Laszakovits Defense

Sabine Laszakovits successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled On the fundamental difference between dependent-up and dependent-down cases, and on their manifestation in Turkic on June 17th.

Congratulations, Sabine!

 

Sabine defending “in front of” most of her committee:

 

Dr. Laszakovits with the committee and audience after the successful defense:

 

Gan Defense

Linghui ‘Eva’ Gan successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled Information Structure of the Clause-Final Position in Hong Kong Sign Language on May 14th.

Congratulations, Eva!

 

Eva defending:

 

Dr. Gan with her well-earned cake:

 

Dr. Gan with her committee:

 

Bošković | Edward C. Marth Mentorship Award

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

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

        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

        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

            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):