Past Event Category: Talk
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Feb 6Mahowald on language and cognition
Cognitive and communicative pressures in language Kyle Mahowald Stanford University Human language is a fruitful domain for understanding the basic computation and information-processing capabilities of the mind, as well as for exploring human social structures. First, whereas many cognitive tools are similar across cultures, there is wide diversity among human languages. Thus, world languages offer …
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Feb 3Yuan on learning and generalizability
Fast and far generalization from sparse data Lei Yuan Indiana University Much learning is slow, incremental, and limited in generalizability. However, there are clear cases of fast learning with far generalization from quite limited input data. In this talk, I will present a case from a real-world learning domain that provides insights into both incremental …
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Jan 21Dehghani on computing morality
Computation and Morality: Integrating diverse data to study moral behavior in the wild Morteza Dehghani University of Southern California-Dornsife
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Dec 6Ling Fridays: Rissman on instrument proto-roles
Weak evidence for shared Instrument Proto-roles across English, Dutch and German Lilia Rissman University of Wisconsin–Madison, Department of Psychology Thematic roles such as Agent and Patient have a controversial status in linguistic theory. Although roles are notoriously difficult to define, the role Agent has been argued to be part of universal core knowledge. Similarly, the …
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Nov 15Ling Fridays: Burner on Asturian morphology
Exploring the Formal Features of Mass Neuter in Asturian Matthew Burner, Ph.D. student in Hispanic Linguistics University of Wisconsin–Madison According to the literature, there are a few noun sets in Asturian that formally distinguish between count and mass by making use of their theme vowel. For example, fierru (‘an iron object’) in comparison to fierro …
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Nov 8Huynh on Vietnamese and English compounds
The Role of Language Dominance in Morphological Decomposition of Vietnamese and English Compounds Juliet Huynh University of Wisconsin–Madison This talk discusses whether there are any differences between the grammatical processing of the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) based on the relative dominance between these two languages. Two groups of bilingual Vietnamese-English speakers …
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Oct 29Armstrong on Jakalteko Mayan documentation
The Jakalteko Language of Guadalupe Victoria: Documenting an Endangered Dialect of the Mayan Language Jakalteko-Popti’ in Chiapas, Mexico The Race and Indigeneity Speaker Series presents: Jakalteko (or, Popti’) is a Mayan language spoken by around 34,000 people in Guatemala and also by a few hundred people across the border in the town of Guadalupe Victoria, …
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Oct 25Ling Fridays: Somers on historical German syntax
Orality, Literacy and the Syntax of Ninth-Century German Katerina Somers University of Wisconsin–Madison, Department of German, Nordic, & Slavic This talk investigates how two diametrically different traditions—Germanic’s oral heritage and a Latin-based literacy—shape the clause structure of German’s first written attestations and are the main source of the puzzlingly divergent patterns attested across the corpus. …
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Oct 18Ling Fridays: Biedny et al. on Algonquian lexicon
Lexical Relations in ‘Central’ Algonquian Jerome Biedny, Andrea Cudworth, Sarah Holmstrom, Monica Macaulay, Gabrielle Mistretta, Joseph Salmons, Charlotte Vanhecke and Bo Zhan University of Wisconsin–Madison The roles of genetic subgrouping vs. areal diffusion within Algonquian are less understood than many aspects of the family’s history. Goddard and others see a set of ‘Central’ languages …