9th November 2023 04:30 PM

ASL Linguistics Lecture Series: Debbie Chen Pichler to discuss Bimodal Bilingualism

The Department of Linguistics proudly presents Professor Debbie Chen Pichler, Professor of Linguistics at Gallaudet University

Dr. Pichler will present on "Bimodal Bilingualism and Beyond: What L2 Signers Teach Us about Language Acquisition".

ASL/English interpretation will be provided.

Abstract:

Research on bimodal bilinguals from around the world has broadened our understanding of how humans develop as multilinguals in both spoken and signed modalities.

This talk will overview some of the most significant insights from the last 20 years of bimodal bilingual research, focusing on language acquisition by young bimodal bilingual learners (i.e. Kids of Deaf Adults-KODA) children and deaf children with hearing amplification) and adult L2 signers.

This research also lies at the heart of heated debates about language choice and early intervention practices for deaf and hard of hearing children.

Bio:

As a young child, Dr. Deborah Chen Pichler got interested in linguistics and bilingualism, when she grew up in a bilingual English-Taiwanese family.

She's started working in the Linguistics department at Gallaudet University in 2002, where she teaches first and second language acquisition and generative syntax. Her research is focused on ASL acquisition (American Sign Language) by deaf children with deaf parents (with and without a CI) and by hearing bilingual children (CODA's: children of deaf adults).

She also researches the acquisition of ASL as a foreign language in adults.

She is especially interested in the use of technology in education, particularly in deaf education.

10th November 2023 12:20 PM

Phonetics Lab Meeting

Annabelle will lead a discussion of this paper :

• KRÄMER, M. (2019). Is vowel nasalisation phonological in English? A systematic review. English Language & Linguistics, 23(2), 405-437. doi:10.1017/S1360674317000442

15th November 2023 12:20 PM

PhonDAWG - Phonetics Lab Data Analysis Working Group

Sam will show some regressions and visualization of Fengyue's test data.

16th November 2023 04:30 PM

Colloquium Talk by Kyle Johnson on Implicit Objects as Incorporated Theta-roles

The Cornell Linguistic Circle and the Department of Linguistics proudly present Dr. Kyle Johnson of University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  Dr. Johnson will give a talk titled:  "Implicit Objects as Incorporated Theta-roles"

Abstract:

Some verbs are capable of being used without an expression of their arguments. The direct and indirect objects of eat and throw are standard examples.

(1)  a. Marlys ate cake.

           Marlys ate.

      b.  Marlys threw the ball to Sam.

           Marlys threw the ball.

The meanings of eat and throw preserve the θ-roles that cake and to Sam bear, even when those arguments are not present. Those θ-roles are understood to be existentially closed. They are said to be implicit when this happens. The ability for a θ-role to be implicit seems to be idiosyncratically controlled by the verb, but it does not extend to external arguments.

To make an external θ-role implicit, a valency changing operation is required. An external/internal argument contrast of this sort is also found in many kinds of Noun Incorporation constructions. The lexically idiosyncratic nature of making a θ-role implicit also seems to be a feature of some Noun Incorporation constructions.

Martí (2015) argues that the syntax and semantics of Noun Incorporation underlies making a θ-role implicit. I will pursue that thesis in this talk. I will suggest that we should think of θ-roles as being kinds of nominals, and sketch a syntax that makes sense of that idea. One of its consequences is that θ-roles can undergo Incorporation, and this is how implicit arguments are achieved.

 Bio:

Kyle graduated with a BA in psychology from the University of California-Irvine in 1981. UC, Irvine had an interesting group of cognitive psychologists at that time working on learning theory, attention, and visual perception. The cognitive science group included linguists -- Mary-Louise Kean, Peter Culicover, Bernard Tranel, Ed Matthei, Ken Wexler, and Stephen Crain, who was a graduate student.

Dr. Johnson learned about linguistics from them and went on to study it at MIT, where he got a PhD in 1985. On his way to the position he now has at UMass, he taught, and mostly learned, at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, UC-Irvine, UCLA, University of Wisconsin at Madison and McGill University. His specialization is in syntactic theory.