Issue 2014/02/21

Phonology Workshop Meeting Today (2/21) at Noon: Kiparsky

There will be a presentation at today’s (2/21) P-Interest meeting from Paul Kiparsky at noon in the Greenberg Room. His abstract is given below.

Word accentuation from IE to Baltic and Slavic

Abstract: I present the compositional theory of Indo-European word accent developed in Kiparsky 2010 and extend it to the very different-looking Balto-Slavic accentual systems. I show that the latter resulted from two basic accentual innovations: (i) the loss of presuffixal accent, and (ii) the widening of the Basic Accentual Principle’s domain to clitic groups. These changes account for the extension of mobility to vocalic stems, as well as for phenomena that have been atomistically treated by positing a number of distinct innovations, such as Vasilev-Dolobko’s Law, Šaxmatov’s Law, Meillet’s Law, and “Lithuanian Metatony”. In fact, the latter two, under this analysis, do not correspond to any historical changes at all.

Social & Farewell to John Rawlings, today (2/21) at 4PM

Come to the department lounge today at 4PM (promptly) for a social special farewell to John Rawlings, our longtime bibliographer at Green Library.

As John Rickford notes, John Rawlings has ‘been working heroically on behalf of linguistics–to ensure that we have the books and periodicals and other library resources we need–for over thirty years.  I particularly appreciate him for the efforts he made to expand our holdings on pidgins and creoles into one of the best in the US and the world.  He put together an amazing public exhibition of Green’s materials in this area one year. …

‘Finally, John Rawlings is also the author of The Stanford Alpine Club, a 2001 CSLI (!) book tracing the history of “one of America’s most prominent college mountaineering groups.”  Amazon describes it as follows: “The Stanford Alpine Club is a large format (9.25 x 12.25 inches) photographic history of the club, following the club through its inception, its first trips to Yosemite, its most daring moments in the Himalayas, and its later days of scaling campus buildings; this fascinating volume presents portfolios of photographs by SAC members Tom Frost, Leigh Ortenburger, and Henry Kendall, an insightful text by John Rawlings, reflections and snapshots from former members, lyrics from the SAC songbook, and other tidbits from this history of this amazing association.”‘

As a bonus, the social will give you a chance to meet John’s replacement, Jacqueline Hettel, who is a sociolinguist.

Manfred Krifka at Construction of Meaning Workshop: Monday 2/24, 4PM

The Stanford Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop: “The Construction of Meaning” will be hosting the following talk from Manfred Krifka (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) this Monday, February 24 at 4PM in the Greenberg Room. He will present the paper “Speech Acts as Semantic Objects”.

Dan Jurafsky named new Department chair

Dan Jurafsky has been appointed the next Chair of Linguistics. Congratulations, Dan!

Linguist List annual fund drive and Grad School Challenge underway!

The Linguist List is beginning its annual fund drive, including the Grad School Challenge, which Stanford has won at various times. The Linguist List is an invaluable resource to our community.

Click here to see a list of schools and how much they’ve donated. Don’t wait, donate now – let’s get to the top!

Douglas Hofstadter talk, Thursday March 6 at 5PM

The Symbolic Systems Distinguished Speaker series is hosting a talk by Stanford alum Dr. Douglas Hofstadter, who will speak on Thursday, March 6 from 5:00-6:30 PM in Annenberg Auditorium.

Dr. Hofstadter is the College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Indiana University. Dr. Hofstadter has a B.S. in Mathematics with distinction from Stanford University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Oregon. He is the author of Pulitzer Prize winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach.

Sumner Lab Work Featured in Garden of the Mind Article

Work by Meghan Sumner and Reiko Katakoa on the interaction between talker variation and semantic encoding was recently featured in an online cognitive science blog, Garden of the Mind. You can find the entry here.

Media coverage of Asya Pereltsvaig’s work

Data from Asya Pereltsvaig’s work on the linguistic diversity of the Caucasus region was recently used in a New York Times article on the interaction between the conflict in Ukraine and the Sochi Olympics.

Asya’s perspective on the heritage of last names throughout the United States, especially with regards to African Americans and Jewish Americans, was given recently in a Washington Post article on the most popular last names.

Asya’s data on endangered languages in the Caucasus region of Russia was used as part of a Boston Globe feature on the diversity represented in the Sochi Olympics.