Erica Beck is interested in how language acquisition affects language contact outcomes, specifically in figuring out to what extent adult input vs intergenerational innovation determines what forms are found in mixed languages.

Tim Chou is interested in syntax, and its interface with semantics and pragmatics.

Donggeul Lee is interested in generative systax ,expecially the minimalist framework and language acquisition.

Stephen Tyndall is a first-year student coming from an MA in Indo-European Linguistics at the University of Georgia. He’s interested in Indo-European historical linguistics and philology and articulatory and computational approaches to the study of language history.

WALS (World Atlas of Linguistic Structures) is now online.  WALS  is a useful teaching and research tool based on coding data points from a couple hundred languages, some of which were documented by Jeff Heath.

There is an interactive tool available separately from http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/research/tool.php

Bill Baxter presented a keynote address at the 41st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, 18-21 Sept, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The talk was titled  “”Old Chinese: the Baxter-Sagart Reconstruction, Version 0.98″

Tutunjian, D & Boland, J. E. (2008). Do we need a distinction between arguments and adjuncts? Evidence from psycholinguistic studies of comprehension. Language and Linguistic Compass.

Abstract
Within both psycholinguistic theories of parsing and formal theories of syntax, a distinction between arguments and adjuncts is central to some theories, while minimized or denied by others. Even for theories that deem the argument/adjunct distinction important, the exact nature of the distinction has been difficult
to characterize. In this article, we review the psycholinguistic evidence for an argument/adjunct distinction, discuss how argument status can best be defined in the light of such evidence, and consider the implications for how grammatical knowledge is represented and accessed in the human mind.

Xinting Zhang’s Qualifying Research Paper, “Lexical Decision in Standard Chinese: Factors Influencing Speed and Accuracy,” has been approved.  Xingting now advances to Doctoral candidacy.

Congratulations, Xinting!

Terry Szymanski’s Qualifying Research Paper has been approved.  The paper, “Computational Approaches to Sound Change and Reconstruction, ” uses a probabilistic model of language change and diversification as the basis for a reconstruction algorithm. Given cognate word-lists from two or more cognate word lists, the goal of the algorithm is to reconstruct the form of the words in the proto-language, derive the necessary sound changes, and determine the most likely topology for linguistic phylogeny. Experiments show that the algorithm is successful on small, simulated data sets, and should be extensible for application to real language data.

Terry now advances to Doctoral candidacy.  Congratulations, Terry!

Hsieh, Y., Boland, J. E. ,  Zhang, Y., & Yan, M. 2008. Limited syntactic parallelism in Chinese ambiguity resolution.  Journal of Language and Cognitive Processes

Abstract
Using the stop-making-sense paradigm (Boland, Tanenhaus, Garnsey, & Carlsen, 1995) and eye-tracking during reading, we examined the processing of the Chinese Verb NP1 de NP2 construction, which is temporarily ambiguous between a complement clause (CC) analysis and a relative clause (RC) analysis. Resolving the ambiguity as the more complex, less preferred CC was costly under some conditions but not under others. We took this as evidence for a limited parallel processor, such as Tabor and Hutchins’ (2004) SOPARSE, that maintains multiple syntactic analyses across several words of a sentence when the structures are each supported by the available constraints.

Carmel O’Shannessy has published  ”Children’s production of their heritage language and a new mixed language” In Simpson, Jane and Gillian Wigglesworth (eds) Children’s Language and Multilingualism. London / New York: Continuum International Press      

Abstract:
Children in Lajamanu community grow up in a complex linguistic environment in which people around them talk in several languages and code-switch between them. They learn two Indigenous languages in the home – Light Warlpiri, which they use on a daily basis from when they fi rst start to talk, and Warlpiri, which they begin to produce between the ages of 4 and 6 years. Light Warlpiri and Warlpiri share a lot of vocabulary and grammatical patterns. They differ mainly in the use of verb systems, and in the distribution of certain types of suffixes on nouns. The similarities and differences in the two languages lead to intriguing
questions about how the children in the community deal with such complex and variable input. In this paper I discuss the children’s development in speaking each language, by examining their production of a set of stories told in both Light Warlpiri and Warlpiri. Analysis shows that they can identify and reproduce quite finely differentiated patterns within and between languages.