Spell-Out Blog
Week of October 5
PhonLab Visiting Speaker On Friday, October 9 at 10:30am-12:00pm , Christian DiCanio (University at Buffalo) will present at PhonLab on "Lenition flipped on its head: the phonetics of medial strengthening in Mixtecan languages" ( see abstract ). After the...
Week of September 28
Georgian Fieldwork at MIT's Fox Fest On Saturday, Prof. Tanya Bondarenko and alum of the department Richard Luo (PhD, Yale) gave a talk called "Interpreting Clausal Movement" at Fox Fest, a syntax workshop at MIT in honor of Danny Fox. Their research...
Week of September 21
Colloquium with Ryan Bochnak Semanticist and fieldwork researcher Ryan Bochnak of the University of British Columbia joins us this week for our first Linguistics Department Colloquium of the semester. The talk will be held on Friday, September 25 at 12:00...
Week of September 14
Fall Reception Reminder that our Fall Reception will be held on Tuesday, September 15 from 4:00-6:00pm in the Boylston 3rd floor lounge. Come mix and mingle with our faculty, graduate students, undergraduate concentrators, and potential future...
Week of September 8
Summer Research With the WOLF Lab In June, members of Dr. Tanya Bondarenko’s WOLF Lab traveled to the Alabama-Coushatta Reservation in East Texas to conduct fieldwork on the Muskogean language Alabama. Dr. Bondarenko, Ava Silva ('27), Jackson Herrera ('27...
Week of August 31
Welcome new members of the department! This fall, the Linguistics Department welcomes two first-year graduate students and two new faculty lecturers. If you see them around Boylston, be sure to say hello! Neng Wan - Graduate Student (semantics, pragmatics...
Week of August 10
We're pleased to announce the Ph.D. defenses of: Jack Rabinovitch "The Speech Report: A Cross-Linguistic Investigation into the Compositional Semantics of Reported Speech" Tuesday, August 11, 2026 1:00-3:30pm 1st Floor Boylston Hall - Fong Auditorium...
Week of Apr 27
Hande Sevgi Thesis Defence Hande Sevgi is defending her thesis ' Manner Modification Across Modalities: Insights from Gesture, Sign, and Spoken Language' this Thursday, April 30 at 10:00–12:30 in Boylston 105. Refreshments immediately following the...
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...
Week of Apr 13
19th Annual Joshua and Verona Taylor Whatmough Lecture The Department of Linguistics is proud to present the 19th Annual Joshua and Verona Taylor Whatmough Lecture. This year, our speaker is Diane Lillo-Martin, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of...
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...
Week of Mar 30
4th Annual Graduate Student Workshop The Department of Linguistics hosted its 4th Annual Graduate Student Workshop last Friday, March 27, 2026. The workshop brought together graduate students and faculties for a day of short talks, discussion, and...