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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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BULA Discussion Group This Wednesday!
by Lara Bryfonski 05 Mar '12

05 Mar '12

Hello again linguists! Please join us for our monthly discussion group this Wednesday, March 7th at 8pm in CAS 204B. The topic will be lost languages and we will be viewing this cool TED talk ( http://www.ted.com/talks/rajesh_rao_computing_a_rosetta_stone_for_the_indus…) on the 4000 year-old Indus script. Your friendly co-president Lara Bryfonski will also give a practice talk on the research she is currently completing at Harvard and will be presenting this weekend at McGill University's Undergraduate Linguistics Conference in Montreal. The topic is how kids construct logical semantic form during sentence comprehension. Please come and give your support and suggestions! We will also be voting on designs for a linguistics-themed BULA t-shirt. Bring your ideas! It's not too late to join the e-board for the next academic year! We need YOU to make BULA a success in future semesters. See you Wednesday! bula.bu.edu

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Talk on Friday, 1pm, CAS 533B, Daniel Erker, "Of categories and continua"
by Paul Hagstrom 19 Feb '12

19 Feb '12

Hello, BULA -- here is a message from Prof. Barnes about a linguistics talk this coming Friday. The talk is on 2/23 at 1pm in CAS 533B. -Paul Dear linguists, I wanted to alert you to another upcoming talk on campus, this one by Daniel Erker, a candidate for the position in Spanish linguistics in the Dept. of Romance Studies. Daniel specializes in Spanish dialectology, phonetics, and sociolinguistics. His talk will be held on Friday, February 23, in CAS 533B, in the Geddes Language Center, and will be titled: Of categories and continua: Relating the discrete and gradient aspects of sociophonetic variation Refreshments will be served afterward! Additionally, for those of you that were present at the talk last week by Meghan Armstrong, our search committee would be interested in hearing any feedback that you might have on the matter. Please send any thoughts that might be helpful to us by email to me at jabarnes(a)bu.edu. We are extremely grateful for anything that you would like to share. Best, Jon Barnes

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Become part of the BULA e-board!
by Lara Bryfonski 09 Feb '12

09 Feb '12

Hello again fellow language lovers, Interested in becoming more involved in the BULA? Want to help plan events and meet fellow linguists? Please consider becoming a part of the BULA e-board! We are looking for returning students to take charge of this exciting club for the next academic year. As an e-board member, you will have the chance to interact with your linguistics professors and other linguistics-loving students to plan topics for discussion, invite guest speakers, and keep current with happenings in the field. If you are interested, e-mail bula(a)louis-xiv.bu.edu. We are planning to invite interested members to our next e-board meeting sometime next week, so please include your availability. Looking forward to seeing you! bula.bu.edu

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Spanish linguistics talk Friday 1-2pm in CAS 533B: M. Armstrong, Intonation and belief states in Puerto Rican Spanish
by Paul Hagstrom 09 Feb '12

09 Feb '12

Dear linguists, We wanted to call your attention to an event happening on campus this Friday that may be of interest to many of you. Specifically, Meghan Armstrong of Ohio State University and Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona will be giving a talk in the area of Spanish linguistics. The title of this talk will be "Intonation and Belief States in Puerto Rican Spanish", and it will take place on Friday, February 10, from 1 to 2, in CAS 533B. Little to no background in linguistics will be presumed, so the talk should be accessible to everyone. An informal reception, with refreshments, will follow. Hope to see you there... -Paul

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Reminder: Meeting Tonight
by Lara Bryfonski 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

The BULA would like to remind you to come to our first meeting of the semester TONIGHT *Tuesday, January 31st at 7pm in CAS 225!* We look forward to seeing you all and hearing your ideas for the semester. See you tonight! bula.bu.edu

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BULA Spring Semester
by Lara Bryfonski 25 Jan '12

25 Jan '12

Welcome back linguists and hope you are enjoying the beginning of the new semester. We are hoping to see you again at our monthly discussion groups and various events! This semester we plan to have several speakers give talks on their research, collaborate on events with other linguistics clubs and related BU clubs, and make t-shirts. Please join us next *Tuesday, January 31st at 7pm in CAS 225* for our first meeting of the semester. We will be discussing events, t-shirt ideas, and how to get involved with the e-board next year. We would also like to have our monthly discussion on a theme of your choosing! The officers have thought about discussing a topic in language acquisition, but we are looking for more ideas. If you have an idea for next week's discussion, send us an e-mail at bula(a)ling.bu.edu before next Tuesday. Looking forward to seeing everyone and hearing your ideas for this semester! And as always: make sure to check out our website: bula.bu.edu and like our Facebook fan page.

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Undergraduate conferences
by Paul Hagstrom 04 Dec '11

04 Dec '11

Two undergraduate conferences (in Canada) have just been announced, the details are below. If you think you might have something interesting to present, consider sending an abstract. (I'd also encourage you to check in with one of us on the Linguistics faculty to discuss how to put an abstract together, if you're interested in submitting one.) There is also usually an undergraduate conference at Harvard as well, although that has not yet been announced as far as I know. The two conferences here are: McGill Canadian Conference for Linguistics Undergraduates (McCCLU 2012), conference March 9-11 abstracts due January 6 http://mccclu2012.blogspot.com/ http://linguistlist.org/confcustom/McCCLU2012/ Call for papers attached (PDF) Toronto Undergraduate Linguistics Conference (TULCon 2012), conference March 2-4 abstracts due February 5 http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~slugs/?s=tulcon2012 Call for papers below -Paul Begin forwarded message: > TULCON5: CALL FOR PAPERS > > The Society of Linguistics Undergraduate Students (SLUGS) at the > University of Toronto is excited to announce its fifth annual conference > for undergraduates from March 2-4, 2012. The Toronto Undergraduate > Linguistics Conference (TULCon) is a great opportunity to meet your peers > in the linguistics world, share your work, and learn; and we invite your > submissions. Abstracts should be approximately 500 words in length (not > including references), can be about any topic relating to linguistics, and > can also be works in progress. Speakers will have the opportunity to speak > for 20 minutes with 5 minutes for questions following. In your submission, > please indicate whether you would like to present a talk or a poster > during our poster session. > > Submissions should be sent as .pdf or Microsoft Word (.doc, NOT .docx) > attachments to tulcon2012(a)gmail.com by Sunday, February 5, 2012. Also, > keep an eye out for announcements about registration coming up in the near > future! If you have any questions, please contact us at > tulcon2012(a)gmail.com. > > -- > SLUGS (Society of Linguistics Undergraduate Students) > E-mail: slugs(a)chass.utoronto.ca > Web site: http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~slugs/ > Facebook page: > https://www.facebook.com/pages/University-of-Torontos-SLUGS/275253139164711 > >

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