Linguistics Circle at Cornell (CLC)

CLC Colloquium Speakers

Each year CLC members invite selected linguists to come present and discuss their current research.
This speaker series is funded in part by the GPSAFC.

2025

Naomi Feldman (Dec. 4, 2025)

Topic: TBD

Gaja Jarosz (Oct. 2, 2025)

Topic: TBD

Kathryn Davidson (Sept. 18, 2025)

Topic: TBD

Jeff Mielke (May 1, 2025)

Topic: Covert and overt articulatory variation and their implications for phonology

Donka Farkas (Apr. 10, 2025)

Topic: The Interpretation of Rising Intonation in English

Helena Aparicio (Mar. 27, 2025)

Topic: Scalar implicature rates vary within and across adjectival scales

Andrew Carnie (Mar. 6, 2025)

Topic: Dependency-based Merge

Veneeta Dayal (Jan. 30, 2025)

Topic: The Sortability Hypothesis Cross-linguistically

2024

Martina Martinović (Dec. 5, 2024)

Topic: Clitics in Wolof: Syntax all the way up

San Duanmu (Oct. 31, 2024)

Topic: A Gesture-Based Feature Theory and its Consequences

Molly Babel (Oct. 3, 2024)

Topic: What’s in a voice? Language-specific and language-general phonetics

Chris Collins (Sept. 26, 2024)

Topic: A Merge-Based Approach to Argument Structure

Maria Gouskova (Sept. 12, 2024)

Topic: Nobody's Coyote: Possessedness Features in Pipil

Maher Bahloul (May 2, 2024)

Topic: Exploring the Linguistic Landscape of Middle East Pidgin Arabic: An Analysis of Unique Features

Willy Conley (April 22, 2024)

Topic: How “It Fell on Deaf Ears” Became a Play

Vicki Nordquist (April 18, 2024)

Topic: Hand Play

Krishnan Ram-Prasad (April 18, 2024)

Topic: The clitic system(s) of Proto-Indo-European

Amanda Rysling (March 28, 2024)

Topic: A new window on linguistic efficiency: what it takes to comprehend (a) focus

Gideon Firl (Mar. 12, 2024)

Topic: Deaf Perspective: Exploring the Essence of Indian Sign Language

Matthew Faytak (Mar. 7, 2024)

Topic: The aerodynamics of nasal harmony in Piaroa

Cindy Officer (Feb. 8, 2024)

Topic: Acculturating into Deaf Communities as Adults

Edith Aldridge (Feb. 1, 2024)

Topic: Diachronic Origin of the Austronesian Voice System

2023

Angelika Kratzer (March 30, 2023)

Topic: How to Build a Knowledge Ascription

James Crippen (April 20, 2023)

Topic: The syntactic derivation of complex verb morphology and so-called ‘polysynthesis’ in Tlingit

Adrian Stegovec (April 27, 2023)

Topic: A typological gap in person restrictions and the un-parameterization of Agree

Byron Ahn (May 4, 2023)

Topic: Variation in English Reflexives: Themself and Themselves

Vera Gribanova (Sept. 7, 2023)

Topic: The identity relation in ellipsis: variation in its domain of application

Julie Hochgesang (Sept. 28, 2023)

Topic: Sharing ASL data online FAIRly with CARE the ASL way - MoLo and O5S5 projects

Ronald Kim (Oct. 19, 2023)

Topic: The Ossetic Transitive Preterite: Typology, Evolution, Contac

Kevin Connelly (Oct. 26, 2023)

Topic: Applied Philology: Using Classic Indigenous Literature in Language Revitalization

Kyle Johnson (Nov. 16, 2023)

Topic: Implicit Objects as Incorporated Theta-roles

Anna Bugaeva (Nov. 27, 2023)

Topic: Appositive possession in Ainu and indigenous American languages: Inherited feature or rarum?

2022

Matt Wagers (November 3, 2022)

Alignment, Reanalysis and Reencoding in a Verb-initial Language

Josef Fruehwald (November 10, 2022)

Sound Change? Incrementation? Diffusion?

Adamantios Gafos (April 28, 2022)

Entropic bases for artificial grammar learning and infant mispronunciation studies

Junko Shimoyama (April 21, 2022)

Embedded negative polar questions in Japanese: Explaining the puzzling distribution of embedded noncanonical negation

Kathryn Franich (April 7, 2022)

Exploring the Relationship Between Temporal Coordination and Phonetic Enhancement Effects

Lisa Matthewson (March 24, 2022)

Aren’t negative questions in Gitksan biased?

2021

Omer Preminger (September 30, 2021)

Natural Language Without Semiosis

Matthew Goldrick (April 1, 2021)

Multiple Levels of Analysis in the Study of Sound Structure

David Embick (March 11, 2021)

Smaller Structures for Stative Passives

Mark Aronoff (February 11, 2021)

English Spelling: Getting Better All the Time

2020

Morgan Sonderegger (December 3, 2020)

The SPADE Project: Large-scale Analysis of a Spoken Language Across Space and Time

Rebecca Morley (November 19, 2020)

Towards a Domain-general Theory of Phonological Contrast

2019

Judith Degen (October 31, 2019)

Harnessing the Richness of the Linguistic Signal to Predict Pragmatic Inferences

Christian DiCanio (September 26, 2019)

Beyond Tonogenesis: The Role of Speech Reduction and Redundant Cues in the Diversification of Otomanguean Tonal Systems

Andrew Simpson (September 19, 2019)

Classifiers are for What? Probing the Syntax of an Enigmatic Functional Category

Jeff Mielke (March 14, 2019)

Phonetic Studies of Interesting Vowel Systems

2018

Florian Schwarz (October 11, 2018)

The role of linear order in interpretation -- A case study on presupposition projection from conjunction

Mark Hale (February 22, 2018)

Second Positions in Latin

2017

Jessica Coon (October 12, 2017)

Feature Gluttony and Hierarchy Effects

Edith Aldridge (March 23, 2017)

Case and Parameter Change in Chinese

2016

John Goldsmith (November 3, 2016)

Unsupervised Learning of Morphology, and What It Teaches Us about Learning and Explanation

Dan Jurafsky (October 20, 2016)

Discovering Laws of Semantic Change and Extracting Social and Pragmatic Meaning from Everyday Interactions: On applying Computational Linguistics to the Social Science of Language

Roger Levy (September 23, 2016)

Bayesian Pragmatics: Lexical Uncertainty, Compositionality, and the Typology of Conversational Implicature

Martin Hackl (April 7, 2016)

On the Role of Question Answer Congruence, Scalar Presupposition, and the Structure of Alternatives in the Acquisition and Processing of "Only"

Keith Johnson (March 3, 2016)

Adventures in Phonetic Neuroscience

2015

Judith Tonhauser (October 8, 2015)

Projection Variability

Alan Yu (September 10, 2015)

The United States Supreme Court Oral Arguments as a Sociophonetic Corpus

Mandy Simons (April 16, 2015)

How Questions and Answers Cohere

Paul Kiparsky (April 9, 2015)

Syntactic Drift and Convergence

Patricia Keating (March 19, 2015)

Linguistic Voice Quality

Jason Merchant (February 19, 2015)

Joint Selection

Workshops

The CLC hosts a number of recurring and one-time workshops throughout the academic year.

Workshops for 2024-2025

• 2/21/2025 - Professional Workshop with Dr. Naomi Enzinna (’18 Alum)
• 3/7/2025 - Professional Workshop with Dr. Mia Gong (’22 Alum)
• 4/25/2025 - Professional Workshop with Dr. Lingzi Zhuang (’23 Alum)
• 2/8/2025 - Personal Website Workshop: by John Starr

Workshops for 2023-2024

• 4/14/2023 - Professional Workshop with Dr. Carol-Rose Little (’20 Alum)
• 4/21/2023 - Professional Workshop with Dr. Katie Blake (’22 Alum)

Workshops for 2022-2023

• 11/14/2022 - L^aT_eX for Linguists basics: By John Starr
• 11/21/2022 - L^aT_eX for S-siders: By Young-Hoon Kim

Workshops for 2021-2022

• 02/19/2022 - L^aT_eX for Linguists basics: By John Starr
• 02/26/2022 - L^aT_eX for S-siders: By Young-Hoon Kim

Workshops for 2020-2021

• 10/30/2020 - L^aT_eX for Linguists: By Lingzi Zhuang
• 1/27/2021 - How to Build a Website: By Mary Maroney

Workshops for 2018-2019

• 10/18/2018 - L^aT_eX for Linguists: By Forrest Davis and Mia Wiegand
• 11/8/2018 - How to Build a Website: By Jacob Collard

Workshops for 2017-2018

• 3/1/2017 - How to Build a Website: By Jacob Collard
• 10/26/2017 - L^aT_eX for Linguists: By Mia Wiegand, Carol-Rose Little, and Jacob Collard.

Workshops from 2016-2017

• 9/29/2016 - L^aT_eX for Linguists: By Todd Snider, Zac Smith, and Mia Wiegand
• 12/1/2016 - How to Build your Webpage 101: By Zac Smith and Jacob Collard

Workshops from 2015-2016

• 9/25/2015 - Professional development workshop: By department faculty.
• 10/6/2015 - Natural Language Processing with SpaCy: By Jacob Collard
• 10/29/2015 - L^aT_eX for Linguists: By Todd Snider & Zac Smith
• 10/29/2015 - How to Build your Webpage 101: By Zac Smith and Todd Snider

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We have also held one-time workshops on parsing, developing grammars for NLP, and writing abstracts, among other topics.

Social Events

The CLC organizes a variety of social events every year, including ski trips, movie nights, and picnics.

Recurring Events

• Weekly Coffee & Cupcake Hour
• Welcome Back, year-end, and summer BBQ picnics
• Holiday party
• Prospective Students Weekend
• Apple picking
• Skiing

Pictures of Past Events

Reading Groups

The primary aim of the CLC reading groups is to foster informal discussion of a wide range of topics. Members can also present their own research projects at various stages of development, from ideas just starting out to polished conference talks.

Syntax Circle

Syntax Circle meets weekly to discuss papers chosen by the participants or to hear presentations from members. Topics range from formal grammars to distributed morphology and everything in between. SynCirc currently meets every Wednesday, alternating between in-person meetings at 5 PM and Zoom meetings at 7 PM. For more information, contact Burak Oney at bo87@cornell.edu.

Semantics Group

Semantics Group meets every week and provides an opportunity for students and faculty to come together to tackle current issues related to semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, and the syntax-semantics interface. Meetings are held Fridays from 12:25 to 1:15 PM. For more information, contact Prof. Sarah Murray at sarah.murray@cornell.edu.

Ph²

The Ph² (Phonetics and Phonology) Reading Group hosts biweekly meetings to discuss current topics of interest in phonetics and phonology. The group meets on Fridays at 12:25 PM. For more information, contact Lisa Zhao at fz227@cornell.edu.

Historical Reading Group

Historical Reading Group meets to discuss any and all topics, papers, and data related to historical linguistics. Recent topics include Chinese serial verb compounds, Austronesian migration patterns, and Germanic historical syntax. Meetings are held every other Tuesday at 12:15 PM in Morrill 226F. For more information, contact Prof. Michael L. Weiss at mlw36@cornell.edu.

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The CLC has also hosted occasional reading groups based on the current interests of members. In the past we have had a Language Research Group. Our members also attend a variety of interdisciplinary reading groups including the Emergent System Group, the Cognitive Science Reading Group, and the NLP Group among others.

Resources

The following is a collection of links to resources that may be of use to CLC members.

Teaching

• TA Wiki
• Linguistics FWS Wiki
• FWS Resources
• Canvas Help
• Confluence Home
• LSA Academic Depository

Cornell/Grad School

• Graduate School Forms
• Cornell Academic Calendar
• Phonetics Lab
• Computational Linguistics Lab
• Department News

Linguistics Jobs/Careers

• Career Linguist - Provides Consulting Services for Linguists Seeking Professional Positions

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