Unhappy with your place in the UMass Linguistics Erdös graph?

You might still be able to get yourself a 5!

[Thanks to John McCarthy]

Today is a UMass Monday, because Monday was a holiday. But it is a calendar Thursday in this part of the world. WHISC publishes on Thursdays. But Thursdays according to what calendar? This indeterminacy led to conflict in the WHISC offices, with some arguing that, as a university publication, we couldn't even have an issue in this "Thursdayless" week. Those folks eventually walked out, leaving the newsletter severly understaffed.

Space-time location: Saturday, May 1, 9:30 am, Campus center room 104, Elm Street, Smith College, Northampton, MA, U.S.A. (see map)

Parking: Free on most streets around campus, in campus parking lots or in the parking garage on Rte 10 (see map) [Editors' note: we do not know whether free scopes over the entire PP coordination or just the first conjunct. To be safe, ride a bicycle.]

HUMDRUM will be held at Rutgers this year, starting in the afternoon on May 1 (Saturday) and finishing on May 2. A tentative list of speakers and schedule of talks is available in JPG and PDF.

Shigeto needs to know who is staying over at Rutgers on Saturday night. Let him know as soon as possible if you are thinking of staying over and do not have a specific place to stay. The deadline is Saturday at 12:04 pm.

"HUMDRUM" stands for "Hopkins/University of MarylanD/Rutgers/University of Massachusetts". The "D" is thus from the end of "Maryland". Is that a permitted move in acronym formation?

I ran the 108th Boston Marathon this Monday to raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Many WHISC readers contributed generously to my run. I am extremely grateful to them for the support. It helped keep me going through the extreme heat (it was about 85 F when I reached downtown Boston).

The evening before the race, the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge (DFMC) held a big pasta party, at which runners and their families consumed large quantities of pasta, cookies, and water. The evening's highlights, to my mind, were the video interviews with the young researchers at Dana-Farber who have received grants from the DFMC. Such grants are the primary outlet for DFMC funds. The idea is that they can use the money to conduct the research necessary to score multi-million dollar NIH grants (of which there are increasingly few to be had). It is extremely pleasing for me to know that the pledge money I raised will contribute to their work.

Dana Farber had 515 runners this year, with a collective goal of $3.5 million in contributions. All told, the three running Pottses --- my sister Ali, my father Art, and I --- raised $26,000 for DFMC! Amazing! You can check up on our footwork by querying "Potts" at the excellent Boston Athletic Association results database. I don't know who Richard and Ellen Potts are, but I am glad that they finished too.

Please take note only of the net times. Overall times are not directly informative. Mine reveals only that it took me over 18 minutes to cross the starting line in this race of nearly 20,000 entrants.

On May 17, from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, there will be a TA training seminar. It will take place in Herter 301, and lunch will be provided. Other details will be forthcoming shortly.

It would be great to hear from experienced TAs who would like to present at the seminar on an issue or innovation in their teaching. Also, those who teach a course that relies on 201 might want to suggest topics for inclusion in the seminar. If you would like to participate, contact John Kingston.

To qualify for the lower registration fee, you have to register before May 1. To register follow this link, fill out the online form, print out the result, and fax (or surface-mail) it in. As well as registering, you can use the same form to reserve student accommodation and book lunch tickets (the lunch menu is available on the ESSLLI 2004 website).

Click the image for a closer look.

WHISC Whimsy #4 concerned the Alanis Morissette album title

Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie

Question 1: How many different bracketings does this string have?

It has 11 bracketings. Here is a method for determining the number of bracketings for strings of any length.

Question 2: How many logically distinct meanings does this string have?

I detect 5. It is tricky to see where they all come from and what they mean. If you want the details, and the building blocks for a complete semantic analysis, follow this link.

Question 3: Is spurious ambiguity still supposed to be a theoretical problem?

Let's hope not.

Bonus round: Which famous 1972 syntactic generalization is counterexemplified in the first verse of the album's third track, 'Thank U'?

I am withholding the answer for one more week. I am concerned that UMass linguists are not reading enough 1970s-era Haj Ross. I'll provide the relevant line though: How 'bout stopping eating when I'm full up.