bach was soon to give a talk on "Western Abenaki serial verb constrictions". 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. ===============================================================