Shengyun Gu successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled Bimanual coordination: The non-dominant hand in Shanghai Sign Language on Friday October 27th.
Congratulations, Shengyun!
Shengyun during the defense:
Dr. Gu with her committee after the successful defense:
Dr. Gu cutting her well earned cake:
The 48th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD48) took place on 2nd-5th November 2023. UConn linguistics was represented at the conference with talks by:
… and posters by:
Željko Bošković will give two invited talks this week at the Peking University, sponsored by Peking University Overseas Famous Scholar Lecture Plan:
The talks will be titled:
Adrian Stegovec will give a colloquium talk at UMass, Amherst on October 27th, 2023. His talk will be titled “Short scrambling as smuggling: The argument from Slovenian ditransitives”. More information on the talk will be posted here.
Jarry Chia-Wei Chuang will give three presentations at the following conferences in October and November:
Word Prominence in Languages with Complex Morphologies co-edited by Ksenia Bogomolets (PhD 2020, now at Māori Language Commission & University of Auckland) and Harry van der Hulst has been published by Oxford University Press.
This volume focuses on the theoretical and analytical challenges that languages with complex morphologies pose for the theory and typology of word-level prosodic phenomena. The morphological complexity and phonological length that are characteristic of words in these languages make them a particularly fruitful ground for investigating the effects of both phonological and morphological factors in the assignment of prominence. The first three chapters in the volume explore general theoretical issues pertaining to word prominence in synthetic languages, including the issue of ‘wordhood’ and the empirical, theoretical, and methodological issues with delineating word-level prominence and the higher-level prosodic phenomena in these languages. These are followed by a series of case studies on stress, accent, and tone in a geographically and genetically diverse set of languages with highly synthetic morphologies including languages of the Americas, Europe and Asia, and Australia. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, combining phonetic, phonological, and morphosyntactic insights. It will be of interest not only to phonologists and morphologists, but to all those interested in the typological and theoretical issues relating to polysynthetic languages.
The volume also contains chapters written by Ksenia and Harry:
A Mind for Language: An Introduction to the Innateness Debate written Harry van der Hulst has just been published by Cambridge University Press.
How does human language arise in the mind? To what extent is it innate, or something that is learned? How do these factors interact? The questions surrounding how we acquire language are some of the most fundamental about what it means to be human and have long been at the heart of linguistic theory. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to this fascinating debate, unravelling the arguments for the roles of nature and nurture in the knowledge that allows humans to learn and use language. An interdisciplinary approach is used throughout, allowing the debate to be examined from philosophical and cognitive perspectives. It is illustrated with real-life examples and the theory is explained in a clear, easy-to-read way, making it accessible for students without a background in linguistics. An accompanying website contains a glossary, questions for reflection, discussion themes and project suggestions, to further deepen students understanding of the material.
The article “Deaf and Hearing American Sign Language–English Bilinguals: Typical Bilingual Language Development” by Corina Goodwin (PhD 2016) and Diane Lillo-Martin has just been published in The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education (https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enad026). Congratulations!
Abstract: Some studies have concluded that sign language hinders spoken language development for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children even though sign language exposure could protect DHH children from experiencing language deprivation. Furthermore, this research has rarely considered the bilingualism of children learning a signed and a spoken language. Here we compare spoken English development in 2–6-year-old deaf and hearing American Sign Language–English bilingual children to each other and to monolingual English speakers in a comparison database. Age predicted bilinguals’ language scores on all measures, whereas hearing status was only significant for one measure. Both bilingual groups tended to score below monolinguals. Deaf bilinguals’ scores differed more from monolinguals, potentially because of later age of and less total exposure to English, and/or to hearing through a cochlear implant. Overall, these results are consistent with typical early bilingual language development. Research and practice must treat signing-speaking children as bilinguals and consider the bilingual language development literature.
The 16th Brussels Conference on Generative Linguistics (BCGL16) is took place October 5th-6th. This year’s conference is devoted to the morphosyntax of speaker and hearer. UConn will be represented at the conference by:
Hello! My name is Wu Qi (u35 tɕʰɪ35, 吴琪). I grew up in Shenzhen, China, a southern coastal city where, since the last few decades, people from over the country have come with them their own dialects and traditions. Meanwhile, some part of me has been shaped by years in the north, as an undergrad studying English literature (Beijing & UK). Dealing with words created by people across different time and space calls up my enthusiasm for languages, and I went on finishing a Master’s degree in linguistics. Currently, as a PhD student, I am primarily interested in Syntax and its interface with Morphology and Pragmatics.
Besides academics, I play badminton, video games, and would like to go for trekking a little. I enjoy cooking and exploring into it, and I wish I could have some time for sketches and scribbles, movies and music. It’s such a pleasure to be able to join the department with all the wonderful people!