Past Event Category: Talk
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Apr 16Ling Fridays: Francis on gradient acceptability judements
Interpreting gradient acceptability judgments: evidence from word order alternations in English Elaine Francis English & Linguistics, Purdue University What conclusions can we draw from gradient patterns of acceptability judgments about speakers’ implicit grammatical knowledge? In this talk, I highlight some of the main arguments from my forthcoming book, Gradient Acceptability and Linguistic Theory, in the …
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Apr 12Reclaiming Indigenous Languages of WisconsinMonica Macaulay, Brian McInnes, and Omar Poler will give a brief overview of the Indigenous languages of Wisconsin in both historical and current context, focusing on their reclamation and revitalization by the Native Nations of the state, and illustrated with examples of community based language revitalization strategies. Finally, the presenters will discuss their work as …
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Apr 9Ling Fridays: Goldrick on speech production
Language control and cross-language interactions in speech production Matt Goldrick Linguistics, Northwestern University Bilingual speakers have the amazing ability to efficiently manage the parallel activation of multiple linguistic systems during speech. What is the nature of the mechanisms supporting this expert control abilities? I’ll discuss research examining how Spanish-English bilinguals deploy these mechanisms at multiple …
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Mar 26Ling Fridays: Leonard on Native American linguistics
Aspects of the Theory of Native American Linguistics Wesley Leonard Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, University of California-Riverside Despite increased focus on Native American language community needs and values in the discipline of Linguistics, an ongoing frustration experienced by Native American scholars and community members is that linguists often default to colonial assumptions and categories in …
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Mar 19Ling Fridays: Jin & Koenig on language production
When interference in language production gets lexicalized: The case of expletive negation Yanwei Jin & Jean-Pierre Koenig University at Buffalo In this talk, we explore this hypothesis that expletive negation (EN) is caused by general properties of language production: the meaning of some lexical items (EN-triggers) leads to the concurrent activation of an argument proposition …
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Mar 5Ling Fridays: Yucatec Maya verbs
Building verbs in Yucatec Maya out of lexical roots from Spanish: The role of form and meaning Grant Armstrong UW–Madison, Spanish & Portuguese The goal of this talk is to contribute to our understanding of the lexical influence of Spanish on Yucatec Maya by analyzing the ways in which borrowed material from Spanish is integrated …
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Feb 26Ling Fridays: Kepler on English Wh-relatives
Preposition Placement in Wh-Relative Clauses Among Speakers of American English Grady Kepler UW–Madison, English This study investigates acceptability judgements of native speakers of American English, specifically examining the preposition placement in wh-relative clauses. In wh-relative clauses, prepositions may be pied piped (e.g., To whom is she speaking?) or stranded (e.g., Who is she speaking to?) …
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Nov 20Ling Fridays: Holmstrom & Vanhecke on Wisconsin English
[V̰] is the new [ʔ]: On glottalization in Wisconsin English. Sarah Holmstrom & Charlotte Vanhecke UW–Madison, Linguistics PhD program Online – contact rashields@wisc.edu for the link. While /t/-glottalization has been a well-attested phenomenon since the 1940s, few studies have described its specific patterns of variation and change in American English. Trager (1942) recorded [ʔ] as …
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Nov 6Ling Fridays: Koranda on predicting lexical choice
The probability of saying a word depends on form properties of recent utterances Mark Koranda, UW–Madison Graduate Student, Psychology
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Oct 30Ling Fridays: Jacobs on form/information
On the relationship between form and information content Cassandra Jacobs, UW–Madison Research Associate in Psychology Zipf (1949) famously demonstrated that longer words are typically less frequent. However, more recent work has suggested that word frequency is not the driving factor explaining word length – Piantadosi, Tily, and Gibson (2011) proposed instead that words that usually …