Cati Fortin was named as a 2008 recipient of the highly competitive Distinguished Dissertation Award.

Cati’s dissertation, “Indonesian sluicing and verb phrase ellipsis: Description and explanation in a minimalist framework” investigates two elliptical phenomena, sluicing and verb phrase ellipsis (VPE), in Indonesian. The dissertation is equally concerned with description and formal analysis, and provides the first in-depth description and generative analysis of both Indonesian sluicing and VPE.

Cati is currently a visiting assistant professor in syntax at Carleton College.

Congratulations. Cati!!

Kate Arcangeli (Linguistics, 2008) presented a paper at the 2nd annual Cornell Linguistics Undergraduate Colloquium held March 8-9.   Her talk was titled, “The Syntax of ne-Cliticization in Italian.”

The College of Literature, Science and the Arts has recommended that Acrisio Pires be promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.

This is an outstanding accomplishment and wonderful news.

Congratulations, Acrisio!!

Susan Lin was honored with the Rackham Graduate School’s Outstanding GSI Award for 2007-08.

Congratulations Susan!!

Sally Thomason gave a plenary talk at the annual meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft. The conference was held in Bamberg from Feb. 27-29.

Abstract

Does Language Contact Simplify Grammars?

In recent years the old notion that extensive language contact
tends to lead to overall simplification of linguistic structure has
attracted a new set of adherents, among them Peter Trudgill and John
McWhorter. English is frequently cited as an example of a language
that has undergone dramatic simplification as a result of language
contact, both in the transition from Old English to Middle English
and in the emergence of a variety of Englishes all over the world.
In this paper I will argue that extensive language contact does not
lead predictably to overall grammatical simplification, and that
English does not present a historical picture of simplification,
whether due to language contact or to internally-motivated change.
My main examples will come from contact situations that primarily
involve hunter-gatherer communities whose languages have not been
standardized, although they often display considerable dialectal
variation. I have too little information to assess Trudgill’s claim
that `low-contact languages’ tend to remain complex, but I will argue
against his claim that `high-contact languages’ tend to become less
complex. (more…)