Author: Adrian Stegovec

UConn Linguists at TISLR

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The 14th conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR14), which is taking place in Osaka, Japan on 27th-30th September 2022. The UConn linguistics community will be well represented at the conference with a keynote address by:

  • Marie Coppola. How interacting minds make language: The creative forces behind homesign, sign languages, and all human communication

… talks by:

  • Madeline Quam (UConn Psychology), Diane Brentari and Marie Coppola. Lexical conventionalization requires a community of primary users, communicative interactions are not enough
  • Jenny Lu, Diane Lillo-Martin, Diane Brentari and Susan Goldin-Meadow. Not all points are the same from a child’s eyes
  • Matthew Hall (post-doc 2013-17, now at UMass Dartmouth), Taye Hallock, Stephanie De Anda, Bobbie Jo Kite and Julie Mitchiner. “Not good enough”, or just “not enough”? Quality and quantity of signed input in DHH children from hearing families
  • Kaj Kraus, Shengyun Gu, Diane Lillo-Martin and Deborah Chen Pichler (PhD 2001, now at Gallaudet University). L2 Signer Accent: Phonological Development in ASL Learners

… and posters by:

  • Elena Koulidobrova (PhD 2012, now at Central Connecticut State University) and Deborah Chen Pichler. In the beginning there was… Initial communicative systems and language deprivation through the lens of Crip Linguistics
  • Shengyun Gu. What a combined method reveals: H2 spread in Shanghai Sign Language
  • Kadir Gökgöz (post-doc 2014-16, now at Boğaziçi University). Production of Complex Motion Events and Age of Acquisition Effects in Turkish Sign Language (TİD)
  • Kathryn Davidson (post-doc 2011-2013, now at Harvard University), Annemarie Kocab and Dorothy Ahn. Embracing optionality: pragmatic constraints on loci
  • Shengyun Gu. Weak hand classifier verbs in Shanghai Sign Language: a typology of person agreement

Yixuan Yan (Pepper) | New Student

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Hi, my name is Yixuan Yan (Pepper), I was born in northern mainland China. Basically I’m interested in formal semantics and pragmatics, and the development and processing of them as well. Before coming to UConn, I was a research assistant doing language acquisition and experimental linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). In addition to linguistics, I have knowledge of movies, Japanese anime and TV series; I enjoy hiking and badminton, yet more of the time I prefer to sleep. (The selfie was taken at my previous EEG Lab in CUHK.)

Shangyan Pan | New Student

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I am Shangyan Pan from Xuzhou, China. I graduated from Bucknell University with a B.A and honors in Linguistics in 2022. I also received minors in Math (Statistics) and Econ. My primary research interests are syntax and semantics. I also got really interested in learning Russian over the past year. In my free time, I love singing, going to Broadway shows and all things musical theater.
I look forward to learning and growing at UConn in the next few years!

Hanyu Liu | New Student

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My name is Liu Hanyu (lit., cold rain). I come from a town where, in many winters, the west wind brings copious water vapor from the Bay of Bengal, drenching the city with perpetual precipitation.

I was at Fudan University, the University of Western Australia (exchange) and UCL before coming to Storrs. What lured me into linguistics at an early age was historical phonology, and I’ve enjoyed the collateral games along the way.

For hedonism, I binge-watch TV shows, stream POV drives, and daydream living in some fiction. Geography is always important in my story-telling. I try to learn more, so I can use my imagination more freely.

Thanos Iliadis | New Student

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My name is Thanos Iliadis and I was born in Greece. I completed my undergraduate studies in Philology with a specialization in Linguistics at the University of Athens in 2018. In 2021 I received a master’s degree in Linguistics from UCL and currently I am a first-year graduate assistant at UConn’s Linguistics department. My research interests lie in syntactic theory, as well as in the syntax-phonology and syntax-semantics interfaces, within the framework of generative linguistics and the Minimalist Program.

Sharmin Ahmadi | New Student

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My name is Sharmin Ahmadi; I’m from a beautiful city named Sanandaj, a city in Iran. I did my BA in English Language and Linguistics from the University of Kurdistan. Before starting the next level of my education, I happened to hear and read about Linguistics. Starting to read linguistics books in its various areas, I began to look at languages, specifically my own language (Kurdish), from a different angle. My mind started to be immersed with a lot of questions and puzzles, ending in my passion for this major. That’s why I have an MA in General Linguistics from the University of Tehran, where I figured out that the area which I’m most curious about and interested in is Syntax. Among the questions I had in mind, I chose to solve the question and puzzle I encountered regarding what has been examined under the topics of three-place predicates, ditransitives, and double-object constructions.

Following my passion and interests, I am doing my Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Connecticut now.

Besides my academic life, I do enjoy shopping, walking, mountain climbing, spending time with my family and friends, watching films … 🙂

UConn Linguistics at GALA

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The 15th Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition conference (GALA 15), held on 22–24 September 2022 in Frankfurt, Germany. UConn linguistics will be represented at the conference by the following presentations:

  • Evan Zysman and William Snyder. A Parametric Connection between VP Ellipsis and Yes/No Questions
  • Kangzheng Gao. Applying Constraint Demotion algorithm to parameter-setting
  • Shuyan Wang (PhD 2022, now at Rutgers University). Processing limits can delay children’s computation of scalar implicatures (poster)
  • Karina Bertolino (PhD 2020, now at University of São Paulo). Spontaneous production of generic null subjects in a partial null subject language (poster)

Gu, Pichler & Lillo-Martin | Frontiers in Psychology

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The article “Phonological development in American Sign Language-signing children: Insights from pseudosign repetition tasks” by Shengyun Gu, Deborah Chen Pichler (PhD 2001, now at Gallaudet University), L. Viola Kozak and Diane Lillo-Martin has just been published online in Frontiers in Psychology. Congratulations!

The full article can be accessed here.

Abstract: In this study, we conducted a pseudosign (nonce sign) repetition task with 22 children (mean age: 6;04) acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) as a first language (L1) from deaf parents. Thirty-nine pseudosigns with varying complexity were developed and organized into eight categories depending on number of hands, number of simultaneous movement types, and number of movement sequences. Pseudosigns also varied in handshape complexity. The children’s performance on the ASL pseudosign task improved with age, displaying relatively accurate (re)production of location and orientation, but much less accurate handshape and movement, a finding in line with real sign productions for both L1 and L2 signers. Handshapes with higher complexity were correlated with lower accuracy in the handshape parameter. We found main effects of sequential and simultaneous movement combinations on overall performance. Items with no movement sequence were produced with higher overall accuracy than those with a movement sequence. Items with two simultaneous movement types or a single movement type were produced with higher overall accuracy than those with three simultaneous movement types. Finally, number of hands did not affect the overall accuracy. Remarkably, movement sequences impose processing constraints on signing children whereas complex hands (two hands) and two simultaneous movement types do not significantly lower accuracy, indicating a capacity for processing multiple simultaneous components in signs. Spoken languages, in contrast, manifest greater complexity in temporal length. Hearing children’s pseudoword repetition still displays high levels of accuracy on disyllabic words, with complexity effects affecting only longer multisyllabic words. We conclude that the pseudosign repetition task is an informative tool for studies of signing children’s phonological development and that sheds light on potential modality effects for phonological development.