Linguistics Seminar

Seminars typically take place each Monday from 4-5 PM, either in-person or over Zoom. In-person seminars are normally held in the Lucy Ellis Lounge (LCLB 1080).

Contact Xuan Hu for Zoom links and details and if you’d like to be added to the mailing list and receive announcements of new talks every week.

Spring 2025 Schedule
  • 3 March:  Geoff LaFlair (Duolingo)
    • Talk Title: Accelerating Item Development and Di3iculty Estimation with NLP and Responsible AI
    • Abstract: A key challenge of high stakes language assessment is introducing new test items rapidly while minimizing the amount of response data required for accurate item parameter estimation. This is especially true for computer adaptive tests (CATs), such as the Duolingo English Test, which require the creation and maintenance of large item pools. With advances in automated item generation (Attali et al., 2023), it is possible to create large numbers of items with relatively little e3ort. However, these items need parameter estimates if they are to be used operationally. Traditional methods of parameter estimation rely on extensive pilot testing, which is time-consuming, costly, and poses security risks, a limitation that can be overcome with machine-learning (ML) driven feature-based parameter estimation.
  • 10 March: Grad Student Workshop - Applying for Internships in Industry (Mingyue Huo)
  •  31 March: Cynthia Gordon (Georgetown)
  • 7 April: Grad Student Workshop - Project Management & Organizational Tools (Amy Atiles & Britni Moore)
Fall 2024 Schedule

  • 9 Sept: Dr. Yunwen Su (UIUC EALC)

    • Talk Title: Perceptual and Acoustic Analysis of Prosody in Mandarin Chinese Refusals 

    • Abstract: In Mandarin Chinese, ritual refusals are often employed to enhance politeness or to test the sincerity of the invitation or offer. This study examines whether native listeners can accurately judge the sincerity of refusals when hearing complete sentences or keywords, and whether their judgement is associated with specific prosodic cues. Twelve native Mandarin speakers each produced 10 sincere and 10 ritual refusal sentences containing the keyword buyong (‘you don’t need to’). These 240 complete sentences and 240 keywords extracted from the complete sentences were used in an Aural Sincerity Rating Task. Seventy-two native listeners listened to these stimuli and judged their sincerity (forced choice). Results showed that listeners could judge the sincerity of refusals when listening to complete sentences as well as keywords, the latter of which did not contain any contextual information. This suggests that they relied on prosodic cues to make their judgement. Acoustic Analyses conducted on the accurately-perceived stimuli revealed that refusals spoken at a higher pitch, with a larger pitch fluctuation, with a quieter voice, and at a slower speech rate were more likely to be perceived as ritual than sincere. This study demonstrates the critical role of prosody in conveying nuanced speaker intention in Mandarin. 

  • 30 September: Graduate Student Workshop - Tania Ionin and Aida Talić

  • 7 October: Hannah Sande (UC Berkeley)

    • Talk Title: Discontinuous harmony in Guébie: Consequences for cyclic spell out

    • Abstract: This talk presents a puzzling case of discontinuous harmony in Guébie (Kru, Côte d'Ivoire), where the target and trigger of vowel harmony are separated by intervening non-harmonizing words. Discontinuous harmony presents a challenge for existing phonological models of harmony, which predict that harmony should be local, at least within a given tier. In Guébie, root-controlled ATR harmony affects vowels of prefixes and suffixes. In particle verb constructions, when the particle is a verbal prefix in [S Aux O Part-V] clauses, it unsurprisingly harmonizes. When the verb moves away from the particle in [S V O Part] clauses, there is no harmony. The surprising facts are found in verb focus constructions, where focusing a particle verb results in the particle surfacing at the left edge of the clause: [Part S Aux O V] or [Part S V O]. In [Part S Aux O V] contexts (but not [Part S V O] contexts) the verb triggers harmony on the particle, despite being on the opposite end of the clause. Specifically, in exactly the same clause structure where the particle and verb harmonize locally in non-focus constructions, they also harmonize--despite apparent non-locality--in focus constructions. The Guébie data suggests an analysis where phonology applies to a subset of syntactic structure (containing the verb and particle in [S Aux O PART-V] constructions, but only the particle in [S V O PART] constructions) prior to syntactic focus movement, resulting in a configuration where the target and trigger of harmony are discontinuous. Such an analysis requires interleaving of phonology and syntax and a relaxed notion of phase impenetrability.

  • 14 October: Hilda Koopman (UCLA)

    • Talk Title: Towards a unified account of the homophony of -rare in Japanese passives and potentials

    • Abstract:  This presentation will have an empirical part, and a theoretical part. Empirically, it is an investigation in the syntactic properties of the Japanese morpheme -rare in passive and ’potential’ (i.e. ability, possibility) constructions. (See some basic data below. ) Theoretically, guided by strongly decompositional antisymmetry/cartographic approaches to syntax, we focus on the question if a unified analysis can be given for the (crosslinguistically frequent) homophony of passive and potential. As we will argue a unified analysis is possible, i.e. -rare always has the same properties w.r.t its Specifier, but differs only in its complement properties, i.e. at what height in the clausal structure it can be merged. Moreover, only a basic ’smuggling’ analysis as in Collins (2005, 2024), Ishizuka (2012) can lead to a unified analysis. We thus provide strong evidence for a particular view of Passive Voice, as never directly interacting with the argument structure of a predicate. This conclusion can only be reached by looking at various aspects of the syntactic structures surrounding passive and potentials. This includes: spelling out assumptions about the forms of the potential, the role of silent elements including the implicit argument, the treatment of suffixes, establishing the overall cartography of passive voice and potentials (here Cinque (1999) will be highly relevant), and considering how specific parts of the PP hierarchy interact with it. We adopt the unified analysis for passive Voice -rare of Ishizuka (2010, 2012), and show how it leads to a unified analysis and lean account not only for passive, and passive potentials (i.e. psv-potentials). It also easily extends to active potentials, providing a (somewhat surprising) answer to what passive -rare is doing in active structures.

  • 28 October: Jennifer B. Delfino (UIUC Anthropology)

    • Talk Title: Decolonizing Raciolinguistic Ideologies of Difference in Language Education 

    • Abstract: In the U.S., ideologies of difference and inclusion have historically tied together race and language in ways that reinscribe whiteness as normative and desirable. It is commonly assumed that as a nation, “we” have moved beyond a racial past, with language differences serving as one of the present frameworks for realizing a multicultural future of equality and inclusion. Yet in language education, racial and linguistic ideologies continue to position minoritized groups as needing academic and social interventions while claiming to value the linguistic and cultural practices of diverse student populations. In this talk, I discuss how my research ethnographically describes and attempts to decenter liberal and progressive ideologies of diversity and multiculturalism. These raciolinguistic ideologies appear to validate difference while reinscribing the logic of white supremacy. I conclude the talk by discussing possibilities for decolonizing raciolinguistic ideologies of difference in language education and other social institutions.

  • 11 November: Graduate Student Workshop-Anna Mendoza

    • Workshop Topic: Publishing Articles

  • 18 November: Jeffrey Witzel

    • Talk Title: L1/L2 Lexical Processing Differences: Frequency, Form, and Fragmentation

      Abstract: A core question in second language acquisition is whether there are fundamental differences between first language (L1) and second language (L2) processing. In this talk, I will discuss three studies that explore such differences at the lexical level. Specifically, using both eye tracking during reading and masked priming experiments, I will provide evidence for L1/L2 differences related to word frequency effects, lexical form processing, and morphological decomposition. The implications of these findings for models of L1 and L2 processing will also be discussed.

  • 9 December: Graduate Student Workshop-Cory Lemke and Dr. Numa Markee

    • Workshop Topic: Graduate School Application

For a list of seminars held in previous semesters, please see Past Seminars.