Rebecca Greene has been awarded a Geballe Dissertation Fellowship (for 2009-10) at the Stanford Humanities Center. Congrats, Rebecca...!

And a warm Sesquisvagat to Lucas Champolion, who is visiting the department this quarter.

I'm a 5th year Ph.D. student at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, originally from Germany. Right now I'm at the Palo Alto Research Center as a visiting researcher. My thesis advisors are Cleo Condoravdi at PARC/Stanford and Aravind Joshi at Penn. I'm interested in formal semantics, formal language theory and natural language processing. At the moment I'm working on my dissertation on the semantics of nominal distributivity ("Three girls wore a ring"), aspectually sensitive adverbials ("for an hour"), and measure phrases ("three gallons of rum"). The common property of all these constructions is that their truth conditions impose requirements on the subparts of some of their arguments. In the past, I've worked on binding theory, Tree-adjoining grammar, donkey sentences, and pedagogical software for semantics students.

Actually, I've been in California for almost a year now, but I've spent most of that time in my office and I'm happy to be in a linguistics department again. Thanks to all of you for the warm welcome!

Earlier this month, Paul Kiparsky was in Belém-Pará-Brasil, where he attended a conference he's still talking about: II Congresso Internacional de Estudos Lingüísticos e Literários na Amazônia Diversidade e Adversidades na América Latina His talk was titled: "MUDANÇA DE SOM" (which, for the Portuguese impaired among us, means "Sound Change").

Ivan Sag just got back from the UK, where he attended a workshop at the University of York on Formal vs. Processing Explanations of Syntactic Phenomena. He presented a paper together with Philip Hofmeister (UCSD) on "Can Processing Explain Subjacency Effects?" (The answer is "Yes").

Tine Breban is off at SHEL 6 conference on the Study of the History of the English Language) in Banff (Canada). She is presenting a paper on the semantic and formal characteristics of secondary grammaticalization.

Doug Ball is down in Santa Cruz this weekend attending AFLA 16. He has a poster there on "Hili-Clauses in Tongan".

There's a number of Stanford linguists presenting at the California Universities Semantics and Pragmatics (CUSP) Conference first annual meeting, to be held May 23-24 at UCLA:

• Inverse number marking in Dagaare - Scott Grimm
• The asymmetric distribution of quasi with temporal connectives - Patricia Amaral & Fabio del Prete
• Free choice of the irgend kind: not as wide as you might think - Sven Lauer

Another week, another name to identify. Be the first to identify this name, then be the first to find Meghan and tell her what it is, and then you can be the first to win this week's prize.

And our British correspondent finally caught up with Sesquipeditor Ivan Sag during his recent trip to the UK. Here he is eating a healthy pizza salad for lunch at the York workshop he attended.

Prepare yourselves! Next Saturday, May 9th, Stanford will be hosting Trilateral Linguistics Weekend (TREND) 2009, this year combining Syntax and Phonology in one conference. Word has it there will be gripping talks and an outstanding social afterwards. Keep your weekend clear for this event! Find a schedule of talks here.

Florida Personals

Some 'Senior' personal ads seen in the sunshine state:
(Who says seniors don't have a sense of humor?)

FOXY LADY:
Sexy, fashion-conscious blue-haired beauty, 80's, slim, 5'4' (used to be 5'6'), searching for sharp-looking, sharp-dressing companion. Matching white shoes and belt a plus.

LONG-TERM COMMITMENT:
Recent widow who has just buried fourth husband, and am looking for someone to round out a six-unit plot. Dizziness, fainting, shortness of breath not a problem.

SERENITY NOW:
I am into solitude, long walks, sunrises, the ocean, yoga and meditation. If you are the silent type, let's get together, take our hearing aids out and enjoy quiet times.

WINNING SMILE:
Active grandmother with original teeth seeking a dedicated flosser to share rare steaks, corn on the cob and caramel candy .

BEATLES OR STONES?:
I still like to rock, still like to cruise in my Camaro on Saturday nights and still like to play the guitar. If you were a groovy chick, or are now a groovy hen, let's get together and listen to my eight-track tapes.

MEMORIES:
I can usually remember Monday through Thursday. If you can remember Friday, Saturday and Sunday, let's put our two heads together.

MINT CONDITION:
Male, 1932, high mileage, good condition, some hair, many new parts including hip, knee, cornea, valves. Isn't in running condition, but walks well.

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

FRIDAY, 1 MAY

• Speech Lunch

  Caroline Piercy (U Essex)
  'oh ar [əʊɑ-:]': An introduction to Dorset English
  12:00pm, ExL Lab

• Department Colloquium

  Fritz Newmeyer (University of Washington)
  What conversational English tells us about the nature of grammar
  3:30pm, MJH 126

• Department Social

  5:00pm, lounge

FRIDAY-SUNDAY, 1-3 MAY

• Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association Meeting

  UC Santa Cruz

MONDAY, 4 MAY

• Berkeley Undergraduate Honors Thesis Colloquium

  4-5:30pm, 182 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley

THURSDAY, 7 MAY

• SocioRap

  Habiha Jerad (U Tunis)
  On language planning and linguitics uses and change in multilingual contexts: the example of Tunisia
  5:15pm snacks, 5:30pm talk, MJH 126

FRIDAY, 8 MAY

• QP Festival

  Students present research they've done for their QPs in a conference-talk format
  1:00pm, MJH 126

• Department Social

  5:30pm, lounge

SATURDAY, 9 MAY

• TREND

  Trilateral Weekend - MJH Terrace Room

The 33rd Stanford Child Language Research Forum, on 'Experience and Variation in Learning a First Language' will be held on July 10-12, 2009, as one of the Institute Conferences during the LSA Summer Institute at UC Berkeley. The two invited speakers are William Croft (UNM) and Tom Griffiths (UC Berkeley). The Program and general information on lodgings, etc., is available online.

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-, and B-. 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

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