She's an Assistant Professor in the Linguistics Department. They're WILD!

The October issue of Illuminating is available.

"The seriousness of the threat to individual liberty cannot be underestimated."

Bob Rothstein remarks:

A Google search for the two phrases shows approximately 54,200 examples of "cannot be overestimated" vs.132,000 for "cannot be underestimated." (There are 138 instances in which the two expressions are used to set up a contrast, or are cited to point out the "frequently occurring error.") Presumably those speakers of English who use "cannot be underestimated" in the sense intended by The Guardian understand "cannot" to mean "should not" or "must not."

Is this another case like "I could(n't) care less" (but without the stress difference)?

Barbara's extended riff on the phrase "people of size"

Acoustical Society of America Fellowships, Scholarships, Prizes, Grants and Student Awards

[Thanks Vanessa Cargill!]

Semantics Shape Social Security Debate

[Thanks Emmon!]

English as She is Spoke

Rainy Stanford drew our attention to the infamous phrasebook English as She is Spoke, by José da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino.  As Rainy says, "it was supposed to be an English phrasebook for Portuguese speakers, but the authors didn't actually speak English.

Venice, Fla. -- A WHISC staffer relaxes, cautiously, ridiculously, in the sun.

On March 11, Barbara Partee will receive an honorary doctorate from the Copenhagen Business School, the premier school for linguistic research in Denmark.

This will be Barbara's fourth honorary doctorate, after Swarthmore 1989, Charles University in Prague 1992, Russian State Humanities University in Moscow 2002.

Postcard from Francesca: "Happy New Year! (Paris is magic.)"

Click the image to return to the first postcard.

The language for Ellen Woolford's graduate Field Methods course this spring (Ling 748) will be Kono. It is a Niger-Congo language spoken in Sierra Leone. Follow this link to the Ethnologue page for more information.

The course is currently scheduled for Thursday afternoons, but it will be rescheduled due to conflicts with the schedules of the participants. The first meeting will be tomorrow (January 28), from 3:30-5:00 pm (Tobin 623), at which time Ellen will attempt the (probably impossible) task of finding a time that works for everyone involved but is not at night, early in the morning, or on a weekend. Whew!

Matthew Wolf's paper 'An autosegmental theory of quirky mutations' has been accepted for presentation at WCCFL 24 (Simon Fraser University, March 18-20).

From Adam Werle and Leah Bateman:

Among other forthcoming UMOPs, the GLSA is planning to put out a volume of working papers in phonology. We, the prospective editors, would like to invite submissions to this volume on any aspect of phonology.

At this stage, we ask that you please let us know if you're in possession of an appropriate paper in some stage of completeness, what its real or imagined title is, and when you expect to have finished it. We would like to receive all contributors' final submissions by June 15, 2005.

Imagine --- you're all alone at the office late at night, slaving away on that article or assignment that's due at the crack of dawn. Your tired brain starts sending signals that it needs more glucose. Sighing with exhaustion, you wend your way to the candy jar in the department office ... but ... it's ... EMPTY! Oh, NO! How can you finish without that chocolatey sugar edge???

You --- yes, you --- can prevent this horrible scenario by donating to the candy fund now!!!

With many thanks, we remain (for now)
Your sincere candy monsters,
Elena and Leah

Linguistic training is extremely valuable for careers in law. So WHISC readers should be aware of the events that the Pre-Law Advising Office has planned for this semester. Check out the office's weblog, the UMass Amherst Pre-Law Blog, for news about workshops, advising, etc.

[Thanks Angelika!]

After many years, Susanne Tunstall has managed to reformat her 1998 UMass dissertation so that it can be made available to the GLSA and others. The word processing system she used for the original was so outdated that the thesis couldn't be put in PDF format without solving considerable technical difficulties. But now the GLSA has it, and it should soon be available on the Semantics Archive.

[Thanks Lyn!]

There will be approximately 9,000 workshops associated with the 2005 ESSLLI, in Edinburgh, Scotland, August 8-19.  Keep watching the website.

The call for papers has gone out for Experimental Pragmatics: Exploring the Cognitive Basis of Conversation, Faculty of English, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge, April 14-16, 2005. Two-page abstracts are due January 31; check out the website for more information.