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March 2015

Week of March 30, 2015

Advising Fortnight Kickoff Event

Date: Monday, March 30
Time: 5:00-7:00 p.m.
Location: Annenberg Hall

Professor Polinsky and a few students will be there to tell you more about linguistics. Drop by the Linguistics table to learn more! Our Head Tutor, Professor Polinsky, and the Assistant Head Tutor will be holding office hours during the Advising Fortnight in case you have additional questions.

Office Hours:
Head Tutor and Director of Undergraduate Study:
Dates: Thursdays, April 2 & Tuesday, April 7
Time: 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Location: Boylston Hall 314

Assistant Head Tutor: 
Dates: Wednesdays, April 1 & April 8
Time:4:00-5:00 p.m.
Location: Lounge in the Department of Linguistics, Boylston Hall third floor

Polinsky Lab Meeting 

Anita Peti-Stantić (University of Zagreb/Tufts University)
Experimental Morphosyntax of South Slavic Languages - Gender Agreement
Wednesday, April 1 | 5:15pm | 2 Arrow Street (4th floor)

Language Universals Workshop 

Ruth Kramer (Georgetown University)
The Morphosyntax of Gender and Number: Converging and Crossing
Friday, April 3 | 2pm | Boylston 303

Harvard at WCCFL 33

The following talks featured Harvard presenters at the 33rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 33) which was held at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Mar. 27 – 29.

Department Events: Spring 2015

Week of March 23, 2015

Job Talk: Salvador Mascarenhas

Salvador Mascarenhas (University of Oxford, St. Catherine’s College)
Illusory Inferences: Reasoning and Interpretation
Monday, March 23 | 4pm-6pm | Boylston Hall Fong Auditorium
Reception in the Department of Linguistics immediately following the talk.

Polinsky Lab Meeting 

Ekaterina Kravtchenko
Predictability affects syntactic production: Evidence from subject omission in Russian
Wednesday, March 25 | 5:15pm | 2 Arrow Street (4th floor)

Linguistics Circle Workshop 

Jon Gajewski (University of Connecticut)
The representation of degree in American Sign Language
Friday, March 27 | 4:30pm | Sever Hall 208

Harvard at PLC39

The following talks featured Harvard presenters at the 39th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference that took place at the University of Pennsylvania, March 20-22, 2015.

  • Dorothy Ahn: A New Account for too and either
  • Laurence B-Violette: Obviating the Disjoint Reference Effect in French
  • Jenny Lee: Root Alternation and Verbal Plurality in Ranmo
  • Yimei Xiang: Multiple Exhaustifications and Multiple Scalar Items

Department Events: Spring 2015

Week of March 16, 2015

Spring Recess March 14-22

Spring Recess began last Saturday, March 14, and will end on Sunday, March 22. Happy Spring Break!

Job Talk: Salvador Mascarenhas

Salvador Mascarenhas (University of Oxford, St. Catherine’s College)
Illusory Inferences: Reasoning and Interpretation
Monday, March 23 | 4pm-6pm | Fong Auditorium (Boylston 1st floor)
Reception in the Department of Linguistics immediately following the talk.

Teaching Award: Fall 2014

Lecturer Patrick Jones, and graduate students Dorothy Ahn, Yujing Huang, Marek Majer, and Chrissy Zlogar have won Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning for the Fall Semester 2014.

  • Patrick Jones: LING 115 "Phonological Theory I"
  • Dorothy Ahn: LING 112 "Syntactic Theory I" (TF)
  • Yujing Huang LING 241r "Practicum in Linguistics" (TF)
  • Marek Majer: LING 83 "Language, Structure, & Cognition" (TF)
  • Marek Majer: LING 105 "Sounds of Language" (TF)
  • Chrissy Zlogar: LING 106 "Knowledge of Meaning" (TF)
  • Chrissy Zlogar: LING 115 "Phonological Theory I" (TF)

Congratulations!

Week of March 9

Polinsky Lab Meeting 

Brad Larson & Nick Longenbaugh (Harvard)
WCCFL Practice Talk: Subject/Object Parity in Niuean and the Labeling Algorithm
Wednesday, March 11 | 5:15pm | 2 Arrow Street (4th floor)

Harvard at DGfS 2015

Dorothy Ahn presented her joint work with Uli Sauerland (ZAS Berlin; Visiting professor 2012-2013) titled Reversal of Proportional Quantifiers at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS), which took place at the University of Leipzig, Germany, March 4-6.

Also at the conference was Andreea Nicolae (ZAS Berlin;PhD 2013), presenting her work titled The positive polarity aspect of weak disjunction.

Dorothy Ahn also presented her work "Additive focus particles too and either" at the Pre-DGfS Workshop which took place at ZAS Berlin, Germany, on March 3.

Job Talk: Heather Burnett

Heather Burnett (Université de Toulouse 2- Jean Jaurès)
Vagueness and Scale Structure in Delineation Semantics
March 13, 2015 | 4pm-6pm | Boylston 103
Reception in the Department of Linguistics immediately following the talk.

Department Events: Spring 2015

  • Spring Open House: April 9
  • ECO5: April 11
  • Thesis Colloquium: April 30
  • Spring Reception: April 30