Linguistics News, Announcements, and Publications

Papers by Illinois linguists in Speech Prosody 2012

Peter Lasersohn — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:15:00 CST

Four papers authored or co-authored by University of Illinois linguists have been accepted to the conference 6th International Conference on Speech Prosody, to be held May 22–25, 2012, in Shanghai:

'Prosodic Similarity – Evidence from an Imitation Study', by Hansjörg Mixdorff, Jennifer Cole and Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel
'Modeling speaker variation in cues to prominence using the Bayesian information criterion', by Tim Mahrt, Jennifer Cole, Margaret Fleck, and Mark Hasegawa-Johnson
'Determining prominence and prosodic boundaries in Korean by non-expert rapid prosody transcription', by Hina (Hie-Jung) You
'Using Map Tasks to Investigate the Effect of Contrastive Focus on the Mandarin Alveolar-Retroflex Contrast', by Shawn Chang and Chilin Shih

Congratulations to all!

Sadler interview on UI website

Peter Lasersohn — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:15:00 CST

Prof. Randall Sadler was interviewed for the UI web feature "A Minute With...", on the controversy surrounding an Arizona legal case denying a city council candidate the right to run for office, based on insufficient fluency in English. Read the whole interview at http://illinois.edu/lb/article/72/59654.

Lu and Huei in new positions

Peter Lasersohn — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:30:00 CST

Congratulations to our recent Ph.D. graduates Chen-Huei Wu and Dora Lu, both of whom are now in faculty positions in Taiwan. Chen-Huei is at National Hsinchu University of Education, and Dora is at National Taipei University of Education.

Terkourafi receives joint EURO-XPRAG Project Award

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:00:00 CST

Jessica Soltys (Cambridge), Napoleon Katsos (Cambridge) and Marina Terkourafi (Illinois) have been awarded a European Science Foundation EURO-XPRAG award for the project "Why imply something when you could say it explicitly?". The project, which was one of only nine funded out of a total 29 submissions, is based on Terkourafi's critique of Steven Pinker's theory of the "strategic speaker" published in Journal of Pragmatics 43.

Marina Terkourafi awarded Hewlett International Conference Grant

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:00:00 CST

Professor Marina Terkourafi has been awarded a Hewlett International Conference Grant for "Experimental & Empirical Approaches to Politeness & Impoliteness", an inter-disciplinary conference taking place at our campus from August 29-31.

For more information, see the conference website here: http://www.liar3.illinois.edu/

...and a Twitter feed too

Peter Lasersohn — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:00:00 CST

The Department of Linguistics now has a Twitter feed, at https://twitter.com/#!/UIUCLinguistics. Like our Facebook page, this echos the News and Announcements feed and Calendar feed, both of which also display on the front page of our department website at http://www.linguistics.illinois.edu/.

Department Facebook Page

Peter Lasersohn — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:30:00 CST

The Department of Linguistics now has a Facebook page! Check it out at http://www.facebook.com/UIUCLinguistics.

Rusaw/Cole NSF Grant

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:45:00 CST

The Linguistics Program of the National Science Foundation is recommending funding for a dissertation improvement grant to Jennifer Cole and Erin Rusaw, to support their project "Modeling temporal coordination in speech production using an artificial central pattern generator neural network." Congratulations Erin and Jennifer!

Benmamoun to edit book series: Studies in Arabic Linguistics

Peter Lasersohn — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:30:00 CST

Prof. Elabbas Benmamoun will serve as co-editor (with Enam Al-Wer, University of Essex) of the new book series Studies in Arabic Linguistics, to be published by John Benjamins. Congratulations, Abbas!

This book series aims to publish original research in all fields of Arabic linguistics, including – but not limited to – theoretical linguistics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, typology, and language acquisition. Submissions from all current theoretical frameworks are welcome. Studies may deal with one or more varieties of Arabic, or Arabic in relation to or compared with other languages. Both monographs and thematic collections of research papers will be considered.
The series includes monographs and thematically coherent collective volumes, in English.

Terkourafi invited to join Editorial Board of the Journal of Pragmatics and of Lodz Papers in Pragmatics.

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 08:15:00 CST

More information:
Journal of Pragmatics: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-pragmatics/
Lodz Papers in Pragmatics: http://ia.uni.lodz.pl/pragmatics/news/lodz-papers-in-pragmatics-lpp-to-be-published-by-mouton-de-gruyter

Terkourafi, Marina (2012). "Politeness and pragmatics." In: Jaszczolt, Katarzyna & Allan, Keith (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 617-637.

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 08:00:00 CST

This chapter focuses on developments in im/politeness research within linguistic pragmatics with a view to identifying the main trends and directions for future research. By way of carving out an area of investigation that does justice to the recent expansion of the field, I begin by introducing two recent developments, namely
the distinction between first-order and second-order politeness (section 2), and the increasing attention paid to impoliteness/rudeness (section 3). These recent developments are also having an impact on how scholars are defining and applying to empirical data central theoretical notions of im/politeness research, to which I turn next. Section 4 deals with the notion of face, descended from sociology, while section 5 discusses how im/politeness may be accounted for using the notions of the speaker’s intentions, implicatures and perlocutionary effects, as these have developed within (post-)Gricean pragmatics. Finally, section 6 tackles the question of how im/polite language use relates to extra-linguistic context, and considers some proposed conceptualisations of extra-linguistic context within im/politeness studies. Section 7 concludes the chapter. The overall picture that emerges is that of a rich and dynamic, if also polyphonic and fluid in its boundaries, field, much like our experience of
the everyday enactment of im/politeness itself.

Terkourafi receives MGSA Innovative Initiatives award

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 08:00:00 CST

Professor Marina Terkourafi received an Innovative Initiatives award for the project "The Contemporary Piano IV: Impressions from Greece" by the Modern Greek Studies Association. The project, which consists of musical performances in Champaign and in Chicago, is organized as part of the Modern Greek Studies program.

http://www.moderngreek.illinois.edu/news/

Allen, Girju, and Hasegawa-Johnson in Daily Illini

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:00:00 CST

Professors Jolt Allen (ECE/Beckman), Roxana Girju(Linguistics/Beckman), and Mark Hasegawa-Johnson(ECE/Beckman) have been interviewed by Daily Illini for a new article which appeared on Jan. 16: "Tech predictions on the silver screen might soon becoming true in real life".

Shosted, Ryan, Christopher Carignan and Panying Rong. 2012. Managing the distinctiveness of phonemic nasal vowels: Articulatory evidence from Hindi. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 131 (1): 455-465.

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:00:00 CST

There is increasing evidence that fine articulatory adjustments are made by speakers to reinforce and sometimes counteract the acoustic consequences of nasality. However, it is difficult to attribute the acoustic changes in nasal vowel spectra to either oral cavity configuration or to velopharyngeal opening (VPO). This paper takes the position that it is possible to disambiguate the effects of VPO and oropharyngeal configuration on the acoustic output of the vocal tract by studying the position and movement of the tongue and lips during the production of oral and nasal vowels. This paper uses simultaneously collected articulatory, acoustic, and nasal airflow data during the production of all oral and phonemically nasal vowels in Hindi (four speakers) to understand the consequences of the movements of oral articulators on the spectra of nasal vowels. For Hindi nasal vowels, the tongue body is generally lowered for back vowels, fronted for low vowels, and raised for front vowels (with respect to their oral congeners). These movements are generally supported by accompanying changes in the vowel spectra. In Hindi, the lowering of back nasal vowels may have originally served to enhance the acoustic salience of nasality, but has since engendered a nasal vowel chain shift.

Girju nominated area chair for HLT-NAACL-2012

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:00:00 CST

Roxana Girju is area chair for the 2012 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics / Human Language Technologies, Montreal Canada.

Lasersohn, P. 2011. Mass Nouns and Plurals. In: von Heusinger, et al., eds., Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, DeGruyter, vol. 2, pp. 1131-1153.

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:00:00 CST

Abstract: Mass and plural expressions exhibit interesting similarities in distribution and interpretation, including cumulative reference, the ability to appear bare, and a parallel alternation between existential and generic readings. They also exhibit important differences in agreement, determiner choice, and in the types of quantification available. Major approaches to plural denotation make conflicting claims whether plurality involves reference to collective objects such as sets or mereological sums, or instead requires simultaneous saturation of an argument place by multiple individuals. Theories of mass denotation differ as to whether the count/mass distinction is a difference in discrete vs. continuous denotation, reference to objects vs. the material they are composed of, or reference to mereological sums vs. classes of individuals. Bare plurals and mass nouns sometimes denote “kinds”; there is disagreement whether they also have an indefinite reading. Several kinds of plural and mass quantification can be distinguished, depending on determiner choice, predicate modification, and the use of a classifier or measure phrase. Plural quantifiers may interact to give a “cumulative” reading, in which the quantifiers are scopally independent. Sentences containing plurals sometimes exhibit an ambiguity between collective and distributive readings; the number of readings and mechanisms for producing them is in dispute.

McGlashan graduates summa cum laude

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 12:00:00 CST

Congratulations to our December 2011 graduate Lovila McGlashan, who completed her B.A. in linguistics summa cum laude.

Ionin named Petit Scholar

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:30:00 CST

Tania Ionin has been designated the 2012-13 Helen Corley Petit Scholar in the College of LAS, which is an award given to a scholar coming up for promotion and tenure who possesses an extraordinary scholarly and teaching record. Congratulations, Tania!

Terkourafi and Ionin recommended for tenure

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:30:00 CST

Marina Terkourafi and Tania Ionin have both been recommended to the Provost for promotion with tenure. Congratulations, Marina and Tania!

Tania Ionion appointed to the Editorial Board of the journal "Bilingualism: Language and Cognition"

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 08:00:00 CST

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=BIL

Tania Ionin gives talk in Brazil

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 08:00:00 CST

Tania Ionin gave an invited talk in Brazil at the Third International Conference on Bare Nominals: Theory and Experiment. November 21-23, Rio de Janeiro. The talk was: Tania Ionin & Elaine Grolla, "Nominal interpretation by native and non-native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese."

Ryan Shosted has been appointed to the Editorial Board of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association.

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:00:00 CST

Davidson presents keynote lecture at the Japan Language Testing Association

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:00:00 CST

Prof. Fred Davidson presented the keynote lecture at the 15th annual meeting of the Japan Language Testing Association (JLTA) on October 29th, 2011, held at Momoyama Gakuin University in Osaka, Japan. The title of his talk was: "Test Specifications in University Entrance Examinations." He introduced a new concept in language test development: "releasability", which is the degree to which test blueprints (specifications) are shared outside of the secure test development team. This talk is forthcoming in article form in the JLTA Journal. He also conducted workshops on specification-based language test development at Kansai University (in Osaka) and at the East Shikoku Chapter of the Japan Association of Language Teachers (in Kochi).

Lasersohn, P. 2011. Context, relevant parts and (lack of) disagreement over taste. Philosophical Studies 156(3): 433-439

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Response to arguments given in Cappelen and Hawthorne's book Relativism and Monadic Truth against a relativist analysis of expressions of personal taste. doi: 10.1007/s11098-010-9625-x

Girju gives an invited talk as part of the 2011 Director's Seminar Series at Beckman

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Roxana Girju spoke at the Director's Seminar Series, Beckman Institute. The talk was entitled "Deep Semantics for Natural Language Reasoning: Going Social and Mobile".

Ryan Shosted speaks at GIPSA-lab in Grenoble

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 08:00:00 CDT

On October 19, Prof. Shosted gave an invited talk on the oro-pharyngeal production of vowel nasality in Hindi and Brazilian Portuguese at GIPSA-lab (Grenoble Images Parole Signal Automatique Laboratoire) in Grenoble, France.

Puri, V. 2011. The Influence of English on the History of Hindi Relative Clauses. Journal of Language Contact, VARIA IV 2011 , pp. 250-268(19).

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:00:00 CDT

The influence of Hindi on English has been well documented; however, little has been said about the influence of English on the structure of Hindi. In this paper I provide evidence that Hindi “embedded“ (i.e. post-nominal) relative clauses result from English influence. Hindi originally had Relative-Correlative (RC-CC) constructions that could adjoin to the left or the right of the main clause. Since evidence from early Hindi is limited, I draw on Awadhi and Braj Bhakha to provide greater time depth for the earlier history of Hindi. In addition I examine early 19 th century grammars and texts. None of these provide unambiguous evidence for embedded relative clauses. By contrast, late 19 th century and early 20 th century Hindi texts translated from English exhibit many instances of central embedded relative clauses (besides the old adjoined relativecorrelatives), thus supporting the argument that Hindi embedded relative clauses result from the influence of English. I argue that what may have helped in this developed is the occasional occurrence of potentially ambiguous structures in earlier Hindi, which could be reinterpreted as involving embedding, rather than a relative-correlative construction with deleted correlative pronoun.

Ryan Shosted delivers lecture in Portugal, forms collaboration in articulatory research

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:30:00 CDT

Prof. Shosted delivered an invited lecture on vowel nasality at the University of Aveiro, in Portugal, on October 11, 2011. In addition, he will visit the Universities of Aveiro and Coimbra for one week in order to give a classroom lecture on the acoustics of nasalization, participate in the collection of MRI speech data, and serve as a consultant on the ongoing articulatory synthesis project, "Heron II -- Evolução do Sistema de Síntese de Voz de Base Articulatória para o Português Europeu," funded by the Portuguese government's Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). http://uaonline.ua.pt/detail.asp?c=21932

Moon presentation at conference on Temporal Modal and Event Interpretation

Peter Lasersohn — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:30:00 CDT

Lori Moon presented a paper entitled "Detecting Entailing and Non-Entailing Uses of `Could' and `Would'"on June 17, 2011 at the Conference on Temporal Modal and Event Interpretation (TMEI), held at Universidade dos Acores, Sao Miguel, Portugal.

Moon to speak at AAAI

Peter Lasersohn — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:30:00 CDT

Lori Moon is scheduled to give a talk entitled "Modal verbs in the common ground: Discriminating among actual and non-actual uses of could and would for improved text interpretation" at the AAAI Fall Symposium, "Building Representations of Common Ground with Intelligent Agents" on November 5-7, 2011. The paper will also appear in the Technical Report from the AAAI Fall Symposium, published by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2011.

Carignan, Christopher, Ryan Shosted, Chilin Shih, and Panying Rong. 2011. Compensatory articulation in American English nasalized vowels. Journal of Phonetics 39: 668-682.

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Shosted, Ryan. 2011. An articulatory-aerodynamic approach to stop excrescence. Journal of Phonetics 39: 660-667.

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Lasersohn to speak in philosophy colloquium

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:30:00 CDT

Peter Lasersohn is scheduled to give a talk entitled "Non-World Indices and Assessment Sensitivity" in the UI Department of Philosophy colloquium series, Friday, October 21, 3:00-5:00 pm, in Gregory Hall 213.

Ionin to be invited speaker at FASL 21

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:30:00 CDT

Tania Ionin is scheduled to be an invited speaker at the 21st Conference on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics, to be held at Indiana University, May 10-11, 2012. Congratulations, Tania!

Moon to speak at SWAMP

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:30:00 CDT

Lori Moon will be presenting her paper "Inferencing in Complement Clauses with Could" at the Semantics Workshop of the American Midwest and Prairies, October 14. Congratulations, Lori!

Tania Ionin, Silvina Montrul, Ji-Hye Kim and Vadim Philippov. 2011. Genericity distinctions and the interpretation of determiners in second language acquisition. Language Acquisition, 18(4), 242-280.

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Abstract: English uses three types of generic NPs: bare plurals ( Lions are dangerous), definite singulars ( The lion is dangerous), and indefinite singulars ( A lion is dangerous). These three NP types are not interchangeable: definite singulars and bare plurals can have generic reference at the NP-level, while indefinite singulars are compatible only with sentence-level genericity. This study investigates whether L1-Russian and L1-Korean L2-English learners, whose article-less L1s do not morphologically encode the distinction between the two types of genericity, can distinguish between the different types of English generics. The results of a written acceptability judgment task with intermediate/advanced L2-learners showed that the learners exhibited sensitivity to the two types of genericity. They were target-like on their interpretation of bare plural and indefinite singular generics, but had not acquired the interpretation of definite singular generics. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Prof. Shosted delivers public lecture on Mayan linguistics

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 08:00:00 CDT

On September 30, Prof. Shosted joined representatives of Wuqu' Kawoq, Carle Physician Group, and Engineers without Borders at a public lecture on health, development, and language in Guatemala. Prof. Shosted gave a talk on Mayan linguistics and language documentation work with the Q'anjob'al community of Champaign County. For more information on Wuqu' Kawoq, see http://www.wuqukawoq.org/ and http://www.facebook.com/wuqu.kawoq.

Kate Kokhan's article accepted in Language Testing

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Kate Kokhan has had a solo-authored article accepted for publication in the journal Language Testing. Kate is a graduate of the MATESL program in Linguistics and is presently working toward a PhD, also in our department.

Language Testing is the premier refereed outlet for research and scholarship in the field of language assessment. Her article is based on her MATESL thesis, and it is entitled: "Investigating the possibility of using TOEFL scores for university ESL decision making: Placement trends and effect of time lag". The abstract of her paper appears below. This research is a significant and seminal contribution to work on entry and placement language testing in general, and it makes some important conclusions about the TOEFL, as well.

Abstract:

The English Placement Test (EPT) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is designed to provide an accurate placement (or exemption) of international students into the ESL writing and pronunciation classes. Over the last five years, UIUC has experienced an increase in number of international students taking the EPT. Because of the costs of the EPT, various stakeholders have suggested using TOEFL as a substitute placement tool. The purpose of this research is to find out whether TOEFL iBT can serve as a suitable pre-screening tool for placement of international students into the ESL writing courses at UIUC.

While there is a general statistically significant tendency that students with higher TOEFL iBT scores are placed into higher levels of ESL classes, there is no particular set of either total or section scores which can be used as a reliable criterion for dividing students into ESL classes without significant misplacement. Furthermore, the correlation between TOEFL iBT and the EPT shows a distinct pattern of time dependence: the correlation is stronger when the time gap between these tests is short but it dramatically decreases and even becomes slightly negative around Week 50; however, starting from the 50th week it increases. Some possible interpretations of the findings as well as recommendations for score users are discussed in this paper.

Position available: Assistant Professor in Second Language Acquisition

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:00:00 CDT

The Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position in Second Language Acquisition with specialization in psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, or cognitive neuroscience of language, at the rank of Assistant Professor. The candidate must possess demonstrated strength in theoretical and/or experimental linguistics. The candidate's record should provide clear evidence of a strong research program and an excellent research trajectory. The successful candidate should demonstrate a commitment to excellence in teaching, and will be expected to contribute to both undergraduate and graduate instruction. Research specialty in one of the languages offered by the Linguistics department or another department in the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics is a plus, as is experience in second and/or foreign language teaching. The PhD should be in hand prior to the target date of appointment, August 16, 2012. Salary is commensurate with the experience and qualifications of the candidate.

To apply, create your candidate profile through https://jobs.illinois.edu <https://jobs.illinois.edu/> and upload the following application materials through this system: letter of application, CV (including phone number and e-mail address), contact information for 3 references, up to 3 representative publications, statement of teaching and research interests, and teaching evaluations or other evidence of strength in teaching. Referees will be contacted electronically upon submission of the application. Only electronic applications submitted through https://jobs.illinois.edu <https://jobs.illinois.edu/> will be accepted.

For further information please contact: Professor Tania Ionin, C/O Marita Romine, SLCL-HR@illinois.edu. To ensure full consideration, all required materials must be received no later than December 1, 2011. Letters of reference must be received no later than December 8, 2011. The department highly recommends that complete applications be submitted prior to Dec. 1, to ensure that referees have enough time to submit their letters of recommendation.

The University of Illinois is an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity Employer and welcomes individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and ideas who embrace and value diversity and inclusivity (www.inclusiveillinois.illinois.edu <http://www.inclusiveillinois.illinois.edu/> ).

Bob McMurray, Jennifer Cole, & Cheyenne Munson. 2011. Features as an emergent product of perceptual parsing: Evidence from vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. In C.N. Clements and R. Ridouane (eds.), Where do Phonological Features Come From? Cognitive, Physical and Developmental Bases of Distinctive Speech Categories, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins, pp. 197-236.

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Speech perception must ultimately contrast between discrete units of meaning, words, which are minimally distinguished by phonological features. While traditional approaches argued that discreteness is imposed by mechanisms like categorical perception that discard within-category detail, recent research suggests that fine-grained detail is preserved throughout processing. We develop an alternative that argues that discreteness emerges from processes that parse overlapping sources of variance from the signal. These need not discard acoustic detail and may make it more useful to listeners. We develop a computational implementation (Computing Cues Relative to Expectations, C-CuRE) and test it on a corpus of vowel productions. It shows how C-CuRE reveals underlying vowel features despite contextual variance, and simultaneously uses the variance to better predict upcoming vowels.

Cole, J. and J.I. Hualde. 2011. "Underlying Representations." In van Oostendorp, Marc, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth Hume and Keren Rice (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Phonology. Blackwell Publishing, pp. 1-26.

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Jennifer Cole to speak on Prosody in Montreal

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Sept. 24, 2011. Jennifer Cole, Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel and Hansjörg Mixdorff. Are listeners sensitive to the phonological form of prosody or its phonetic encoding? 2nd Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Prosody, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Terkourafi, Marina. "The pragmatic variable: Toward a procedural interpretation." Language in Society 40: 4, 343-372.

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Terkourafi, Marina."The puzzle of indirect speech." Journal of Pragmatics 43, 2861-2865.

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Terkourafi, Marina. "Why direct speech is not a natural default: Rejoinder to Steven Pinker's Indirect Speech, Politeness, Deniability, and Relationship Negotiation". Journal of Pragmatics 43, 2869-2871.

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Shosted, Ryan. 2011. Towards a glottalic theory of Mayan. In H. Avelino (Ed.), New Perspectives in Mayan Linguistics (pp. 80-113). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar's Publishing.

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Hans Henrich Hock, editor. World of Linguistics

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Hans Henrich Hock is editor of the series World of Linguistics, published by de Gruyter Mouton.

http://www.degruyter.de/cont/imp/mouton/moutonMbwEn.cfm?rc=41883

The first volume in the series (The languages and linguistics of Europe) has just appeared in print.

The second volume (The indigenous languages of South America) will come out in November 2011.

Girju invited to participate in the selective NSF-sponsored workshop on extending WordNet, Washington D.C.

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 08:00:00 CDT

The two-day workshop will bring together a unique group of researchers from different but overlapping communities with a shared interest in the lexical database WordNet (Fellbaum 1998). The panel will provide input and suggestions about possible plans for the restructuring of WordNets adjective subset and its potential benefits for a wide range of applications. Specific methods, advantages, limits, and benefits for representing scalar adjectives in WordNet for Word Sense Disambiguation, Reading Textual Entailment and language pedagogy are some of the topics to be discussed.

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1139844

Jennifer Cole speaks in Japan

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Japan Phonology Forum, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, August 25, 2011: "Perceiving prosody while hearing the speaker: Abstraction and adaptation in prosody perception"

Girju to be invited speaker at SIG-11

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 08:00:00 CDT

Roxana Girju has been invited to be a keynote speaker at the Second International Workshop on Stochastic Image Grammars, to be held as part of the 13th International Conference on Computer Vision in Barcelona, Spain, November 12, 2011. Congratulations, Roxana!