• Please mark your calendars:
  
  

  The 4TH ANNUAL QP FEST will be held on Friday 4 May 2007, and will be an all-day event. This is a great opportunity for linguistics graduates who have (nearly) completed their first or second QPs to present their research to the larger Linguistics community.

  We invite all who are interested in presenting to write to Bruno aananda@stanford.edu with your tentative talk title by April 15. Please follow the time-line below.

  • By April 15: Write to Bruno aananda@stanford.edu with a tentative talk title.
  • By April 23: Confirm talk title and submit a one-page abstract (PDF format).

  The QP Fest committee
  Vivienne, Matt, Marie-Catherine, Bruno, Alex, and Dmitry

• Congratulations!

  • Bruno Estigarribia has accepted a two-year postdoctoral training grant in the program in neurodevelopmental disorders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He will be doing research on the language development of autistic and fragile X kids. Congrats, Bruno!
  • Sociolinguistics Professor John Rickford considers shifting to child language acquisition as he joins the grandparents club with Nyla Angela Washington, born March 29, 2007 (7 lbs, 9 oz; 20 3/4") to daughter Anakela and son-in-law Marc.
    
    
    
    
    
• The Stanford Blood Center has a shortage of types O-, A-, and B-. For an appointment, go to http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call 650-723-7831. It only takes an hour of your time and you get free cookies.
  

Our roving reporter in Tucson stumbled into City Hall two weeks ago, just in time to catch Norma Mendoza Denton and Aomar Boum getting married. From left to right -- Tad Park (Aomar's dissertation advisor), Aomar, Norma, and Jane Hill. Congratulations and best wishes, Norma and Aomar!

• A Farmer's Fable

  There was a chicken farmer who lived in a village in China. One year his chickens were afflicted with a strange blight that caused them to lose their feathers. The farmer was deeply concerned about this because winter was coming and if the chickens had no feathers, they would freeze to death. So, the farmer decided to consult the two wisest men in the land. First, he visited Mr. Hing, the renowned scholar. Mr. Hing leafed through all his agricultural and medicinal texts and pored over books and scrolls well into the night. Finally, he returned to the farmer and told him that if he crushed the leaves of a gum tree into powder, made it into tea, and fed it to his chickens, they would be cured.

  The farmer then went to Mr. Ming, the great seer. Mr. Ming cast stones, read tea leaves, and poked through entrails until finally he came up with the answer: "As surely as gum causes a shoe to stick to the ground, tea made from gum leaves will cause feathers to stick to chickens."

  Now the farmer was ecstatic. The two wisest men in the land had given him exactly the same prescription. So, as soon as he returned home, he took some gum leaves and made tea from them. He mixed this with the chicken feed and fed it to his chickens. But it didn't work. The chickens continued to lose their feathers, and, with the onset of winter, they all froze.

  The moral of this story: All of Hing's courses and all of Ming's ken couldn't get gum tea to feather a hen.

• What did that sign say?
  
  
  1. Did I read that sign right?
     TOILET OUT OF ORDER. PLEASE USE FLOOR BELOW
     
  2. In a Laundromat:
     AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINES: PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR CLOTHES WHEN THE LIGHT GOES OUT
     
  3. In a London department store:
     BARGAIN BASEMENT UPSTAIRS
     
  4. In an office:
     WOULD THE PERSON WHO TOOK THE STEP LADDER YESTERDAY PLEASE BRING IT BACK OR FURTHER STEPS WILL BE TAKEN
     
  5. In an office:
     AFTER TEA BREAK STAFF SHOULD EMPTY THE TEAPOT AND STAND UPSIDE DOWN ON THE DRAINING BOARD
     
  6. Outside a secondhand shop:
     WE EXCHANGE ANYTHING - BICYCLES, WASHING MACHINES, ETC. WHY NOT BRING YOUR WIFE ALONG AND GET A WONDERFUL TRADE
     
  7. Notice in health food shop window:
     CLOSED DUE TO ILLNESS
     
  8. Spotted in a safari park:(I sure hope so)
     ELEPHANTS PLEASE STAY IN YOUR CAR
     
  9. Seen during a conference:
     FOR ANYONE WHO HAS CHILDREN AND DOESN'T KNOW IT, THERE IS A DAY CARE ON THE 1ST FLOOR
     
  10. Notice in a farmer's field:
      THE FARMER ALLOWS WALKERS TO CROSS THE FIELD FOR FREE, BUT THE BULL CHARGES.
      
  11. Message on a leaflet:
      IF YOU CANNOT READ, THIS LEAFLET WILL TELL YOU HOW TO GET LESSONS
      
  12. On a repair shop door:
      WE CAN REPAIR ANYTHING. (PLEASE KNOCK HARD ON THE DOOR - THE BELL DOESN'T WORK)
      

• FRIDAY, 13 APRIL

  • Ethics@Noon

    12:00 in Bldg. 60:61H
    
    Donald Kennedy (President Emeritus, Stanford)
    Ethical Issues in Research and Publication
    

  • Berkeley Syntax and Semantics Circle

    14:30 in 1229 Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
    
    Gaėtanelle Gilquin (Belgian National Scientific Research Fund/University of Louvain) will present a talk entitled `Testing the linguistic and cognitive reality of prototypes: The case of high-frequency verbs'.
    

  • Linguistics Department Colloquium

    15:30 in MJH 126
    
    Anthony Kroch (U. Penn)
    Was Old English a Verb-Second Language? (abstract)
    

  • Weekly Social

    17:00 in the department lounge. Gourmet delights from the Social Committee.
    
  
  

• For local linguistic events, always consult the Department's event page, available RIGHT HERE
  
  
• Got broader interests? The New Sesquipedalian recommends reading or even subscribing to the CSLI Calendar, available HERE.
  
  
• What's happening at UC Santa Cruz? Find out HERE.
  
  
• What's going on at UC Berkeley? Check it out HERE.