April 2012 - BULA - ling.bu.edu lists

"How Do Languages Change?" Lecture TONIGHT!
by Lara Bryfonski 23 Apr '12

23 Apr '12

Just a quick reminder to come to our BULA lecture *tonight at 7:30pm in SCI (Science Building, 590 Comm Ave) Room 113* to hear a second lecture given by visiting Icelandic Professor Höskuldur Thráinsson. He will be presenting on *"How Do Languages Change?**"* See the abstract below. Looking forward to seeing YOU there! * * *Do speakers gradually change their language over the course of their life or do languages mainly change * *as a result of incomplete acquisition by children? This talk reports on a research project where speakers of* *Icelandic have been interviewed/tested over a long period of time (some of them were first interviewed * *over 65 years ago) in order to determine how and to what extent they have changed selected aspects of * *their language, both phonological and syntactic. The results suggest that there may be structural limits to * *the ways in which adult speakers change their language and that certain aspects of language may be more * *susceptible to gradual change in real time than others.* ** -BULA

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Two Linguistics Lectures
by Lara Bryfonski 17 Apr '12

17 Apr '12

Greetings BULA! Coming up soon, Professor Höskuldur Thráinsson from the University of Iceland will be giving two talks, both of which are sure to be interesting. The first is Friday (Apr 20, 3pm) on writing systems, and the second is Monday (Apr 23, 7:30pm) on language change. Abstracts of these talks are below. The talk on Friday is sponsored by the Geddes Lecture Series, and the talk on Monday is sponsored by the BULA. Don't forget to RSVP on Facebook and check out our website bula.bu.edu. See you there! *Friday 4/20, 3pm, KCB 101* James Geddes, Jr. Lecture Series Höskuldur Thráinsson "When Is Orthography Optimal?" Speakers/Writers often complain about the orthography of their language and claim that it is too complicated and does not make any sense (cf. George Bernhard Shaw's claim that one could argue for the spelling "ghoti" for the English word 'fish'). But if you were to design an orthography for a language, what would be your main considerations? In the 12th century an anonymous linguist designed an orthography for Icelandic and wrote a paper about it (the so-called "First Grammatical Treatise") explaining his decisions using amazingly modern methods. In the middle of the 19th century a group of philologists and historians designed an orthography for Faroese, partly using very different arguments for their decisions. This paper compares these two sets of arguments and discusses what we can learn from them about the nature of orthography in general. *On Monday 4/23, 7:30pm, SCI (Science Center, 590 Comm Ave) Room 113* The BU undergraduate Linguistics Association* presents: Höskuldur Thráinsson "How Do Languages Change?" Do speakers gradually change their language over the course of their life or do languages mainly change as a result of incomplete acquisition by children? This talk reports on a research project where speakers of Icelandic have been interviewed/tested over a long period of time (some of them were first interviewed over 65 years ago) in order to determine how and to what extent they have changed selected aspects of their language, both phonological and syntactic. The results suggest that there may be structural limits to the ways in which adult speakers change their language and that certain aspects of language may be more susceptible to gradual change in real time than others. *Partially funded by the undergraduate student fee.

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Reminder! BULA Event Tonight!
by Lara Bryfonski 04 Apr '12

04 Apr '12

Just a quick reminder to come to our BULA lecture *tonight at 5pm in CAS 325 * to hear Professor Luc Baronian speak! He is presenting on *"The Metrics of Amédé Ardoin and its Implications on the French stress system*.*"* * * Looking forward to seeing YOU there! -BULA

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BULA Lecture this Wednesday
by Lara Bryfonski 01 Apr '12

01 Apr '12

Hello BULAers, We are pleased to announce that the linguistic department's own Luc Baronian will be presenting his research this *Wednesday 4/4 at 5 pm in CAS 325**. * You can find the abstract of the lecture below as well as more information at bula.bu.edu and on facebook. Hope to see you this Wednesday! -The BULA E-Board *The Metrics of Amédé Ardoin and its Implications on the French stress system* * * *"*In this talk, I will use the principles of Generative Metrics (Halle & Keyser 1971, Kiparsky 1977) to present an analysis of the unusual metrical structure used by Amédé Ardoin, one of the earliest recorded Louisiana Creole singers of the 1920s and 1930s, in one of his most staple songs, Madame Atchen. The most intriguing aspect of the song involves stress placed on syllables which do not normally receive stress in spoken French, yet its musicality is undeniable. I will show that if we assume Ardoin was using a combination of iambic and anapestic foot structure, his stress (mis)placements fall exactly on syllables that would normally receive secondary stress. The tension thus created between the expected linguistic stress and the musically delivered one generates a syncopated or off-beat pattern, typical of African music, which is however resolved at the end of lines or stanzas. Besides the sociologically interesting conclusion that African rhythm has in fact influenced a local variety of French in its cultural manifestations, there are linguistic implications of this finding for French in general. First, there is no consensus as to whether or not French should be considered to have secondary stress. The intuitive use of the language by a naive Creole French speaker of the 1920s lends support to Noyer's (2002) view that French has in fact an iambically structured prosody, although I will also argue for an optional anapestic one. In fact, I will show that it is possible tointerpret the popularity of the French alexandrine verse with authors such as Beaudelaire himself as a consequence of the inherent structure of French metrics."

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