UConn linguistics was well represented at three sign language conferences in December, January, and February. At the 10th edition of the SIGN conference (SIGN10), which was held at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, Trinidad & Tobago, December 9-10, we were represented with the following talks by:

• Diane Lillo-Martin, Deborah Chen Pichler (PhD 2001, now at Gallaudet University) and Elaine Gale. Family ASL: Deaf Children and Hearing Parents Learning ASL Together
• Elaine Gale, Patrice Creamer and Shane Blau (post-doc 2023-24). Language input for Deaf infants: What do Deaf babies need and how can parents provide it?

At the 15th conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR 15), which was held at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, January 11-12, we were represented with the following talks by:

• Shengyun Gu (PhD 2023, now at Occidental College), Diane Lillo-Martin, Deborah Chen Pichler, Elaine Gale. ASL Phonology Development in Deaf Children with Hearing Sign-Learning Parents
• Shane Blau. Perceptual discrimination in signed languages: Evidence from deaf and hearing infants

… and posters by:

• Shane Blau, Deborah Chen Pichler, Elaine Gale, and Diane Lillo-Martin. Development of Visual Communication and Sign Language by Deaf Children in the Family ASL Project
• Shengyun Gu. Iconicity for all, but not in the same way: Evidence from weak drop processing
• Linghui Gan. Correlation between word order and information structure in Hong Kong Sign Language
• Linghui Gan. Question Answer Pairs (QAPs) in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL)
• Natasha Thalluri and Kathryn Davidson (post-doc 2012-13, now at Harvard University). Universality and variation in sign language comparatives
• Kazumi Matsuoka (1998 PhD, now Keio University, Japan). Reflecting lexical aspect: Interactions of perfectives and verb types in Japanese Sign Language
• Nozomi Tomita, Masashi Tamura, and Kathryn Davidson. Negative possessive and existential sentences in Japanese Sign Language (JSL)
• Kazumi Matsuoka. Reflecting lexical aspect: Interactions of perfectives and verb types in Japanese Sign Language
• Madeline Quam, Annemarie Kocab, Jesse Snedeker, and Marie Coppola. Distinguishing Agents and Patients in Homesign Language Systems

And lastly, at the conference of the Association of College Educators – Deaf & Hard of Hearing (ACEDHH), which was held on January 30-February 1 in Washington DC, we were represented with a talk by:

• Diane Lillo-Martin, Chui-Yi Lee, Elaine Gale, and Deborah Chen Pichler. Bimodal Bilingual Benefits Counter Audism and Linguicism

Jarry Chia-Wei Chuang gave a talk, titled “Where are you from? The status of prenuclear glide in Mandarin”, at the 2024 Annual Meeting on Phonology, which took place at Rutgers University on November 1st-3rd.

The 49th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD49) is taking place on November 7-10th 2024. UConn linguistics is going to be well represented at the conference with a keynote talk by:

• Diane Lillo-Martin. Sign Language Acquisition is a Human Right

… talks by:

• Irene Canudas Grabolosa, Madeline Quam, Marie Coppola, Jesse C. Snedeker and Annemarie Kocab. The role of language in building one and two-place predicates: event imitation in homesigners
• Annemarie Kocab, Madeline Quam, Marie Coppola and Jesse Snedeker. Who did what to whom? Marking event participants in Nicaraguan homesign systems
• Ting Xu (PhD 2016, now at Tsinghua University), Lyn Tieu (PhD 2013, now at University of Toronto) and Stella Christie. Highlighting the presupposition trigger helps: Evidence from Mandarin-acquiring children’s interpretation of presuppositional you ‘again’
• Penelope Daniel. Clitics as prerequisites for Spanish DOM

… and posters by:

• Alyssa Vorobey, Nadia Faehndrich and Lyn Tieu. Children project the presuppositional inferences of co-speech sound effects
• Anita Sritharan, Janice Shum and Lyn Tieu. Extending presupposition projection to co-speech gestures: The view from child language
• Lea Heßler-Reusch, Ting Xu and Xiaolu Yang. Chinese L2 learner’s interpretation of telicity in German
• Madeline Quam, Annemarie Kocab and Marie Coppola. Pragmatic knowledge in asymmetric language contexts
• Yoshiki Fujiwara (PhD 2022, now at Yamaguchi University). Acquisition of particle drop in Japanese: a preliminary study
• Chui Yi Lee and Angelica Hill. Children’s acquisition of circumstantial modals: Do they know where necessity can come from?
• Yixuan Yan and Yitong Luo. Do children know that PolQs are not AltQs? Evidence from Mandarin Chinese

In addition, Yixuan (Pepper) Yan was also awarded the Paula Menyuk Award for top-rated abstracts by student first authors. Congratulations!

Photo: UConn linguists and UConn-connected people at BUCLD following Diane Lillo-Martin’s keynote talk.

The 17th Conference on Syntax, Phonology and Language Analysis (SinFonIJA 17), is being held on 26-28 September 2024 at the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia. UConn linguistics will be represented at the conference by the following talks:

• Praval Yadaav & Giulio Muramatsu. Reduplication dislikes Specificity: Restrictions in Long-Distance Agreement in Hindi-Urdu
• Elena Guerzoni, Furkan Dikmen & Penka Stateva (PhD 2002, now at University of Nova Gorica). A novel account of Turkish singular and plural marking

… and with an invited talk by:

• Luisa Martí (PhD 2003, now at Queen Mary University of London). Impossible determiners