Penny Eckert is "resting uncomfortably" (her words) after successful back surgery yesterday...

In other news, Uli Sauerland recently managed to spend a week with the Pirahã (thanks to EU-funding, two Brazilian government approvals, and Doug Ball's willingness to fill in for him in his class). Uli joined a team of three there (two Brazilians and a PhD-student from Berlin). He reports that there are three tidbits about the Pirahã: They used to fight a lot (he met a guy who claims to have eaten an enemy's flesh when he was younger). Now they are peaceful and friendly -- Uli got adopted as "Pohoipai" and, as you can see, he got the body paint to go with the name. They still live largely as hunter-gatherers, but grow maniok and possibly some bananas and papaya. However, they are largely monolingual and have little contact with the outside world -- when they saw a picture of San Francisco and they assumed it was Humaitá, the Brazilian small city nearest -- i.e. a day away by car and boat from their reservation.


[So what does it all mean? Is recursion innate? Is there UG in the Chomskyan sense? Is Everett right? Are Pesetsky and co. right? Are neither of them right? So many questions.... So little time -- the Sesquipeditor]

John Rickford gave a talk on Thursday at the UC Davis Linguistics Department. His title was: "Relativizer Omission in Anglophone Caribbean Creoles, Appalachian, and AAVE, with implications for the controversy over the English/Creole origins of AAVE". As John's abstract reports, his results "may be bad news for attempts to close off the long-standing debate about AAVE's creole origins, but it opens new vistas for studying and understanding variability in English, and in language more generally."

We've also got some students and alums at the 31st Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in Osnabrück, Germany, and most of their names start with S:

• Scott Grimm
  "An empirical view on raising to subject"
• Stefan Kaufmann (Northwestern University)
  "On the projection of expressive presuppositions"
• Sven Lauer
  "The -ever in whatever: What, and how?"
• Stephanie Shih, Jason Grafmiller, Richard Futrell and Joan Bresnan
  "Rhythm's Role in genitive and dative construction choice in spoken English"

It was "Stanford Psycho" (-linguistics) night recently in San Diego, though some of the Stanford folks had come from pretty far away... And some of their faces looked pretty red, but we don't think they were really embarrassed:

Church Bloopers...

They're Back! Those wonderful Church Bulletins! Thank God for church ladies with typewriters. These sentences (with all the BLOOPERS) actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced in church services:

The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.



The sermon this morning: 'Jesus Walks on the Water.' The sermon tonight: 'Searching for Jesus.'



Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.



Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say 'Hell' to someone who doesn't care much about you.



Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help.



Miss Charlene Mason sang 'I will not pass this way again,' giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.



For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.



Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.



Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.



A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.



At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be 'What Is Hell?' Come early and listen to our choir practice.



Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.



Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.



Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.



The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.



Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow.



The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.



This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.



Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B. S. is done.



The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.



Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM.. Please use the back door.

For events farther in the future consult the Upcoming Events Page.

FRIDAY, 27 FEBRUARY

• Speech Lunch

  Sam Tilsen (UC Berkeley)
  "Evidence for covariability of rhythmic and intergestural timing"
  12:00pm, ExL Lab

• Berkeley Seminar on Information Access

  Tuukka Ruotsala
  "Finnish CultureSampo: Cultural Heritage on the Semantic Web"
  3:00pm, South Hall room 107, UC Berkeley

• Department Colloquium/SocioRap/Dissertation Proposal Talk

  Rebecca Starr
  "Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Variation in a Mandarin-English Dual Immersion School"
  3:30pm, 460-126

• Department Social

  5:00pm, the lounge

MONDAY, 2 MARCH

• Berkeley Linguistics Colloquium

  Spike Gildea (U of Oregon)
  From Participant Nominalization to Main Clause Verb: Three Distinct Outcomes in Three South American Languages
  4-5:30pm, Dwinelle 182, UC Berkeley

WEDNESDAY, 4 MARCH

• Linguistics Department Open House

  Come meet the prospies!
  12:00pm, MJH 126 -- with lunch!

• SocioBeer

  Come drink and "socio"-lize with real live sociolinguists!
  5:15, meet in the kitchen

THURSDAY, 5 MARCH

• SocioLunch

  Sociolunch goes Marxist this week. Find the reading HERE
  12:00, the Chair's Office.

• SRI AI Seminar Series

  Edward Zalta
  "A System of the World"
  4:00pm, Building E room EJ228, SRI International, Menlo Park

FRIDAY, 6 MARCH

• Department Social

  4:00pm, lounge

SATURDAY, 7 MARCH

• Linguistics and Santa Cruz

  Papers presented by UCSC graduate students
  UCSC Alumni speaker Ted Fernald (Swarthmore)
  9:00am-4:00pm, Humanities One, Rm 202, UCSC

• Spatial Relations: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

  In Cordura 100:
  8:30 - 9:00 bagels and coffee
  9:00 - 9:45 Jeremy Meyers: Hybrid Mereology for Spatial Objects and Situations
  9:45 - 10:30 Darko Sarenac (Colorado State / Philosophy): Is S4 Complete over the Coast of Britain?
  10:30 - 10:40 break
  10:40 - 11:25 James Pustejovsky (Brandeis / Computer Science): Spatiotemporal Properties of Motion in Language
  11:25 - 12:10 Mark Gawron (San Diego State / Linguistics): Verbs and Axes
  12:10 - 1:30 Lunch
  1:30 - 2:15 Daniel Bobrow, Cleo Condoravdi (PARC), Elizabeth Coppock (CYC), and Annie Zaenen: Extended Paths
  2:15 - 3:00 Rusty Bobrow (BBN): Where did you go? Why do you want to know?
  3:00 - 3:10 break
  3:10 - 3:55 Herbert H. Clark (Stanford / Psychology) and Leila Takayama (NRC): Displaced Places in Communication
  3:55 - 4:40 Beth Driver (NGA): Observations, Applications, Examples
  4:45 - 5:15 General Discussion
  5:15 - 7:00 Reception at CSLI
  

MONDAY, 9 MARCH

• Phonology Workshop

  Kyuwon Moon
  4:00pm, Chair's Office

FRIDAY-SATURDAY, 13-14 MARCH

• 10th Annual Semantics Fest

  "The Construction of Meaning"
  with many special talks by department alums
  All Day, MJH 126

UPCOMING EVENTS (always under construction)

LINGUISTIC DEPARTMENT EVENTS PAGE

Got broader interests? The New Sesquipedalian recommends reading, or even subscribing, to the CSLI Calendar, available HERE.

WHAT'S HAPPENING AT UC SANTA CRUZ?

WHAT'S GOING ON AT UC BERKELEY?

The Stanford Blood Center is reporting a shortage of types O-, A-. For an appointment, visit http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call 650-723-7831. It only takes an hour of your time and you get free cookies. And the Blood Center recently got a new bloodmobile. Check it out HERE

Want to contribute information? Want to be a reporter? Want to see something appear here regularly? Want to be a regular columnist? Want to take over running the entire operation? Write directly to sesquip@gmail.com.