Week of Apr 6

Bondarenko at UMass Amherst  

On Friday March 27, our faculty Tanya Bondarenko gave a colloquium talk at UMass Amherst titled 'In favor of Equality Semantics: an argument from Russian polarity subjunctives'. Congrats, Tanya! 

GSAS Indo-European & Historical Linguistics Workshop

We are excited to announce a talk in the GSAS Indo-European & Historical Linguistics Workshop next week:

Joseph Eska, Professor of Language Sciences in the Department of English at Virginia Tech, will present his work on Friday, April 10, at 5 PM in Boylston 335.

Speaker: Joseph Eska (Virginia Tech)

Time: Friday April 10 at 5 PM

Location: Boylston 335 (Linguistics department, third floor)

Title: Aspects of object agreement in Early Irish and related matters

Abstract: In Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 57 (2009/2010), I advance the argument that the so-called infixed and suffixed pronouns of Early Irish are not pronouns, but object agreement affixes. The response of those interested in Celtic and Indo-European diachronic linguistics has been deafeningly silent (with the exception of Aaron Griffith, who makes a passing remark to the same effect), and it is still entirely routine to find these morphemes labelled as pronouns. In this working paper, I will first take up phonological evidence that offers a proof (stronger in the case of the suffixes) that these morphemes are, indeed, object agreement affixes. I will then address the matter of the context(s) in which these morphemes are employed. Finally, I consider instances of object drop and its potential relationship to object agreement.

Additionally, we would like to bring another upcoming talk by Professor Eska to your attention. On Thursday, April 9, at 5 PM, he will give a talk in the Department of Celtic Languages & Literatures titled "The Birth and Development of Writing in the Ancient Celtic World,"  which will be held in Kates Room, Warren House. For more information, please see the event page by the Department of Celtic Languages & Literatures. 

LangCog

The next LangCog meeting of the semester will be Tuesday, April 7, from 5:30-7:00pm, in William James Hall, Room 1550 (different room from usual). The speaker is Hope Kean (MIT), 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: The Neural Architecture of Human Reasoning

Abstract: Humans possess a remarkable ability for abstract logical reasoning, such as drawing conclusions from premises and generalizations from examples. The neural basis of this reasoning remains poorly understood, particularly its relationship to language. We addressed this question using three complementary approaches: fMRI in healthy adults performing inductive and deductive reasoning tasks, behavioral testing in individuals with severe language impairment (aphasia), and precise neuroimaging in individuals with atypical brain anatomy. Our findings reveal a surprising neural architecture for logical thought. First, we identify a network of anterior frontal brain regions specialized for abstract formal reasoning that robustly dissociates from the language network, the domain-general Multiple Demand network, and other high-level cognitive systems. Second, we demonstrate that the language network is not engaged during logical reasoning, and individuals with profound aphasia perform intact logical reasoning tasks, providing further evidence that linguistic representations are neither utilized nor required for inductive or deductive reasoning. Finally, we show that this functional specificity is preserved even in individuals with severe cortical deformation from brain cysts, including the logic network. This suggests that functional modularity is a fundamental organizing principle of neural architecture, robust even to extreme anatomical variation.