Sesquisalutations to Luc Baronian, who coedited a French linguistics festschrift for Yves Charles Morin that came out in January, including papers by R. Rhodes, T. Lodge, B. Laks, R. Kayne, J. Durand, M-H Côté, F. Gadet, and another half dozen linguists. Check it out here.

Don't forget the department meeting at 3:30 today, where there'll be an open discussion about recent visits and the ongoing faculty search...

Scott Grimm recently gave a paper on "Number Marking and Individuation: A View from Dagaare" at the February 7-8, 2009 University of Toronto mass/count workshop.

And at about the same time, Beth Levin was off at the University of Ghent (Belgium), where she presented a paper ``Where Do Verb Classes Come From?'' at the conference: Verb Typologies Revisited: A Cross-linguistic Reflection on Verbs and Verb Classes.

Given the recent success of the Sesquipedalian's pioneering coverage of Finnish humor, it has been brought to our attention by the AJC, the UJA, the RJC, the IDF, and various other organizations who apparently monitor closely the political content of this publication, that it behooves us to give equal time to this more traditional category of ethnic humor...

Sayings of the Jewish Buddha (aka: Our Favorite Zen Cohens)

• If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?
• Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?
• Drink tea and nourish life; with the first sip, joy; with the second sip, satisfaction; with the third sip, peace; with the fourth, a Danish.
• Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.
• Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems. What would you talk about?
• The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single Oy.
• There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?
• Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.
• The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not have expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.
• Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems. Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as a wooded glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.
• Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. (You might want to see a specialist.)
• The Torah says, Love your neighbor as yourself. The Buddha says, There is no self. So, maybe we're off the hook.

Jewish Tradition

During a service at an old synagogue in Eastern Europe, when the Shema prayer was said, half the congregants stood up and half remained sitting. The half that was seated started yelling at those standing to sit down, and the ones standing yelled at the ones sitting to stand up. The rabbi, learned as he was in the Law and commentaries, didn't know what to do. His congregation suggested that he consult a housebound 98 year old man who was one of the original founders of their temple. The rabbi hoped The elderly man would be able to tell him what the actual temple tradition was, so he went to the nursing home with a representative of each faction of the congregation. The one whose followers stood during Shema said to the old man, 'Is the tradition to stand during this prayer?' The old man answered, 'No, that is not the tradition.' The one whose followers sat said, 'Then the tradition is to sit during Shema!' The old man answered, 'No, that is not the tradition.' Then the rabbi said to the old man, 'But the congregants fight all the time, yelling at each other about whether they should sit or stand.' The old man interrupted, exclaiming, 'THAT is the tradition!'

For events farther in the future consult the Upcoming Events Page.

FRIDAY, 13 FEBRUARY

• Speech Lunch

  Discussion of:
  Martijn Goudbeek, Anne Cutler, Roel Smits
  Supervised and unsupervised learning of multidimensionally varying non-native speech categories. Speech Communication (2008)
  
  12:00pm, ExL Lab

• Department Meeting

  All students and faculty welcome
  3:30pm, MJH 126

• Special Valentine's Day Social

  5:00pm, the lounge

SATURDAY-MONDAY, 14-16 FEBRUARY

• Berkeley Linguistics Society

  all day, 371 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley

SATURDAY, 14 FEBRUARY

• Jean-Claude Risset birthday celebration with Mari Kimura

  A celebration of Jean-Claude Risset's 70th birthday. Performers: Jean-Claude Risset and violinist Mari Kimura. Works by Risset, Kimura, Bach and Nancarrow
  8:00pm, CCRMA Stage, The Knoll, Free Admission

MONDAY, 16 FEBRUARY

• President's Day

  No classes! Go to BLS! Hit the beach! :-)

TUESDAY, 17 FEBRUARY

• Semantics Workshop

  Edit Doron (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
  The Interaction of Adjectival Passive and Voice"
  10:30am, MJH 126

THURSDAY, 19 FEBRUARY

• Semantics Workshop

  Hedde Zeijlstra (University of Amsterdam)
  A Formal Approach to Understanding Redundancy
  10:30am, MJH 126

• Socio Reading Group/Sociolunch

  12:15 in the Chair's Office

• Symbolic Systems Forum

  Victor Kuperman and Hal Tily
  "How Communication Shapes Language Structure"
  4:15pm, 380-380C

• Stanford Psychology of Language Tea (SPLAT)

  Asha Smith (Psychology)
  -on adult language learning-
  5:30 (Tea and snacks at 5:15), MJH 126

FRIDAY, 20 FEBRUARY

• UCSC Linguistics Colloquium

  Michael Proctor (Yale)
  "Phonetic characterization of a problematic class: the liquids"
  3:30pm, Humanities One, Room 202, UCSC

• Department Social

  4:00pm, the lounge

MONDAY, 23 FEBRUARY

• Phonology Workshop

  Stephanie Shih, Jason Grafmiller, Richard Futrell, and Joan Bresnan
  "Rhythm's Role in Genitive and Dative Construction Choice in Spoken English"
  4:00pm, Chair's Office

Announcing an all day conference on March 7 at CSLI (Cordura 100):

Spatial Relations: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

List of speakers / titles:

• James Pustejovsky (Brandeis / Computer Science)
  Spatiotemporal Properties of Motion in Language
• Max J. Egenhofer (University of Maine / Spatial Information Science and Engineering)
  TBA
• Mark Gawron (San Diego State / Linguistics)
  Verbs and Axes
• Darko Sarenac (Colorado State / Philosophy)
  Is S4 Complete over the Coast of Britain?
• Herbert H. Clark (Stanford / Psychology) and Leila A. Takayama (NRC)
  Displaced Places in Communication
• Annie Zaenen, Daniel G. Bobrow, Cleo Condoravdi (PARC), and Elizabeth Coppock (CYC)
  Extended Paths
• Rusty Bobrow (BBN)
  TBA
• Beth Driver (NGA)
  TBA

UPCOMING EVENTS (always under construction)

LINGUISTIC DEPARTMENT EVENTS PAGE

Got broader interests? The New Sesquipedalian recommends reading, or even subscribing, to the CSLI Calendar, available HERE.

WHAT'S HAPPENING AT UC SANTA CRUZ?

WHAT'S GOING ON AT UC BERKELEY?

The Stanford Blood Center is reporting a shortage of types O+, O-, A-. For an appointment, visit http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call 650-723-7831. It only takes an hour of your time and you get free cookies. And the Blood Center recently got a new bloodmobile. Check it out HERE

Want to contribute information? Want to be a reporter? Want to see something appear here regularly? Want to be a regular columnist? Want to take over running the entire operation? Write directly to sesquip@gmail.com.