Author: Adrian Stegovec

Daniel Defense

Penelope Daniel successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled Building a DAM: Parameters of differential argument marking on July 7th.

Penelope will be starting her job as a postdoctoral associate in syntax at the University of Maryland in the fall.

Congratulations, Penelope!

 

Penelope defending:

 

Dr. Daniel preparing for the toast after the successful defense:

 

Dr. Daniel celebrating with her committee:

 

The online audience at the defense:

 

 

Stegovec mini-course at UNG

Adrian Stegovec taught a mini-course at the University of Nova Gorica – Center for Cognitive Science of Languagebetween 17th June and 1st July, titled “Restrictions on the order and (co-)occurrence of clitic pronouns: From Slovenian to the world and back again”. The course consisted of five lectures:

  • Setting the stage: Restrictions on the order and (co-)occurrence of clitic pronouns
  • Person-based restrictions on Slovenian clitics: PCC or not PCC?
  • A typological investigation of person restrictions
  • A typological gap and why it’s there
  • Finding the source of person restrictions

 

Laszakovits Defense

Sabine Laszakovits successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled On the fundamental difference between dependent-up and dependent-down cases, and on their manifestation in Turkic on June 17th.

Congratulations, Sabine!

 

Sabine defending “in front of” most of her committee:

 

Dr. Laszakovits with the committee and audience after the successful defense:

 

Gan Defense

Linghui ‘Eva’ Gan successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled Information Structure of the Clause-Final Position in Hong Kong Sign Language on May 14th.

Congratulations, Eva!

 

Eva defending:

 

Dr. Gan with her well-earned cake:

 

Dr. Gan with her committee:

 

Bošković | Edward C. Marth Mentorship Award

Željko Bošković is this year’s Edward C. Marth Mentorship Award Recipient! This award is given to recognize extraordinary mentoring of graduate students. The selection committee noted that Željko’s “dedication to graduate students is legendary.”

As part of receiving this award, Željko was invited to give a presentation at the Ph.D. Commencement exercises held on May 12. He urged the graduates to use their intellectual responsibilities to “be bold” and speak up for justice.

More about Željko’s award can be found on p. 38 of the Commencement Program which can be found here.

UConn Linguistics at CLS

The 61st annual meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS) took place at the University of Chicago on May 9-11, and UConn linguistics was represented at the conference with talks by:

  • Heesun Yang, Bum-Sik Park (PhD 2005, now at Dongguk University), and Rongpei Ma. Negation and negative answers in Chinese
  • Adrian Stegovec. Size and strength: on the correlation between pronoun type and person restrictions
  • Qiushi Chen. Sometimes tripartite, sometimes neutral, but underlyingly nominative-accusative: On Ainu person indexation and its variations

… and poster presentations by:

  • Stefan Kaufmann and Magdalena Kaufmann. Lifetime effects in X-marked conditionals
  • Lydia Paleologou. Quantificational matching in indefinite argument drop.

     

    Photo: Most of the UConn Linguistics contingent at CLS 61 (Heesun, Lydia, Adrian, and Qiushi).

        UConn Linguists at WCCFL

        The 42nd meeting of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 43), hosted by the University of Washington, Seattle, took place on April 25-27, 2025. UConn was represented at the conference with a talk by:

        • Linghui Eva Gan. Correlation between focus and the clause-final position in Hong Kong Sign Language

        … and posters by:

        • Yoshiki Fujiwara (PhD 2022, now at Yamaguchi University). Can Adjuncts Be Elided? A Bimodal Approach to Adjunct-Inclusive Interpretation
        • Si Kai Lee (PhD 2023, now at University of Chicago). Indeterminate determiners: a case study of Singlish prenominal relative clauses 

         

        Pictured: The UConn linguistics contingent at WCCFL (Yoshiki, Si Kai, and Eva).