The New Sesquipedalian

Alum Kayla Carpenter (BA 2010), now at Berkeley, is making headlines! Her efforts to revive the Hupa language have attracted the attention of the press, and you can read all about it here. Way to go!

Looks like we missed some news items last week! First off, in addition to Aya Inamori and Cybelle Smith, Linguistics undergrad Rachel Cristy was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa this year! Sesquipedicongratulations!

Also, we forgot to mention that alum Ashwini Deo was also presenting at SALT.

Nostræ culpæ! However, you can help us avoid these oversights by sending us all the news you ever find out about any topic whatsoever! We’d be especially interested in what you’ll be up to this summer….

Adam Albright (MIT) will give a colloquium talk titled “Gradient complexity thresholds in phonology” TODAY, at 3:30 in the Greenberg room (460-126). His abstract is below.

Gradient complexity thresholds in phonology

A common insight is that phonological processes apply regardless of whether other processes may also apply elsewhere in the word. This generalization precludes patterns in which repairs are triggered ‘cumulatively’ by the simultaneous presence of several marked structures: e.g., a language that allows onset clusters ([klæp]) and coda clusters ([læps]), but not both simultaneously (*[klæps]). If they occurred, such patterns could manifest themselves in two ways: the language might simply lack doubly-marked morphemes like [klæps] (a static phonotactic effect), or it might actively avoid them through alternations: /læp/ pluralized as [læps] (simple onset, coda cluster) but /klæp/ pluralized as [klæpəz] (coda cluster avoided in presence of onset cluster).
Read the rest of this entry »

All are invited to the Department’s annual End-of-the-Year Party, to be held Friday, May 27 (today!) at 8:30 PM in Cordura Hall at CSLI.

Drinks and munchies will be provided, and so will live music: by the official rock band of the Stanford Linguistics Department:

DEAD TONGUES

This year’s musical incarnation includes faculty members Penny Eckert, Mike Frank, Dan Jurafsky, Ivan Sag and grad students Eric Acton, Naira Khan and Middy Tice, as well as two Berkeleyites: Linguistics faculty Terry Regier and CogSci postdoc Liz Bonawitz.

Hope to see you there!

You may have noticed the lack of Stephanie Shih around the department recently–turns out she’s been touring the UK, wowing audiences with the following talks:

Have you been traveling the world, giving cool talks? Are you going to be doing that over the summer? Let us know!

Tyler Schnoebelen will be presenting his work on the socio-semantics of the word ‘little’ at the SocioLunch next week (12:15pm on Wednesday 1 June). You’d be more than a little crazy to miss it!

Little nudges and shoves: power, positioning, confidence, and emotion

If you look at little in context, you’ll find three major affect-related functions. It can be used affectionately (what little toes you have!), insultingly (how’s your little project?), and as a hedge (can I have a little water?). Despite little toes and little kids,little’s collocates skew toward the negative. Why should it have the meanings it does or the negative skew? After all, the collocates of diminutive morphemes (e.g., -ino and –ito in Spanish and Italian) skew toward the positive.
Read the rest of this entry »

MENSA INVITATIONAL The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus : A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon : It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido : All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

On Thursday, June 2nd at 2pm, Asya Pereltsvaig will give a talk in the Greenberg Room, titled “On numberless and paucal numerals in Russian”. See you there!