HOME / SPELL-OUT BLOG /

September 2014

Week of September 29, 2014

Polinsky Lab Meeting 

Reading Group 1: Discussion led by Zuzanna Fuchs
Wednesday, October 1 | 5:15pm | 2 Arrow Street (4th floor conference room)

GSAS Indo-European and Historical Linguistics Workshop:

Marek Majer (Harvard University)
Thoughts on Indo-European *penkʷero- and Similar Forms
Friday, October 3 | 4:30pm | Boylston 104

Harvard at TEAL-9

Two students represented Harvard at the 9th International Workshop on Theoretical East Asian Linguistics (TEAL-9), which took place at the University of Nantes, France, September 25-26, 2014.

  • Edwin Tsai: 'Decomposing Mandarin dou-quantification: An exhaustivity account'
  • Yimei Xiang: 'Obligatory Neg-raising in Mandarin: Negatives and Aspects'

Week of September 22, 2014

Polinsky Lab Meeting 

Brad Larson (Harvard University)
Coordinated Wh-Questions
Wednesday, September 24 | 5:15pm | 2 Arrow Street (4th floor conference room)

GSAS Indo-European and Historical Linguistics Workshop:

Alexander Forte and Caley Smith (Harvard University)
Stylistics and the Question of Authorship in Early Poetry
Friday, September 26 | 4:30pm | Boylston 103

Language Universals Workshop Fall 2014

Oct 9 - Dan Lassiter (Stanford)
Nov 10: Larry Hyman (Berkeley)

Harvard at Sinn und Bedeutung 19

Two students represented Harvard at the 19th Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB19) that took place at the Georg August University at Göttingen, Germany, September 15-17:

  • Dorothy Ahn: 'The semantics of additive either'
  • Yimei Xiang: 'A Grammatical View of Exhaustification with Focus Movement: Evidence from NPI'

Harvard at Questions in Discourse

Andreea Nicolae (PhD 2013) and Yimei Xiang gave invited talks at the Questions in Discourse conference that took place at the University of Göttingen, Germany, September 18-20:

  • Andreea Nicolae: 'Exhaustivity and NPI Licensing in Wh-Questions'
  • Yimei Xiang: 'A Semantic Approach to the Distribution of Mention-Some Questions'

Nicolae and Tsai Win Teaching Award

Andreea Nicolae (PhD 2013) and Edwin Tsai have won Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.

  • Andreea Nicolae: Ling 205 "Syntax Semantics Interface"
  • Edwin Tsai: Ling 241 "Practicum in Linguistics" (TF)

Congratulations!

Week of September 15, 2014

Department Fall Reception

The Department of Linguistics Fall Reception will take place in Boylston Hall at 5:15pm this Thursday, September 18. All undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and visitors are invited. Please join us in welcoming everyone to Linguistics!

Polinsky Lab Meeting 

Masha Polinsky (Harvard University)
Experimental approaches to ergativity
Wednesday, September 17 | 5:15pm | 2 Arrow Street (4th floor conference room)

Majer appears in Russian Linguistics

Marek Majer's article entitled "The origin of the ‘l-less perfect’ in the Novgorod birchbark documents" has been published in Russian Linguistics Vol. 38, Issue 2.

Harvard Circles Colloquium 2014-2015

(Subject to change)
October 24 - Howard Lasnik
November 14 - Draga Zec
January 30 - Florian Schwarz
March 27 - Jon Gajewski
April 10 - Satoshi Tomioka

Week of september 8, 2014

Fall 2014

Study Card Day is tomorrow (Tuesday, September 9). Completed study cards for all students are due between 9 am and 5 pm. 

Here is a list of seminars being taught this semester:

  • Silent but Meaningful: On Ellipsis
    Ling 204r Topics in Syntax | Liu | Th 1-3
  • Focus: Uniformity or Diversity?
    Ling 205r The Syntax-Semantics Interface | Charnavel | F 1-3
  • Comparative and Historical Morphology of the Greek and Latin Verb
    Ling 221r Workshop in Indo-European | Jasanoff | Th 3-5 

The Department of Linguistics Fall Reception will take place in Boylston Hall at 5:15pm on Thursday, September 18. All undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and visitors are invited. Please join us in welcoming everyone to Linguistics!

Polinsky Lab Meeting

Wednesday, September 10 | 5:15pm | 2 Arrow Street (4th floor)

The first Polinsky Lab meeting of the semester will be this Wednesday. The meeting's agenda includes introductions and mapping out the schedule for the semester.

Harvard at AMLaP

Laine Stranahan presented her work "Effects of Working Memory Load on the Processing of Numerals and Scalar Quantifiers"  (a project with Qingqing Wu, Manizeh Khan, and Jesse Snedeker) at the 20th Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP), which took place at the University of Edinburgh, September 3-6, 2014.

Harvard at SciLAC

Dora Mihoc presented her work "The broader epistemic future" at Commitment phenomena through the study of evidential markers in Romance languages, an international conference which took place at the Institute for Language and Communication Sciences, University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland), Sep 4-5, 2014.

Clemens, Coon, Mateo Pedro, Morgan, Polinsky, and Tandet appear in NLLT

The paper "Ergativity and the complexity of extraction: a view from Mayan" co-authored by Polinsky Lab members Lauren Clemens, Maria Polinsky, and Gabrielle Tandet '13 and former lab members Jessica Coon, Pedro Mateo Pedro, and Adam Milton Morgan has been published in the journal Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.