Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Diane Lillo-Martin will serve as the Department Head of Linguistics effective July 1. Diane is a renowned scholar, a pioneer in the study of sign languages and a fellow of the Linguistics Society of America. The department is grateful that a proven academic leader like Diane has volunteered to guide us through these times. Thank you, Diane!
Other News
David Michaels
The members of the UConn Department of Linguistics are sad to share that David Michaels, Professor Emeritus, has died.
David was a kind, generous, intelligent, and humble man. He was one of the early members of the Department, starting as an instructor in 1968 until his retirement in 1997, and served as Department Head for many years, from 1976 to 1992. David shaped the Department and nurtured it, and his influence is felt throughout it to this day. There is no doubt that we would not be what we are without the effort and support of David Michaels.
Our hearts are with Gerda Walz-Michaels and the rest of the Michaels family at this time.
Obituary:
https://www.fhwebsites.net/ctf/obituary/David-Michaels
Jovović, Kaufmann, and Todorović | Talk at NYU
Ivana Jovović, Magdalena Kaufmann, and Neda Todorović (PhD 2016, now at University of British Columbia) presented their work “Obviate me (not): obviation effects in Serbian main and complement clauses” as part of the syntax-semantics seminar at NYU on the 21st of April.
Oda | Natural Language Semantics
Hiromune Oda’s article “Japanese free choice items as unconditionals” has just appeared as an online first article in Natural Language Semantics ahead of its print publication. Congratulations Hiro!
Muyi Yang | Talk at USC
Muyi Yang gave a talk at USC Dornsife as part of their Syntax+ series on the 10th February 2021. The talk was titled: “Revisiting wh-questions in Sinhala: It’s all about focus”.
Tatsumi Defense
Yuta Tatsumi successfully defended his dissertation titled “Linguistic realization of measuring and counting in the nominal domain: A cross-linguistic study of syntactic and semantic variations“ on January 29th.
Congratulations, Yuta!
Dr. Tatsumi with his committee:
Lillo-Martin | Annual Review of Linguistics
Diane Lillo-Martin and Jonathan Henner’s article on the “Acquisition of Sign Languages” has been published in this year’s volume of the Annual Review of Linguistics (Vol. 7:395-419).
Muyi Yang | invited talk Goethe University Frankfurt
Muyi Yang will give a talk at Goethe University Frankfurt as part of their Semantics Colloquium on the 21st January 2021. The talk will be titled: “Iffy if: Japanese moshi in conditionals and related constructions”. Information on how to join the talk online can be found here: https://www.linguistik-in-frankfurt.de/en/talk-by-muyi-yang-uconn/
Sign Language & Linguistics | Special Issue
A special issue of Sign Language & Linguistics in memory of Irit Meir was recently published, guest edited by Diane Lillo-Martin, Wendy Sandler, Marie Coppola, and Rose Stamp, who also wrote the introductory article “Irit Meir”.
The issue also contains the article “Person vs. locative agreement: Evidence from late learners and language emergence” by Lily Kwok (MA 2019), Stephanie Berk (PhD 2004), and Diane Lillo-Martin.
Adrian Stegovec | CRISSP invited talk
Adrian Stegovec will give a talk at KU Leuven, Belgium, as part of the CRISSP (Center for Research in Syntax, Semantics, and Phonology) seminar series on the 9th December 2020. The talk will be titled: “Person on the edge: What typological gaps tell us about syntactic person restrictions”.