- BULA - ling.bu.edu lists

Upcoming Event: Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?
by Kristine Purdy 22 Jan '15

22 Jan '15

Hello everyone! I hope you've all had a great first week back on campus! If you haven't heard yet, BULA is putting on a movie showing next week-- a great way to start the semester. We will be showing "Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?", described as "an animated discussion with Noam Chomsky" next Thursday, January 29th. If you'd like to attend, please join us in CAS room 522 at 7:00 pm. In addition to the film, Professor Neil Myler will give a brief introduction as well as lead a discussion afterwards. The Department of Romance Studies has also provided us with free refreshments for the film. Please join us bring anyone you'd like! Best, Kristine Purdy BULA Vice President

1 0

LX250 Study Session!
by Devyn Arredondo 11 Dec '14

11 Dec '14

Hello everyone! I'm sure everyone is busy studying for exams, but for those of you in LX250 this semester who want some extra help, BULA will be having an informal review session THIS Friday from 2-4pm in room B02 of 621 Commonwealth Ave. Hope to see you there! Devyn Arredondo BULA President

1 0

Correction
by Devyn Arredondo 17 Nov '14

17 Nov '14

Hi everyone! On the SAO events listing, Professor Ahn's talk is listed as starting at 6:30 this Wednesday- it actually starts at 7. Sorry for any inconveniences this may have caused. Can't wait to see you all there! Devyn Arredondo BULA President

1 0

Upcoming Events
by Devyn Arredondo 07 Nov '14

07 Nov '14

Hey everyone! Coming up soon is Game Night for BULA; there will be Phonetic Scrabble and Bananagrams, no experience required~! Everyone is welcome. It will be held in: CAS 214, 7:15pm, Wednesday 11/12 Also, there is a talk by Professor Ahn, titled "Focusing on Reflexives." This talk explores how the differences in stress on reflexives relate, and sheds light on the way syntax, semantics, and phonology are all connected. It will be held in: KCB101, 7pm, Wednesday 11/19 Hope to see everyone there! Devyn Arredondo BULA President

1 0

BULA Meet & Greet
by Devyn Arredondo 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

Hi everyone! The BULA Meet & Greet Dinner will take place tomorrow (9/17/14) at 6:30p in the GSU Back Court. Please bring your own dinner. This will be a casual way to get to know the other members of BULA, and to hear about the upcoming events taking place this semester. Hope to see everyone there! Sincerely, Devyn Arredondo BULA President

1 0

Two Upcoming Events
by Christian Williams 26 Apr '14

26 Apr '14

Good Morning everyone! I hope your semester is winding down nicely and you don't have too much work to do in the coming weeks. Luckily for you all, if you need a de-stressor next week, we have just the event for you! One Monday, April 28th, BULA is hosting an event "Ask a Linguistics Professor!" where you can ask our faculty anything you wanted to ever know about linguistics, but were afraid to ask. The event is in room KCB 106 at 6pm. Professors Jon Barnes, Danny Erker, Paul Hagstrom, and Carol Neidle will be there to answer and and all questions you may have about linguistics or their own research. Perhaps even more importantly we will be discussing the future of BULA at the meeting and run for eBoard! We hope you get involved in the Linguistics Community at BU. The other upcoming event is our group tutoring session for LX 250. The eBoard (along with anyone else who would be interested in helping out) will be reviewing all of the material covered in LX 250 to assist current linguistics students in studying for the upcoming exam. This event will be held in the Educational Resource Center in 100 Bay State Road in room 545B from 2-4 on May 2nd. If you are interested in helping out, please contact me at caw2014(a)bu.edu. Thank you all and I hope to see you all the the events! Alex Williams President of BULA

1 0

Update: Events for Laura McPherson - cancelled
by Hagstrom, Paul 30 Jan '14

30 Jan '14

Hello again, BULA -- it turns out that the information that went out yesterday is already slightly out of date. One of the candidates who was going to be visiting is no longer coming. The revised schedule is below: -- HI, Very sorry to inform you that the events announced just last night for Laura McPherson have been cancelled. Revised schedule for presentations by Morphology candidates 1. Neil Myler, PhD Candidate, NYU https://sites.google.com/site/neilmylerlinguist/ Monday, February 3, 5:15-6:45 PM, KCB 101. "Crack words, and you crack grammar: what morphology has to teach us about the language faculty" In this talk, I will use data from English, Quechua, and other languages to argue that morphology is not an independent component of the grammar. Instead, the phenomena we call ‘morphology’ emerge partly from syntax, partly from phonology, and partly from the interaction between these two. Far from belittling the importance of morphology as a subfield, I will show that this viewpoint places the study of morphology in a privileged position. Since the phenomena of morphology emerge from the interaction of different subcomponents of grammar, it follows that morphology has more to teach us about how these subcomponents fit together than any other subfield. 2. Laura McPherson, PhD Candidate, UCLA - CANCELLED Thursday, February 6, 5:15-6:45 PM, in KCB 101. 3. Mark Norris, PhD Candidate, UC Santa Cruz http://people.ucsc.edu/~mnorris/ Monday, February 10, 5:15-6:45 PM, in KCB 101. "Refining the characterization of nominal concord: Evidence from Estonian" This talk is an investigation of what I will call nominal concord -- the kind of agreement seen between nouns and the elements that modify them (e.g., adjectives, demonstratives). Descriptively, nominal concord is often described as various elements "agreeing with the head noun." Theoretically, it has been proposed that nominal concord is in some sense the noun phrase correlate of subject-verb agreement (Baker 2008, Carstens 2000, among others). In this talk, I investigate the behavior of nominal concord in Estonian, ultimately arguing that both views need to be revised. I will propose that apparent "agreement with the head noun" is epiphenomenal and that there are a number of important differences between concord and subject-verb agreement that need to be taken seriously. Instead, I will propose that nominal concord is purely morphological: elements showing concord in Estonian must express case and number for morphological reasons, and they acquire those values from the closest (nominal) phrase that contains them. Likewise, the meeting for her with students planned for Feb. 7 will not take place. Sorry!

1 0

An important message from your President :-)
by Hagstrom, Paul 29 Jan '14

29 Jan '14

>From Alex Williams: ____ Hello Fellow Linguists, In case you haven’t heard, the Linguistics Program is currently in the process of hiring two new professors. There is about to be a series of lectures from finalists for the position, and the Linguistics Program is asking undergraduates to attend this series of lectures so we can provide valuable feedback that will be used in the hiring process of these candidates! Now is the time for us to let the Linguistics Program hear our voice! There will also be a set of special meetings, at which we can meet the candidates and get to know them a little better. We hope to see you at as many of the events as possible and that you are able to provide the administration of Linguistics Program with some useful feedback! Below are descriptions of the upcoming lectures and the times for the individual meetings. 1. Neil Myler, PhD Candidate, NYU https://sites.google.com/site/neilmylerlinguist/ Monday, February 3, 5:15-6:45 PM, KCB 101. "Crack words, and you crack grammar: what morphology has to teach us about the language faculty" In this talk, I will use data from English, Quechua, and other languages to argue that morphology is not an independent component of the grammar. Instead, the phenomena we call ‘morphology’ emerge partly from syntax, partly from phonology, and partly from the interaction between these two. Far from belittling the importance of morphology as a subfield, I will show that this viewpoint places the study of morphology in a privileged position. Since the phenomena of morphology emerge from the interaction of different subcomponents of grammar, it follows that morphology has more to teach us about how these subcomponents fit together than any other subfield. 2. Laura McPherson, PhD Candidate, UCLA http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/grads/McPherson/Laura_McPhersons_Hom… Thursday, February 6, 5:15-6:45 PM, in KCB 101. "Variable vowel harmony in Tommo So verbal morphology" This talk probes the question of morphological distance -- what makes a suffix an "outer" suffix, and how fine-grained can such distinctions be? I focus on the test case of Tommo So (Dogon, Mali) derivational verb morphology, which shows an interesting interaction with vowel harmony. Tommo So has three vowel harmony processes (Low, Backness, ATR) that may optionally apply to a stem or a stem+suffix combination. Suffixes on verbs appear in a strict linear order, which can be used to establish a hierarchy of "morphological distance" from the stem. This 7-step hierarchy is respected by all three vowel harmony processes, such that they apply with decreasing frequency moving away from the stem. If we plot these application rates across morphological structure, we find that the data form sigmoid, or S-shaped, curves. In this talk, I first give a description of vowel harmony rules and demonstrate how they derive allomorphs of each suffix. I then discuss similar cases in the literature, before suggesting an analysis with weighted constraints that predicts the S-shaped curves found in the Tommo So data. In sum, this talk supports the idea of a highly textured morphology and explores ways in which the phonology responds to that complexity. 3. Mark Norris, PhD Candidate, UC Santa Cruz http://people.ucsc.edu/~mnorris/ Monday, February 10, 5:15-6:45 PM, in KCB 101. "Refining the characterization of nominal concord: Evidence from Estonian" This talk is an investigation of what I will call nominal concord -- the kind of agreement seen between nouns and the elements that modify them (e.g., adjectives, demonstratives). Descriptively, nominal concord is often described as various elements "agreeing with the head noun." Theoretically, it has been proposed that nominal concord is in some sense the noun phrase correlate of subject-verb agreement (Baker 2008, Carstens 2000, among others). In this talk, I investigate the behavior of nominal concord in Estonian, ultimately arguing that both views need to be revised. I will propose that apparent "agreement with the head noun" is epiphenomenal and that there are a number of important differences between concord and subject-verb agreement that need to be taken seriously. Instead, I will propose that nominal concord is purely morphological: elements showing concord in Estonian must express case and number for morphological reasons, and they acquire those values from the closest (nominal) phrase that contains them. Time and Place for the Special Meetings for undergraduates to talk with each of the candidates: 1. Monday, February 3, 9:30-10 AM 621 Comm. Ave. room B02 2. Friday, February 7, 9:30-10 AM, 621 Comm. Ave. room B02 3. Monday, February 10, 9:30-10 AM, 621 Comm. Ave. room B02 As soon as possible after *each* visit, please send your comments to carol(a)bu.edu, so that they can be shared with the search committee. ______ PS If you don't want to receive these messages anymore, please unsubscribe from the mailing list, instructions should be below. THANKS.

1 0

Upcoming Event
by Christian Williams 12 Nov '13

12 Nov '13

Hello everyone! We hope the end of your semester is going well and that you are not too terribly weighted down with work. On Nov. 20th in KCB 101 at 7:00 we will be having our big event for the semester, a lecture (sponsored by the Linguistics Program, Department of Romance Studies; co-sponsored by the BU Undergraduate Linguistics Association (BULA) and the BU Undergraduate Classics Association) from a new member of the classics faculty, Sasha Nikolaev. It is entitled "The Story of Writing Systems: The Origins and Development of Writing Systems," and the abstract is as follows: An overview of the major types of writing systems, their structure, and their historical evolution. This lecture will focus on the history of writing in the Mediterranean region, also briefly discussing several writing systems used in East Asia. We will survey the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Sumerian Akkadian cuneiform, the Phoenician consonantal script (abjad), and finally the Greek and Roman alphabets. To complement this historical overview, a typology of writing systems will be presented; we will also discuss the feasibility of a writing system completely devoid of any reference to the phonological structure of a language. All those interested in ancient languages and civilizations, historical linguistics, and phonology are invited. This event is a great opportunity to hear a lecture from a great, new professor knowledgeable about both Classics and Linguistics, plus there will be free refreshments available. We hope to see you there!

1 0

"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

1 0