Bošković | Edward C. Marth Mentorship Award

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Željko Bošković is this year’s Edward C. Marth Mentorship Award Recipient! This award is given to recognize extraordinary mentoring of graduate students. The selection committee noted that Željko’s “dedication to graduate students is legendary.”

As part of receiving this award, Željko was invited to give a presentation at the Ph.D. Commencement exercises held on May 12. He urged the graduates to use their intellectual responsibilities to “be bold” and speak up for justice.

More about Željko’s award can be found on p. 38 of the Commencement Program which can be found here.

UConn Linguistics at CLS

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The 61st annual meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS) took place at the University of Chicago on May 9-11, and UConn linguistics was represented at the conference with talks by:

  • Heesun Yang, Bum-Sik Park (PhD 2005, now at Dongguk University), and Rongpei Ma. Negation and negative answers in Chinese
  • Adrian Stegovec. Size and strength: on the correlation between pronoun type and person restrictions
  • Qiushi Chen. Sometimes tripartite, sometimes neutral, but underlyingly nominative-accusative: On Ainu person indexation and its variations

… and poster presentations by:

  • Stefan Kaufmann and Magdalena Kaufmann. Lifetime effects in X-marked conditionals
  • Lydia Paleologou. Quantificational matching in indefinite argument drop.

     

    Photo: Most of the UConn Linguistics contingent at CLS 61 (Heesun, Lydia, Adrian, and Qiushi).

        UConn Linguists at WCCFL

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        The 42nd meeting of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 43), hosted by the University of Washington, Seattle, took place on April 25-27, 2025. UConn was represented at the conference with a talk by:

        • Linghui Eva Gan. Correlation between focus and the clause-final position in Hong Kong Sign Language

        … and posters by:

        • Yoshiki Fujiwara (PhD 2022, now at Yamaguchi University). Can Adjuncts Be Elided? A Bimodal Approach to Adjunct-Inclusive Interpretation
        • Si Kai Lee (PhD 2023, now at University of Chicago). Indeterminate determiners: a case study of Singlish prenominal relative clauses 

         

        Pictured: The UConn linguistics contingent at WCCFL (Yoshiki, Si Kai, and Eva).

         

         

        UConn Linguistics at TEAL

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        The 14th Workshop on Theoretical East Asian Linguistics (TEAL-14) took place in March 18-20th, hosted by the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. UConn linguistics represented at the conference with poster presentations by:

        • Mingjiang Chen. One Transition Point Hypothesis
        • Jiayi Zhou and Marijke De Belder. Verbs or nouns? Mandarin compounds suggest a headedness model with probabilistic reasoning

          … and a talk by:

          • Brian Agbayani and Masao Ochi (PhD 1999, now at Osaka University). Tough constructions in Japanese and the Complex XP Constraint

           

            UConn Linguistics at GLOW

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            The 47th Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW) Colloquium will take place in Frankfurt am Main and Göttingen on March 25-28th, 2025. UConn linguistics will be represented at the conference with a “long talk” (one of only six 45 minute talks) by:

            • Qiushi Chen. A tale of two zeros: Lessons from person indexation in Japhug

            … a “short talk” (25 minutes) by:

            • Adina Camelia Bleotu, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Anton Benz, Lyn Tieu (PhD 2013, now at University of Toronto). Agreement with singular disjuncts in adult and child language: A grammatical lacuna or a meaning-driven process 

            … and posters by:

            • Mingjiang Chen. One Transition Point Hypothesis
            • Yixuan Yan & Yitong Luo. Interpretations of two disjunctive morphemes in child Mandarin and their theoretical consequences

             

            Photo: Most of the UConn contingent at GLOW (Qiushi, Yixuan, and Mingjiang):

            Mizuno | NLLT

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            The paper “Argument ellipsis as topic deletion” by our alumnus Teruyuki Mizuno (PhD 2023, now at Ochanomizu University, Tokyo) has just been published online in Natural Language & Linguistic Theory ahead of the print version. Congratulations Teru! The paper can be accessed here.

            Abstract: In recent syntactic literature, argument ellipsis has become a productive perspective of investigation for null arguments in natural language. Focusing on Japanese as the primary object of study, this paper aims to deepen our understanding of the underlying syntactic mechanism behind the derivation of argument ellipsis. The main empirical observation is that argument ellipsis and topicalization exhibit a striking parallelism with respect to the way they interact with wh-dependencies. Building on this observation, I argue that argument ellipsis is an instance of topic deletion, which involves movement of arguments to Spec,TopicP, and phonological deletion of the arguments under the identity of the topic in discourse. I show that the topic-deletion account of argument ellipsis offers a principled explanation for a variety of restrictions concerning what types of argument can or cannot undergo ellipsis. I also suggest that the proposed account enables a unified perspective on argument ellipsis and discourse pro-drop by analyzing them uniformly as instances of topic deletion, thereby shedding new light on the deep typological correlation that has been observed between them.

            UConn Linguists at the LSA Annual Meeting

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            The 2025 edition of the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America took place January 9-12 in Philadelphia. UConn linguistics was represented at the conference with talks by:

            • Shane Blau (post-doc 2023-24), Diane Lillo-Martin, Deborah Chen Pichler (PhD 2001, now at Gallaudet University), Elaine Gale. Sign Language Acquisition by Deaf Children with Hearing, Signing Families: Visual Communication and Vocabulary
            • Penelope Daniel. Parameters of differential argument marking
            • Yoshiki Fujiwara (PhD 2022, now at Yamaguchi University). Wh-scope-marking in Tamil

            … a poster presentation by:

            • Jon Gajewski. On the pragmatics of propositional anaphora

              UConn Linguistics at SIGN, TISLR & ACEDHH

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              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