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April 2015

Week of April 27, 2015

Spring 2015

The last day of Spring classes is Wednesday, April 29. The semester ends with exciting events at the Department this week:

Linguistics Department Spring Reception
Wednesday, April 29 | 5:15pm to 7:15pm | 3rd floor Boylston
All undergradates, graduates, faculty, and visitors are invited!

Department of Linguistics Visitas Open House
Monday, April 27 | 10:00am-11:30am | Boylston 303
The Department of Linguistics is inviting current and incoming freshmen to our Open House. Join us for breakfast to learn more about linguistics via language games, five-minute lectures, and other entertainments.

Senior Thesis Colloquium
Thursday, April 30 | 3:00pm-5:00pm | Boylston 105
See program for more information.

Whatmough X Lecture

Jonathan D. Bobaljik (University of Connecticut)
Morphological Universals: Comparatives and Beyond 
Monday, April 27 | 4:00-6:00pm | Sever Hall 113

A reception will take place after the talk at the Harvard Faculty Club on Quincy Street.

Thesis Defense

Cheng-Yu (Edwin) Tsai
Toward a Theory of Mandarin Quantification
Tuesday, April 28 | 5pm-7pm | Boylston 303

Refreshments immediately following the defense in the Boylston Hall Lounge

Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Science of Language

Thursday, April 30th | 5:30-7pm | Yenching Auditorium

Panelists:

  • Dr. Jesse Snedeker (Psychology)
  • Dr. Gennaro Chierchia (Linguistics)
  • Dr. Gina Kuperberg (Cognitive Neuroscience)
  • Dr. Meredith Rowe (Education)

Moderator: Dr. Alfonso Caramazza

GSAS Indo-European and Historical Linguistics Workshop

Jeffrey Bourns (Harvard University)
Cyberinfrastructure for Indo-European linguistics
Friday, May 1 | 4:00pm | Boylston 103

Harvard at CLS

The following talks featured Harvard presenters at the 51st annual meeting of Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS 51) that took place on April 23-25.

12th Annual Undergraduate Linguistics Colloquium at Harvard

The 12th Annual Undergraduate Linguistics Colloquium at Harvard took place this past weekend in the Science Center. Some of our own concentrators presented as well as undergraduates from elsewhere in the U.S., Canada, and even Germany. The program can be found here.

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 Volume 33, Issue 2 (2015) of Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.

Week of April 20, 2015

GSAS Indo-European and Historical Linguistics Workshop

Craig Melchert (UCLA)
More on Ablaut Patterns in the ḫi-Conjugation
Monday, April 20 | 5:00pm | Boylston 335

Language Universals Workshop 

Patrick Jones (Harvard)
Tone Shift is Phonological, and Phonology is not Emergent: Linguistic knowledge and the acquisition of tone in Kinande
Wednesday, April 22 | 5:15pm | Boylston 303

Charnavel at BU

Assistant Professor Isabelle Charnavel presented her work titled “Auxiliary alternations in French passé surcomposé” as an invited talk at the BU Linguistics Program (Department of Romance Studies, CAS) on Thursday, April 16.

Harvard at GLOW38

Dorothy Ahn and Uli Sauerland (ZAS, visiting professor 2013) presented their work titled "Relative Measures: Implications for the Semantics and Syntax of Pseudo-Partitives" at the 38th Generative Linguistics in the Old World colloquium (GLOW 38), which took place in Paris, April 15-18, 2015.

Whatmough X Lecture

Jonathan D. Bobaljik (University of Connecticut)
Morphological Universals: Comparatives and Beyond 
Monday, April 27 | 4:00-6:00pm | Sever Hall 113

2015 Linguistics Department Spring Reception

Wednesday, April 29 | 5:15pm to 7:15pm | 3rd floor Boylston
*Please note that the reception is now on Wednesday, April 29.

Week of April 13, 2015

LFRG at MIT

Zuzanna Fuchs (Harvard)
Pro-drop in Coordinated-WH Questions: Further Challenges for Multidominance and Ellipsis
Monday, April 13 | 12:00pm | 32-D831

Phonology Circle at MIT

Patrick Jones (Harvard)
Underlying falling tones in Interlacustrine Bantu, and their implications for Meeussen’s rule
Monday, April 13 | 5:00pm | 32D-831

Polinsky Lab Meeting 

Kenneth Mai (Harvard)

Heritage speakers on the edge: Sentence final particle usage among heritage Cantonese speakers
Wednesday, April 15 | 5:15pm | 2 Arrow Street (4th floor)

GSAS Indo-European and Historical Linguistics Workshop

Teigo Onishi (Kyoto University)
Notes on Sabellic nouns with the suffix *-ti-
Friday, April 17 | 4:00pm | Boylston 104

ECO-5 at Harvard

ECO-5 that took place at the Harvard Linguistics Department last Saturday, April 11 was a huge success, thanks to the organizers Laurence B-Violette, Lena Borise, and Yujing Huang. This year's workshop featured thirteen presentations from the five participating schools, including the following presentations representing Harvard:

Week of April 6, 2015

Department of Linguistics Spring Open House

The Department of Linguistics Spring Open House for prospective concentrators will take place this Thursday, April 9, 5:00-7:00 pm. Please check the poster for more information.

Polinsky Lab Meeting 

Ava Berinstein (Cultural Vitality) & Erin Olson (MIT)

Prosody Lab Aligner Demo in Q’eqchi’, Mayan
Wednesday, April 4 | 5:15pm | 2 Arrow Street (4th floor)

Polyglot Hour

Wednesday, April 8 | 6:30 -8:30pm | Queen’s Head Pub (underneath Annenberg)

Harvard Linguistic Department is hosting its first ever undergraduate Polyglot Hour! Polyglot Hour will be time for anyone to come and meet other people who speak the language(s) they do in a casual setting. Please check the Facebook event page for more information.

Linguistics Circle Workshop 

Satoshi Tomioka (University of Delaware)
(Non)-Exhaustivity of "Only"
Friday, April 10 | 4:30pm | Boylston 104

ECO5

Saturday, April 11 | Boylston 335

Harvard will host this year's ECO-5, a graduate student conference bringing together presenters from Harvard, MIT, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Maryland. The program can be found here.

Harvard at Indogermanistisches Forschungskolloquium

Julia Sturm presented her work titled "Preverb + Verb Compounds in the Rg Veda: A Construction-Based Approach" at Erstes Indogermanistisches Forschungskolloquium (First Indo-European Research Colloquium), which took place at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, March 26-27.

Beguš's paper appears in Zeitschrift für Slawistik

Congratulations to third year Gašper Beguš, whose article titled "The Circumflex Advancement in Prekmurje Slovenian and Bednja Kajkavian" has appeared in Zeitschrift für Slawistik 60(1).