The 11th International Conference on Formal  (ICFL) was held at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (Baiyushan campus) on November 7-9, 2025. UConn linguistics was represented at the conference with a keynote talk by:

• Željko Bošković. Licensing under sisterhood

… and talks by:

• Ting Xu (PhD 2016, now at Tsinghua University), Li-Chen Zhuang, Mingming Liu and Stella Christie. On the felicity conditions of dou: An experimental study
• Zheng Shen (PhD 2018, now at National University of Singapore) & Beth Chan. Cross-linguistic variation of D-linking amelioration effects.
• Kangzheng Gao (PhD 2024, now at Suzhou City University). Modeling Syntactic Parameter Setting: A Constraint-based Approach

Stefan Kaufmann gave an invited talk titled “When to intervene: Lifetime effects and other conditional mysteries” at the conference Conditional Constructs Across World Languages, held October 29-31 at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) in Paris, France.

The 50th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD50) is taking place on November 6-9th 2025. UConn linguistics is going to be well represented at the conference, including a symposium led by William Snyder, with Jill de Villiers, Tom Roeper, and Virginia Valian:

• Language acquisition and generative grammar: The past 50 years

… and with talks by:

• Shuyan Wang (PhD 2022, now a post-doc at UConn), Chui Yi Lee, Diane Lillo-Martin, and Deborah Chen Pichler (PhD 2001, now at Gallaudet University). Development of syntax in spoken English by bimodal bilingual deaf children with cochlear implants: Comparison with hearing bilinguals and monolinguals
• Ruthe Foushee, Zena Levan, Jess Breeze, Jenny Lu, Diane Lillo-Martin, and Susan Goldin-Meadow. Communication in the absence of a shared conventional language: Contingent nonverbal behavior scaffolds language development and drives communication with deaf and hearing children
• Clariana Vieira and Elaine Grolla (PhD 2005, now at University of Sao Paolo). Wh-in-situ acquisition in French and in Brazilian Portuguese: Statistical and Prosodic cues
• Linghui Gan, Angelica Llerena and Diane Lillo-Martin.What does bimodal bilingual acquisition look like in deaf children with hearing parents?
• Bonnie Barrett, Kaj Kraus, Shane Blau, Martin Dale-Hench, Deborah Chen Pichler and Diane Lillo-Martin. Implementing a language-specific subscore for more informative ASL syntax assessment for hearing parents and their DHH children
• Ting Xu (PhD 2016, now at Tsinghua University), Li-Chen Chuang, Mingming Liu and Stella Christie. Children’s acquisition of the felicity condition of Mandarin ‘dou’ 

… and posters by:

• Kosta Boskovic (class of 2024, now a PhD candidate in psychology at UC San Diego) and David Barner. Children’s quantification of time: a case study of the comparative “more”
• Irene Canudas Grabolosa, Hanna-Sophia Georgievska Shine, Jesse C. Snedeker, Marie Coppola, and Annemarie Kocab. Agent and Patient Categories in English-Speaking Children and Homesigners
• Ece Eroğlu and Kadir Gökgöz (post-doc 2013-16, now at Bogazici University). A Referential System in Space: Age of Acquisition Effects in TİD Pointing Signs
• Yangyu Sun, Chiara Dal Farra, Aurore Gonzalez, Johannes Hein, Johnson F. Ilori, Tamar Makharoblidze, Chiara Saponaro, Kazuko Yatsushiro (PhD 1999, now at ZAS Berlin), Uli Sauerland and Maria Teresa Guasti. A comparison of children’s relative clause production in Georgian, Italian and Yoruba 
• Yixuan Yan. John knows Mary likes what: Learning attitude verbs by speech acts in a wh-in-situ language 
• Adina Camelia Bleotu, Anton Benz, Deborah Foucault, Lyn Tieu (PhD 2013, now at University of Toronto), and Tom Roeper. Acquiring conditional disjunction: Romanian five-year-olds’ struggle with implicit ‘if not’
• Giulio Ciferri Muramatsu and Zixi Liu. A Snapshot of (Really) Early CP Occurrence: Sentence Final Particles in Child Japanese
• Andre Eliatamby and Lyn Tieu. Children compute more ad-hoc implicatures from “a” than “the”: On the interaction of definiteness and ad-hoc implicatures
• Kaj Kraus, Bonnie Barrett, Shane Blau, Martin Dale-Hench, Mary Cecilia Conte, Diane Lillo-Martin, Elaine Gale, and Deborah Chen Pichler. Relationships between L2 hearing parent and L1 deaf child learning of ASL: Vocabulary and syntax 
• Pravaal Yadav. Children are conservative in their production: A study of long-distance questions in child-Hindi 
• Antonio Codina and Elaine Grolla. The Bare Truth: Bare Nominals Acquisition Challenges for Brazilian Learners of English, French, and Spanish
• Alyssa Vorobey and Lyn Tieu. Information packaging in child language: Comparing asserted to presupposed and implicated information
• Maria Astapova and Lyn Tieu. On children’s acquisition of disjunction in French: A corpus study
• Lyn Tieu and Petra Schulz. Understanding sentences with focus particles using visual alternatives: Children do not ignore “only”

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

The annual Language Acquisition Workshop of New England (LAWNE) took place on October 25th, hosted by Yale University. Several UConn PhD students presented at the workshop:

• Yitong Luo and Yixuan Yan. Acquiring two disjunctive morphemes in Mandarin-speaking Children: A preliminary study
• Zixi Liu. Are those in-tree-guingly early Mandarin SFPs adult-like?
• Giulio Ciferri Muramatsu. Yet another study on the acquisition of Japanese Disjunction
• Pravaal Yadav. Overuse of Wh-Scope Marking in Child Hindi: An Investigation of Long-Distance Questions 

Sinn und Bedeutung 30 will take place at Goethe University Frankfurt, September 23-27, 2024. UConn linguistics will be well represented at the conference, with an invited talk by:

• Magdalena Kaufmann. Perspectives on possibility modals

… and talks by:

• Yuta Tatsumi (PhD 2021, now at Meikai University). Temporal connectives and measure phrases in Japanese
• Mingjiang Chen. A Causal Model Approach to the Agent Control Hypothesis
• Yixuan Yan and Yitong Luo. Declarative but not inquisitive disjunctors derive conjunctive inference in child language: What to flatten?
• Adina Camelia Bleotu, Lyn Tieu (PhD 2013, now at University of Toronto), Gabriela Bîlbîie, Mara Panaitescu, Anton Benz, and Andreea Nicolae.Comparing disjunction across polarities: The source of strong interpretations of negative disjunctive sentences in child language is scope, not strengthening
• Yusuke Yagi (PhD 2025, now at Waseda University) and Ka-Fai Yip. Asymmetric reconstruction for binding but not for scope

… and poster presentations by:

• Jon Gajewski. A source-based ambiguity in the semantics of believe
• Xuetong Yuan (PhD 2024, now at University of Chicago). Conditionality without if: conditional marking strategies in Mandarin

Photo: Most of the UConn contingent at SuB 30.

The 17th Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition conference (GALA 17), was held September 11-13 in Tours, France, at the City of Creation and Innovation (MAME). UConn linguistics was well represented at the conference with talks by:

• Elaine Grolla (PhD 2005, now at University of Sao Paolo), Kazuko Yatsushiro (PhD 1999, now at ZAS Berlin), Andreea Nicolae, Artemis Alexiadou, and Uli Sauerland. Resumption in matrix wh-questions
• Yixuan Yan and Yitong Luo. Mandarin children interpret declarative but not interrogative disjunction as conjunction
• André Eliatamby and Lyn Tieu (PhD 2013, now at University of Toronto). Investigating the interaction of definiteness and ad hoc implicatures in child language
• William Snyder, Sahil Luthra, Nabin Koirala and Roeland Hancock. Passives, Raising, and the Experiencer Externalization Hypothesis
• Chie Nakamura, Suzanne Flynn, Yoichi Miyamoto (PhD 1994, now at Osaka University), and Noriaki Yusa. Filler-gap Resolution in Cross-linguistic Wh-questions: L2 English and Lti Japanese

… and posters by:

• Giulio Ciferri Muramatsu. A Picture Selection Task for the Acquisition of Japanese Disjunction
• Cory Bill, Imke Driemel, Kazuko Yatsushiro, Napoleon Katsos and Uli Sauerland. A cross-linguistic investigation of children’s negative indefinite production
• Pravaal Yadav. Do children use the same grammar for comprehension and production? A study of long-distance questions in child-Hindi

Stefan Kaufmann presented his work on “Import/Export and other conditional invalidities” at this year’s Philosophy of Language and Linguistics workshop at the Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik, Croatia, September 8-12.

Diane Lillo-Martin and Shuyan Wang will present a poster, titled “Children’s online processing of scalar implicatures”, at the 2025 edition of the conference on Cross-linguistic Perspectives on Processing and Learning (X-PPL 2025), hosted by the University of Zurich, September 1st-2nd 2015.