I’m Brittany Zykoski, and I’m from Virginia. I got my BA in Linguistics with a minor in French from the University of Virginia. In the past, I have focused mostly on phonology and am particularly interested in contact linguistics. After graduating, I traveled, studied, and taught English abroad in Morocco, South Korea, and Japan. In my free time, I enjoy hiking, watching football, and studying languages (currently Uzbek/Uyghur).
Other News
Yusuke Yagi | New Student
I’m Yusuke Yagi, I’m from Japan. Though my birthplace was Hokkaido, the northmost prefecture in Japan, I had lived in Tokyo for as long as I can remember. At Waseda University, I did a BA in English and an MA in linguistics. My interest used to be exclusively on Syntax, but right now I find myself enjoying pursuing Semantic issues too. When I have spare time I enjoy running or drinking beer/whisk(e)y.
Tarcisio Dias | New Student
I am Tarcisio Dias, and I grew up in a small city in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. I received my BA in Linguistics and Portuguese at the Universidade de São Paulo, and my MA in Linguistics from the same institution. During both my BA and MA I worked with several topics in a Brazilian indigenous language called Karitiana under a generative perspective: verbal pluractionality, Case and agreement, copular constructions, predication, and ellipsis. I am primarily interested in syntax, and in whatever comes knocking on syntactic phenomenon doors. Currently, my particular interest is in ellipsis, especially sluicing.
I’m always available (except when I’m not) for coffee and beer – but not at the same time, of course! I enjoy cooking, and in my spare time, travelling and watching movies. I’m very happy to be part of the UConn community and look forward to what’s next. 🙂
James Canne | New Student
My name is James Canne and I’m from a small town in the American Midwest. I did a Licence in English literature with a linguistics minor at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and an MA in linguistics at University College London. As far back as I can remember I’ve had an interest in how language works. It wasn’t until I was studying in France that I realized how intricate the puzzles could be. I switched to linguistics for my MA and haven’t looked back since.
My primary focus is the internal structure of the verb phrase. This includes research into particle verbs, transitivity, and resultative constructions.
Marley Beaver | New Student
My name is Marley Beaver. I come from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I received my B.S. in Linguistics with a minor in Psychology from Eastern Michigan University. After graduation I spent a year working in early childhood education. My previous research has focused on the acquisition, syntax, and semantics of resultatives. My continuing research interests include semantics, language acquisition, and the syntax-semantics interface. I enjoy working on creative projects (usually knitting or printmaking) and spending time outdoors.
NACCL-32 at UConn
The 32nd North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-32), organized by the UConn Department of Literatures, Cultures & Languages, is going to be held online on September 18-20. Several UConn linguists are going to be presenting at the conference:
- Shuyan Wang. A Prosodic Analysis of Mandarin Classifiers
- Shengyun Gu. Agreement verbs with weak hand classifier in Shanghai Sign Language
- Xuetong Yuan & Hiroaki Saito. Matrix shuo in Mandarin
- Yuanyuan Zhang & Chui Yi Margaret Lee. NPIs and their attenuation effects: Zenme ‘how’ as a case in Mandarin Chinese
- Nick Huang (National University of Singapore/UConn), Annemarie van Dooren & Gesoel Mendes. Wanting the future: the case of desire and future yao
- Nick Huang (National University of Singapore/UConn). Nominal expressions without nouns in Mandarin
Petrosino Defense
Roberto Petrosino successfully defended his dissertation titled “More than islands of regularity: An investigation of the sensitivity of morphological decomposition to higher-level linguistic properties” on September 4th.
Congratulations, Roberto!
Dr. Petrosino with his committee:
Lacerda Defense
Renato Lacerda successfully defended his dissertation titled “Middle-field Syntax and Information Structure in Brazilian Portuguese“ on August 10th.
Congratulations, Renato!
Dr. Lacerda with his committee:
Bertolino Defense
Karina Bertolino successfully defended her dissertation titled “An Experimental Study on the Acquisition of Impersonals in Brazilian Portuguese“ on August 5th.
Congratulations, Karina!
Dr. Bertolino with her committee:
Bertolino, Nguyen, Petrosino | Isabelle Y. Liberman Award
We are pleased to announce that three of our graduate students have been recognized and awarded stipends for this year’s Isabelle Y. Liberman Award, which is intended to recognize and encourage young researchers who are investigating topics relating to Isabelle Y. Liberman’s interests.
Emma Nguyen received the award for her work on “The link between lexical semantic features and children’s comprehension of English be-passives”, a paper submitted to Language Acquisition with Lisa Pearl.
Additionally, Karina Gomes Bertolino and Roberto Petrosino have been named finalists for the award.
Congratulations to all three!