Colloquia and Talks
Conferences and Calls for Papers
Fall Semester Reading Groups

(Lecture by Morgan Sonderegger) The Diachronic Dynamics of English Noun/Verb Pair Stress

ABSTRACT: Noun/verb (N/V) pairs in English have been undergoing variation and change between three stress patterns for several hundred years: {1,1} (wítness, n. and v.) {1,2} (cómbat, n.; combá v.), and {2,2} (polí, n. and v.). The diachronic dynamics of N/V pair stress can be observed with excellent resolution using historical dictionaries, and used to test theories of the sources of phonological change. This talk describes a project combining empirical and computational methods to map the dynamics of N/V pair stress, and to model the relationship between these population-level dynamics and learning by individuals. The data consist of a corpus of stresses for 150 N/V pairs as listed in 76 dictionaries from 1570-present. Previous work has argued that frequency and syllabic structure may be factors conditioning which pairs shift stress (Minkova, 1996; Phillips, 2006), and that the dynamics consist largely of lexical diffusion from the {2,2} to the {1,2} pattern (Sherman, 1975). We use logistic regression to determine the effects of frequency and structure on which pairs shift stress, and find that both factors play significant roles, with a strong and unusual interaction between the two. We then construct time trajectories of stress for each N/V pair since its first attestation. The observed dynamics are complex, including bidirectional change, stable and unstable variation, and analogical effects. In the second part of the talk, we consider several population-level mathematical models of the dynamics of N/V pair stress, corresponding to different assumptions about biases in language learning by individuals which might underlie the observed dynamics. (For example, misperception of stress location; Kelly, 1989.) We build models in the dynamical systems framework (Niyogi, 2006), which considers the diachronic population-level consequences of assumptions about learning by individuals. Comparing each model's properties to the observed diachronic dynamics, we find that the only successful models incorporate both transmission errors between the speaker and hearer and bias making some patterns harder to learn than others ("channel bias" and "analytic bias"; Moreton, 2009), two types of proposed sources of change often seen as opposed. Our result suggests that both types of bias in learning are important in explaining patterns of change.

(Lecture by Kathleen Currie Hall) An Information-Theoretic Model of Phonological Relationships

ABSTRACT: Noun/verb (N/V) pairs in English have been undergoing variation and change between three stress In this talk, I address the problem of phonological relationships that seem to be intermediate between contrast and allophony. Allophony (in which two sounds are predictably distributed all of the time) and contrast (in which two sounds are unpredictably distributed at least some of the time) have traditionally been assumed to be binarily and categorically distinct. There are, however, a large number of intermediate relationships in the world.s languages that apparently affect both phonological and perceptual patterns. Such relationships have generally been marginalized in the phonological literature and given names such as "quasi-allophones" or "marginal contrasts."I present a new model of phonological relationships that redefines these relationships along a continuum, from fully predictable to never predictable. Intermediate relationships can be defined at all points along this continuum, and the precise relationship between any two sounds in a language can be quantified given a corpus of the language. The continuum is largely based on the information-theoretic concept of entropy, a measure of the uncertainty that exists in the choice among any set of items. In addition to its mathematical rigor, using uncertainty as the basis for modeling phonological relationships provides a cognitively based explanation for a variety of phonological phenomena. In the talk, I discuss one of these: namely, the observation that contrastive sounds are perceptually more distinct than allophonic ones, or more precisely, that the more unpredictably distributed a pair of sounds is, the more perceptually distinct that pair will be.

(Linguistics Department Graduate Workshops) Grant Writing and Submission: Funding your Graduate and Post-graduate Work

Ken de Jong and Sandra Kübler will present the whys and hows of collaborative research. Doing joint authored work has become much more common in linguistics for a lot of good reasons. We will discuss reasons for collaborative research, some ideas for how to conduct it, and go over the range of pitfalls associated with it.

Date	Speakers
17 February	Ken de Jong and Markus Dickinson

(Hispanic Linguistics Brown Bag Series) Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology (CASPSLaP) Poster Practice Session

Abstract will be posted as soon as it is available.

Date	Speaker(s)
22 February	José Hernández
7 March	Gibran Delgado-Díaz
21 March	Allen Davis
4 April	Kimberly L. Geeslin & Bret Linford
18 April	Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, Avizia Y. Long, & Megan Solon

(Second Language Studies Colloquium Series) Processing Gender in L2 Spanish: Evidence from Adjective Agreement

ABSTRACT: In recent second-language (L2) acquisition research, the debate regarding the features involved in agreement computations has taken center stage. Some researchers (Hawkins & Casillas, 2008) argue that an uninterpretable feature absent in the first-language (L1) grammar will not be part of the L2 grammar, and learners will rely on context-sensitive rules based on distributional regularities in the input. Other researchers (e.g., Lardiere, 2009) propose that all features remain accessible in L2 acquisition, but that the task of reassembling those features is extremely demanding. To relieve processing costs, it is suggested that learners may insert underspecified forms in the computation, but that feature clashes will be avoided (e.g., McCarthy, 2008). Despite extensive research on gender agreement in L2 Spanish (e.g., Keating, 2009; Montrul, Foote, & Perpinan, 2008; Sagarra & Herschensohn, 2008; White et al., 2004), these two proposals have not been directly tested. The aim of this study is thus to investigate the distinct processing consequences that these proposals suggest: domain-general symmetrical matching of features (based on rules of co-occurrences) or asymmetrical checking of an uninterpretrable feature by an interpretable counterpart in a hierarchy of specifications (relying on the Agree operation).Low-proficiency English learners of Spanish and a native control group completed a self-paced moving-window judgment task that included three conditions targeting overt gender agreement on adjectives: after an unexpressed pronoun, in a predicate and in a superlative construction. Each experimental item consisted of a short context containing a noun marked for gender and a follow-up sentence presented in segments (as shown with the slashes). Acceptance rates and reading times (RTs) on the adjective (adjusted for letter differences) and on the following segment are analyzed.Following the results from a L2 French study testing similar conditions (Renaud, 2011), learners and natives are expected to exhibit a similar processing profile suggestive of the computation of the uninterpretable gender feature, but lower proficiency learners' grammaticality judgments may lag behind. The results should then provide further evidence that features have the same nature and etiology in L1 and L2 grammars (Lardiere, 2009), and that extra processing costs are generally avoided.

Date	Speaker(s)
24 February	Sun-Young Shin, Ryan Lidster, Rebecca Yaeger, and Stacy Sabraw
6 April	Jim Miller and Chuck Watson

(Lecture by Hélène Blondeau) Francophony and Ethnicity in a Global Montreal

This paper reflects on the notion of Francophony in the context of Multicultural Montreal by integrating the dimensions of ethnicity and contact into the analysis of Montreal French. The goal is to analyse the French of the Montreal speech community considering not only the French of speakers of traditional Québécois ethnolinguistic origin, who have been the subject of numerous studies, but also that of other population segments of the Global Montreal, namely speakers with other ethnocultural or ethnolinguistic affiliations who have integrated French into their repertoire . The paper reports on the perceived ethnic identities of Montrealers based on a perception experiment and examines the phonetic correlates of theses perceptions.

Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 21 (The Third Indiana Meeting)

Invited Speakers:
Zeljko Boskovic, University of Connecticut
Damir Cavar, Eastern Michigan University
Tania Ionin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

FASL 21 will be preceded by a SPECIAL SESSION on Computational Approaches to Slavic Languages 10-11 May 2012 and followed by a free Workshop in Slavic Linguistics 14-17 May 2012.

Abstracts are invited for 30-minute presentations (plus 10 minutes discussion) on any topic dealing with formal aspects of Slavic syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, phonetics, including language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. Computational talks will be organized into the special session.

Abstracts are limited to TWO PAGES and should be ANONYMOUS. Abstract submissions should be made via the EasyChair Conference System. Specific instructions will be made available on the conference website: http://www.indiana.edu/~iuslavic/fasl21.shtml.

Authors are advised to re-check examples and glosses with speakers of the languages involved.

The deadline for abstracts has been EXTENDED to 5 FEBRUARY 2012. After that, there will be no extensions. We hope to make a program available by 15 MARCH 2012.

The Illinois Language and Linguistics Society - 4th annual meeting

The 4th annual meeting of the Illinois Language and Linguistics Society will be held April 13-15, 2012 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ILLS is a general linguistics conference open to all subfields. This year's meeting will include a special session Saturday, April 14th on the topic ?Discourse and Pragmatics.' We are currently accepting abstracts for topics in general linguistics although special consideration will be given to papers that fit the theme for the special session. Deadline for submission is February 12th.

The top 4 submitted student abstracts will be awarded $200 to cover conference travel costs.

All talks will be given 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for questions. Abstract submission guidelines and instructions can be found at: http://ills.linguistics.illinois.edu

Please contact lso.illinois@gmail.com with any questions you may have.

Invited Speakers: Betty J. Birner (Northern Illinois University)
Paul Kiparsky (Stanford University)
Jonathan MacDonald (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Marina Terkourafi (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Robert E. Vann (Western Michigan University)

17th Annual Preparing Future Faculty Conference

This conference is sponsored by the University Graduate School and other participating departments and is FREE to all IU graduate students. Registration is not required. In order to participate in the complimentary lunch you must RSVP by Friday, February 17th, 2012 to iupffc@gmail.com with your name, department, and year in your program. There is limited seating for lunch.

Indiana University's 17th Annual Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) Graduate Conference is a one-day event designed to provide graduate students from all disciplines and at all phases of their educations with important information about preparing for their future academic careers.

The program consists of the following four sessions:

(1) Career Options, Responsibilities, and Rewards. Four panelists will discuss the career options that are available for PhD recipients.

(2) Developing a Professional Record of Research, Teaching, and Service. Panelists will discuss the aspects of potential faculty records that are appealing to members of search committees. Experts will address how graduate students can develop different aspects of their records.

(3) Teaching Is/As Brain Surgery. This panel will take an in-depth look at teaching and learning. Designed to help graduate students improve their teaching techniques, this panel will address what we as instructors need to know about this generation of college students.

(4) Navigating the Job Market. Panelists will discuss the qualities of successful candidates at different colleges and universities. This session will address the details of being on the job market; more specifically, panelists who have served on search committees will provide insider perspectives about faculty visits. This session will also provide an insider perspective on successful interviewing.

CLingDing: Computational Linguistics Hour

There will be no CLingDing this week. We will resume on 21 February with a talk by Markus Dickinson and Marwa Ragheb.

Date	Speaker
21 February	Markus Dickinson & Marwa Ragheb
28 February	Tony Meyer
6 March	Scott Ledbetter
20 March	Rehj Cantrell
27 March	Shahab Khan
3 April	Wren Thornton
17 April	Levi King

Korean Phonology Reading Group

Anyone interested in participating in a reading group this semester on Korean phonology should contact Stuart Davis (davis@indiana.edu).