WHISC 4:4 --- February 16, 2006
This week's WHISC is being doubly published, here and
in trial version as a weblog. Please
let us know what you think of the new format. We are seriously considering a switch.
Check out the
weblog version
The category features are a prime motivation for the switch to a weblog. The links are
in the bottom right of the sidebar. The pages they link to have static URLs, but the pages
are updated with new information as it appears in WHISC. So you could, for example,
link to the
archive page of the semantics reading group from your homepage, and the latest from that
group would always appear at the top of the linked page. (Don't create such a link yet.
These URLs will change when we move out of test mode.)
Our thanks to Jan Anderssen for
figuring out that we could install MovableType and then
going right ahead and installing it.
Angela Carpenter
Acquisition of a Natural vs. an Unnatural Stress System
Friday, February 17, 2006, 3:30 pm, Machmer W-26
[Party at Joe's after]
Lisa Green has accepted our offer of a position. She will be joining the UMass Amherst Linguistics
Department faculty next fall. We are very fortunate to have her joining us.
Lisa got her PhD from UMass Amherst in 1993. Since then, she has become a premier
syntactician and a world-renown expert on African-American English. She has published influential
books and articles on the syntax, semantics, and acquisition of various dialects of AAE, and she
has applied her skills and insights to problems relating to language instruction, language change, and
language preservation. Lisa's is an exciting, unique research profile.
Lisa Selkirk was highly instrumental in attracting Lisa Green. It was in large part due to
Lisa S.'s efforts that we received the necessary backing to establish a Center for African American Language, of which Lisa G.
will be the director. The center will receive financial support from the offices of the UMass Amherst Provost and of the Dean of
Humanities and Fine Arts. It will support a wide variety of activities --- conferences, summer research institutes, post-docs,
colloquia, teacher training seminars, and so forth.
It is an especially exciting time to be in South College. thanks Lisa S. Welcome, Lisa G.!
Heather Walts, a recent graduate of the UMass Amherst Linguistics undergraduate program, is now living and working in Pakistan. She went
expecting to work on a literacy project, but she has ended up teaching English at a Cultural Center and also teaching
some modules of an MA TESOL program. She writes:
I have one student who is selling his motorcyle to have private lessons in linguistics, so I thought current students
might be inspired by the work over here. Not to mention it's quite exciting with my classes being cancelled due to
riots over the Danish cartoonist and the impending visit of George W. to Islamabad next month ... should be an exciting semester here!
Follow this link for a more detailed letter from Heather and what she is up to.
And you can find much more about her adventures at her weblog, Updates from Heather.
[Thanks, Heather, for this wonderful contribution!]
Monday February 13, 2006, South College 301, 12:15 pm
Catherine Leger
Acquistion of Factivity with French and English-speaking Children
Anna Verbuk
Acquisition of Evans-Style contexts
All are welcome!
The next meeting of the PhG is Wednesday, February 22, 3:30 pm, in South College 301. The plan is to discuss Lev Blumenfeld's recent ROA posting,
'Tone domains in Tonga'. John Kingston writes, "I have a very soft
spot in my heart (and a little heart break) about this language, as I wrote about it in my special field exam when I was a student."
John K. will lead the discussion, perhaps assisted by Mike Key.
From Kathryn Flack:
UMMM, the joint UMass and MIT phonology group, met for the first time on
Saturday, February 11, and it was a great success! About 25 people
gathered in our new lounge for seven talks and much lively conversation on a
wide range of topics in phonetics and phonology. The MIT contingent
successfully avoided driving in blizzard conditions, everyone gracefully
adapted to a short-notice time change, and we're looking forward to
another meeting (at MIT, so of "MUMM") in April.
From Florian Schwarz:
The new semester is beginning to stop looking so new, and it's about
time to have our first SRG meeting. That will be today
(Thursday, February 16). As usual, we'll start at 8:00 pm, and we'll be
at Jan's house this week.
We'll continue to discuss Kamp and Partee 1995. We should focus on section 5,
i.e., the striped (stri[pt], stri[pəd]?) apple case and the related problem for compositionality.
Aynat has an interesting handout by a friend of hers from Israel, and I had
prepared that section for the last meeting, so we should be all set.
Maybe one or two people could prepare to help us get back to speed on
the Osheron-Smith Challenge and supervaluations [We volunteer Chris for this ---WHISC eds.]?
We should also take time to discuss what we are doing this semester!
There's only two more SRG's before spring break, and one of those will
be practice talks by Ilaria and myself for
SALT...
See you Thursday!
Florian
Dalina Kallulli will give a talk in the syntax reading group on Thursday, February 23.
The title of the talk is 'Resumption and concealed relatives'. All are welcome!
The candy situation, always precarious, is now dire. The chocolate is gone. The nutty things are good.
We are left with tooth-achingly sweet artificially fruity sugar globules.
Please donate
to the worthwile cause of getting us more goodies. The WHISC staff depends on this fuel for their midnight publishing sessions.
[Thanks to Candy Monster Amy Rose for sounding the alarm!]
A few words about the Node from Node Manager Andrew McKenzie:
Location reminder: Most everyone is aware that all the Node
is now a branching one: The journals are upstairs in the
Partee Seminar Room (301), while everything else is still
downstairs.
Policy reminder: Books and dissertations, most of which are
stocked along the wall with Ellen and Chris P's offices,
may be checked out for one semester. If you have a book
from last semester, kindly return it as soon as possible. If
you checked it out this semester, enjoy.
Working papers, proceedings, and journals are not available
for checkout. You may take them for long enough to read an
article or to make copies. If you have one of these items
out, please return it as soon as possible.
If you check something out, please replace it with one of
those gi-normous manila cards. Please write your name, the
item, and the checkout date on the card.
Returns: A Point of Node Return has been set up in each
location. Just leave items there.
Donations: Donations to the Node are always welcome. If
your donation consists of a volume or two, please slip it in
my mailbox. Let me know who it's from, so proper credit can
be given. If it's larger, please e-mail me in advance, and
leave it on the desk downstairs. Periodically, I will send out updates of Node acquistions,
policy, or news.
Thanks: The Node would like to thank all those who have made recent donations, including:
Barbara Partee, Ellen Woolford, Emmon Bach, John McCarthy, Leah Bateman, Lyn Frazier, Shigeto Kawahara, and
Tom Roeper. (If your name is not on the list, sorry!)
Happy reading,
Andrew, Node Manager
