The New Sesquipedalian

• Last speaker of ancient language of Bo dies in India [Thanks Paul!]
• A Linguist Who Worked on ‘Avatar’ Knows His Na’vi [Thanks Kathryn!]

Stanford Linguistics is pleased to announce the following colloquium:

Stefan Th. Gries
University of California, Santa Barbara

Data-driven approaches in corpus linguistics: The role of granularity for register variation, temporal stages, and temporal change

Friday, January 15, 3:30 pm, Margaret Jacks 126

Reception immediately afterwards in the department lounge.

Thanks Arto!

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UCSC is hosting a Workshop on Polarity Particles tomorrow (Saturday, Jan 16), in the Cowell College Conference Room, 9:30 am – 5:30 pm.

Thanks Cleo!

Keith Johnson (UC Berkeley Linguistics) will speak in the Cognition and Language Workshop on Monday, January 25, 4:15 pm, in Cordura Hall 100. His title is ‘Resolving the motor theory controversy’. Abstract and additional info.

Next week’s post-colloq party will take place, immediately post-colloq, in the new Linguistics Lab.

Thanks Matt!

Scott Grimm co-organized a panel on scholarly publishing at the LSA Annual Meeting in Baltimore last weekend. The panelists were Greg Carlson, Sandy Chung, Monica Macaulay, and Chris Potts. There was an excellent turn-out, and Chris reports that the discussion was really productive. Neal Whitman wrote up a detailed report, and Monica found this video concerning one scholar’s initial reaction to some referee reports:

Thanks Scott, Monica, and Neal!

The 2010 Stanford Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop is scheduled to take place on Friday, March 12:

The Construction of Meaning Workshop is pleased to sponsor the 11th Annual Stanford Semantics Fest. The Sem Fest is intended to promote discussion and collaboration among all those in the Stanford community interested in the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, as well as their interface with other modules of grammar. We encourage contributions from all those who are participants in the Construction of Meaning Workshop or members of the Stanford University community who share these interests.

Abstracts are invited for 20 minute talks (plus 10 minutes discussion) on any topic touching on semantics and pragmatics in natural language. All abstracts should be submitted as plain text or pdf in 12 point font and be no more than 1 page long; a second page may include references. Abstracts are due by 5:00 pm on Friday, February 5. All submissions should be emailed to

. Notification of acceptance will be made about two weeks later.

Organizing Committee: Eric Acton, Alex Djalali, Sven Lauer, Beth Levin, and Chris Potts

Thanks Beth!

The Penn Institute for Research in Cognitive Science (IRCS) is accepting applications for its 12th Undergraduate Summer Workshop, which runs from June 6-19, 2010. The Workshop is open to anyone who is currently enrolled as an undergraduate at any university or college. Applications are due March 1. Check out the website for more information, including FAQs.