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Past Events

  • 2013 Nov 15

    Universals: Juergen Bohnemeyer

    4:30pm to 6:00pm

    Location: 

    Boylston 103

    The linguistic transmission of cognitive practices: reference frames in Mesoamerica

    Abstract: Ongoing research since the 1970s has shown that speech communities vary in the types of reference frames their members prefer for reference to small-scale space in discourse. Furthermore, the frame types used in cognitive tasks such as recall memory show similar variability, and a given population's linguistic preferences significantly predict that population's preferences in cognitive tasks (Pederson et al 1998; Levinson 2003; Majid et al 2004). Two interpretations...

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  • 2013 Nov 14

    Linguistics Happy Hour

    7:00pm

    Location: 

    John Harvard's, 33 Dunster Street, Cambridge, MA

    The first Happy Hour event of the year will take place at John Harvard's!

    Organized by HGSL.

  • 2013 Nov 07

    Universals: Paul de Lacy

    5:00pm to 6:30pm

    Location: 

    Boylston 303

    What counts as evidence for universals?

    Abstract: My talk is about Generative theories of the phonological module (PhM). I will identify some core requirements that such theories impose on evidence for the PhM, then discuss several cases where these evidential requirements are not met. I will then argue that these cases are fairly representative of work in phonological theory, with the consequence that an unknown (but presumably large) number of claims about PhM universals have an uncertain status.

    Some optional background reading:

    de Lacy, Paul (...

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  • 2013 Nov 06

    Universals: Norbert Corver (UiL-OTS, Utrecht university)

    5:15pm to 7:00pm

    Location: 

    TBA

    Small but Intense

    Abstract: "Ideation reigns supreme in language, […] volition and emotion come in as distinctly secondary factors." With these words, Edward Sapir (1921:217) claimed that language is primarily a tool for the expression of thought (ideas). The expression of affect is only secondary. This secondary role is reflected in the form of language: "[T]he emotional aspect of our psychic life is but meagerly expressed in the build of language;" (Sapir ibidem). Roman Jakobson (1960) acknowledges the supremacy of the expression of thought but emphasizes...

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