# Week of November 14 November 14, 2022 ## Linguistics Circle Workshop [Elizabeth Coppock](https://ling.bu.edu/people/coppock/) (Boston University) Title: Towards a typology of ratio markers Abstract: Quantities can be added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided. Are there expressions of natural language that express the concept of division (or in other words, ratio, or quotient)? One obvious candidate is English “per”, as in “10,000 steps per day”. But does it really express the concept of ratio or is it a distributivity marker like adnominal “each”? In Part I of this talk I offer several arguments that it is truly a ratio marker and not a distributivity marker. In Part II, I argue that there are three distinct but related senses of “per”: a quotient function (which just takes two quantities and outputs the result of dividing one by the other), a dimension quotient function (which takes a dimension noun like “cost" and outputs a new one), and a quotient operator (which can take scope over a clause). The question then arises what the typology of ratio markers is, and in particular whether there are ratio markers that lexicalize only a subset of these senses. In Part III, I discuss some progress on this issue, drawing primarily on corpus data from languages represented in the proceedings of the European Parliament (where budgets and fairness are hot topics). Looking forward, I suggest a methodology—in progress—for deciding for any given item whether it lexicalizes the concept of ratio. Friday November 18| 12-1:30PM| Sever 202 ## LangCog Panel discussion on computational language models with Ellie Pavlick (Brown), Anna Rumshisky (UMass Lowell) and Josh Tenenbaum (MIT) Tuesday November 15| 5:30-7:00PM| William James Hall Room #105 ## Awards for Teaching Excellence The following members of Harvard Linguistics were awarded by the [Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning](http://bokcenter.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do) for excellence in teaching. Congratulations everyone! Spring 2022 TFs/TA- Certificate of distinction in teaching **Emily Glenn Smith**, Teaching Assistant for Ling 90 Advance ASL **Deniz Satik**, TF for Ling 102 **Hande Sevgi**, TF for Ling 83 [https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/files/shadowbok/files/spring\_2022\_award\_list\_-\_web\_-\_distinction\_by\_name.pdf](https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/files/shadowbok/files/spring_2022_award_list_-_web_-_distinction_by_name.pdf) Lecturers- Certifcate of teaching excellence **Yağmur Sağ-Parvardeh**, Lecturer for Ling 207r **Adam Singerman**, Lecturer for Ling 83 [https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/files/shadowbok/files/spring\_2022\_award\_list\_-\_web\_-\_excellence\_by\_course.pdf](https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/files/shadowbok/files/spring_2022_award_list_-_web_-_excellence_by_course.pdf) Fall 2021 TFs- Certificate of distinction in teaching **Wei Fang Hsieh**, TF for Ling 105 **Deniz Satik**, TF for Ling 98a **Hande Sevgi**, TF for Ling 104 **Tamisha Tan**, TF for Ling 108 [https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/files/shadowbok/files/fall\_2021\_distinction\_by\_course.pdf](https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/files/shadowbok/files/fall_2021_distinction_by_course.pdf) Lecturer and Preceptor- Certifcate of teaching excellence **Andrew Bottoms**, Preceptor, Ling 73 **Adam Singerman**, Lecturer, Ling 108 [https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/files/shadowbok/files/fall\_2021\_excellence\_by\_course.pdf](https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/files/shadowbok/files/fall_2021_excellence_by_course.pdf) ## Talks by Franich Katie Franich recently presented talks at the [CUNY Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences Colloquium ](https://www.gc.cuny.edu/sites/default/files/2022-09/Colloquium%20Dates%20Fall%202022.pdf)(November 2) and [Rutgers Phonology and Phonetics Research Group](https://sites.rutgers.edu/lgsa/reading-groups/phonx/) (November 4) titled Using Music and Movement as Windows into Prosodic Structure, as well as a talk at the [Brown LingLangLunch](https://www.brown.edu/academics/cognitive-linguistic-psychological-sciences/ling-lang-lunch) series titled Cross-Language and Language-Specific Patterns in the Relationship Between Coordination, Phonetic Enhancement, and Prosodic Prominence. ## Harvard at SNEWS The [Southern New England Workshop in Semantics ](https://snewsling.wordpress.com)(SNEWS) was hosted by Yale University on November 12. The following members of Harvard Linguistics presented their work: Ankana Saha -The puzzle of kind reference in Bangla Yuhan Zhang- The puzzle of de re acceptability for definite noun phrases Natasha Thalluri- Effects of information structure on word order in Hindi The Southern New England Workshop in Semantics (SNEWS) is an annual graduate student conference that brings together presenters from six universities: Harvard, MIT, Brown, Yale, University of Massachusetts at Amherst and University of Connecticut. SNEWS is a great chance for graduate students to present their work and receive feedback in an informal setting. The participating universities take turns hosting the conference, and next year SNEWS (2024) will be hosted by Harvard! ## Satik in Biolinguistics Deniz Satik's paper "The Strong Minimalist Thesis is too strong: syntax is more than just Merge" was accepted to Biolinguistics. It is available for [quick access](https://bioling.psychopen.eu/index.php/bioling/aam). 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