Week of Apr 20

Daria Bikina Thesis Defence

Daria Bikina is defending her thesis 'Fine-tuning (in)definiteness in the absence of articles: Experimental investigation of Russian' this Wednesday, April 22 at 2:00 pm – 4:30 pm in Sever 202. A hybrid option is available; please email dbikina@g.harvard.edu for the Zoom link. 

Hope to see lots of you there!

Whatmough Lecture by Diane Lillo-Martin  

The Nineteenth Annual Joshua and Verona Whatmough Lecture was held on Monday, 13 April 2026. The speaker this year was Diane Lillo-Martin (Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, University of Connecticut), who gave a talk titled ‘Sign Language Acquisition: A Linguistic Right’. The talk was very well attended, attracting students, faculty, and researchers from linguistics, psychology, and related fields in the Boston area.

In the lecture, Prof. Lillo-Martin reviewed evidence that sign languages such as ASL are acquired in the same ways as spoken languages when children have access to fluent input. She also discussed how most DHH children are raised by hearing parents, and how an approach that includes ASL and the deaf community alongside spoken language (bimodal bilingualism) supports a strong case for the linguistic right to sign.

Thank you so much, Diane, for giving such a wonderful lecture and for a thoughtful and engaging discussion. 

LangCog

The next LangCog meeting of the semester will be Tuesday, April 21, from 5:30-7:00pm, in William James Hall, Room 1050 (different room from usual). The speaker is Mélissa Berthet (University of Milan), and the title and abstract of the talk can be found below. You can find the schedule for the remainder of the semester on the LangCog website. Food will be provided, as always!

Title: Bonobo vocal communication and the evolution of compositionality

Abstract: Compositionality — the capacity to combine meaningful elements into larger structures whose meaning depends on the meanings of the parts and the way they are combined — is a hallmark of human language. In this talk, I will present new findings on the compositional capacities of wild bonobos. Specifically, by conducting a comprehensive investigation of meaning and adapting methods from linguistics, I will show that bonobo vocal communication extensively relies on compositionality. This suggests that the ability to construct complex meanings from smaller vocal units was already present in our ancestors at least 7 million years ago.