Robin Queen, along with Andrei Markovits, gave an invited lecture on their work concerning the involvement of women in canine rescue organizations.  The lecture was presented to the Fellows of the Human-Animal Interaction Symposium.

Marlyse Baptista, along with Viviane Deprez, gave an invited lecture at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique lab  on “Structures Formelles du Language”, Groupe de Recherche sur les Grammaires Creoles. June 16, 2008. Paris, France.

View the abstract.

Marlyse Baptista, along with Lisa Green and Tom Klinger, presented a keynote address at the Symposium on Louisiana Dialects and Cultures at Louisiana State University.

View the full program

Robin Queen gave a keynote address at the Indiana University Sociolinguistics Fest Workshop, entitled Language variation and social essentialism.  She explored the place of social and cognitive essentialism for understanding and explaining language variation, using data from a variety of sources, including the television sitcom, Ellen, and weblogs maintained in the voice of a family dog.

Andries Coetzee presented a keynote address at NAPhC  5 (The 5th North American Phonology Conference) at Concordia in Montreal.

Abstract

Many phonological processes apply variably. The likelihood of a variable process applying is determined by a complex interaction between both grammatical and extra-grammatical factors. Over the past decade, several formal models of phonological variation have been developed. These models are quite successful at accounting for the role that the grammatical factors play in phonological variation. However, they are purely grammatical and do not account for the potential influence of extra-grammatical factors on the application of variable processes. Extra-grammatical influences are often equated with performance factors, and if the goal of linguistics is to account for the competence of the language user, then these extra-grammatical factors fall outside the domain of linguistics.

In this paper, I argue for a broader understanding of linguistic competence, where it is taken to encompass all those factors that determine linguistic performance and that that are consciously or subconsciously under the control of the language user. This includes both grammatical and some extra-grammatical factors. A sufficient model of the linguistic competence of the language user therefore needs to incorporate both grammatical and extra-grammatical competence.

By reviewing the literature on English  t/d-deletion I demonstrate that this process is influenced by both grammatical and extra-grammatical factors, and that the language user has at least subconscious control over both of these. I then propose a formal model of the linguistic competence of the language user that integrates both of these components of linguistic competence in the framework of Harmonic Grammar.

Mike Marlo (now visiting assistant professor at UCLA) also presented a talk at the conference. The title of his talk was:  “Post-syntactic spell-out and post-syntactic phonology: evidence from Bantu”.

Miki Obata and Sam Epstein presented their talk, Deducing improper movement from phase based C-to-T phi transfer, at the 27th annual meeting of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, held at UCLA May 16-18.

Abstract

We seek to reveal and address empirical and theoretical consequences stemming from
Chomsky’s (2005:OP) C-to-T phi-feature inheritance (hereon CTI) analysis. We claim: [1] Simultaneousvattraction as a consequence of CTI “splits” the features on a wh-phrase: [Case]/[Phi] moves to Spec-T andv[Q] to Spec-C, [2] [1] makes it possible to rule out improper movement (IM) without appealing to the activity condition (see Nevins 2005 for arguments against activity and for a different approach to IM).

We argue that contra standard assumptions, IM is not a unified phenomenon but is
correctly classified into two distinct types: Case on a moving element is valued after A’-movement in (6) and before A’-movement in (7). We demonstrate that both types of IM are explanatorily excluded under the phase-based approach and it is especially the latter case that empirically supports the feature split system presented above. The derivation of (7) is shown in (8). When C and T each attract “who1″ simultaneously (→8b), the features on “who1″ are split: [Q] goes to Spec-C and [phi]/[Case] goes to Spec-T In the matrix clause (→8c), assuming PIC, only (the edge) “who3″ in the embedded Spec-C is visible to matrix C-T probing. Notice that “who3″ has only [Q], not [Phi] by virtue of feature split, so that “who3″ is not an appropriate (matching) goal for the probing matrix T precisely because “who3” lacks [phi]. In contrast, the matrix C can attract “who3″ but [uPhi] on matrix T is never valued, causing crash. This is a
direct result of the CTI, coupled with OP under which C and T separately attract different featural subsets, simultaneously from the ‘same’ launch site. The absence of [phi] on “who3″ makes it impossible for “who3″ to improperly move (“back”) into an A-position, (Spec-T). The other type of IM (6) is also excluded straightforwardly: when the derivation reaches the embedded CP in (6), the transferred TP includes unvalued [uCase] on “who1/2″ causing crash.

Carmel O’Shannessy gave a colloquium at the University of Indiana on Feb. 1 entitled, “Language contact and acquisition: A new mixed language in northern Australia.

Abstract:

A new mixed language, Light Warlpiri, has emerged in a remote community in northern Australia. It is spoken by children and young adults in the multilingual community of Lajamanu and has developed within the last 30 years. Light Warlpiri is a verb-noun mixed language, meaning that it cannot be traced to a sole parent language, and that its verbal and nominal components tend to come from different source languages. Most verbs and the verbal morphology are from Aboriginal English or Kriol (AE/Kriol), while most nominal morphology is from Lajamanu Warlpiri (the variety of Warlpiri spoken in Lajamanu community). Nouns are drawn from both types of source language. An innovative auxiliary system has developed which draws on, but is not the same as, the systems in the source languages. But the system for indicating grammatical functions draws directly on the typologically different source languages. Lajamanu Warlpiri uses case-marking in an ergative-absolutive system while AE/Kriol uses word order (SVO) in a nominative-accusative system. In Light Warlpiri these two systems meet and are in functional competition. The structure of Light Warlpiri, and code-switching patterns of older speakers in the community, provide empirical evidence that languages of this type can arise from alternational code-switching practices.The language ecology in the community is complex, and code-switching between languages is very common. The complex contact situation, in which there is also rapid change, raises the question of how much variation there is in how grammatical functions are indicated within each of the two main languages spoken, and how children deal with the mixed input they receive. Analyses show that adults and children who speak both Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri distribute ergative marking differently in each language - they use it more often in Lajamanu Warlpiri and less often in Light Warlpiri. Children produce more regular patterns of interaction between case-marking and word order than adults do, suggesting that they are active agents of language change.

Andries Coetzee presented a talk at NELS in Ottawa.

The title of the  talk was ”Lexical frequency and variation”. Andries proposed a model of how the mental lexicon interacts with phonological grammar. It has been known for a long time that variable phonological processes apply more frequently to words with a higher usage frequency. For, in stance, the shcwa in the second syllable of “memory” is more likely to delete than the schwa in the second

syllable of “mammary”, corresponding to the fact that “memory” is a much more frequent word that “mammary”.  Existing models of phonological variation do not allow a way in which these kinds of lexical properties can interact directly with the grammar.

NELS was heavily dominated by syntax talks, as it is always is. But there was also a semantics workshop on pronouns and binding with Irene Heim (MIT) as invited speaker, and a phonology workshop on “abtractness without innateness” with Bruce Hayes (UCLA) as invited speakers.

Li Yang has just returned from the 10th Conference of the Pacific Association for Computational Linguistics (PACLING 2007) in Melbourne, where he presented a paper titled Named Entity Recognition Using Syntactic/Semantic Information, co-authored with Steven Abney.

In their paper, Yang and Abney show that combining deep syntactic knowledge with machine learning methods significantly improves the performance on the task of named entity recognition.

Deep processing is the major theme of PACLING 2007.

Carmel O’Shannessey and Sally Thomason attended the “Variations et changements morphosyntaxiques en situation de contacts de langues” workshop in Paris, Sept. 20-25.

Carmel presented “The emergence of a new mixed language in Australia”

and as reported by an unbiased and anonymous observer, “…if the workshop attendees had voted on which data-rich paper had the clearest and most elegant presentation of data and analyses, Carmel’s would have won hands down.”

Sally presented “On internally- and externally-motivated morphosyntactic change in contact situations (and how to tell which is which)”