• Look Who's Talking

  • The 43rd Regional Meetings of the Chicago Linguistic Society start this coming Thursday. There's a number of Stanford papers on the program. That number is 3:
    
    
    • Improving filler-retrieval in dependency processing
      Philip Hofmeister
    • Empirical investigations in syntactic islands
      Philip Hofmeister, Ivan Sag and Neal Snider
    • Gradient Data and Gradient Grammars
      Tom Wasow (invited speaker)
• 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.
  

Check out the new department T-shirts, exquisitely displayed by supermodels and former undergraduates Tracy Conner and Nick Romero.... In case you can't make it out, the Tshirt front says `The horse raced past the barn fell' and the Tshirt back is `You got garden-path'd - Stanford University Department of Linguistics'.

• Kids are Quick

  • TEACHER: Maria, go to the map and find North America
    MARIA: Here it is.
    TEACHER: Correct. Now class, who discovered America ?
    CLASS: Maria.
  • TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?
    JOHN: You told me to do it without using tables.
  • TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell "crocodile?"
    GLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L"
    TEACHER: No, that's wrong
    GLENN: Maybe it is how I spell it.
  • TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
    DONALD: H I J K L M N O.
    TEACHER: What are you talking about?
    DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.
  • TEACHER: Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn't have ten years ago.
    WINNIE: Me!
  • TEACHER: Glen, why do you always get so dirty?
    GLEN: Well, I'm a lot closer to the ground than you are.
  • TEACHER: Millie, give me a sentence starting with "I."
    MILLIE: I is.
    TEACHER: No, Millie..... Always say, "I am."
    MILLIE: All right... "I am the ninth letter of the alphabet."
  • TEACHER: George Washington not only chopped down a cherry tree, but also admitted it. Now, Louie, do you know why his father didn't punish him?
    LOUIS: Because George still had the axe in his hand.
  • TEACHER: Now, Simon, tell me frankly, do you say prayers before eating?
    SIMON: No sir, I don't have to, my Mom is a good cook.
  • TEACHER: Clyde, your composition on "My Dog" is exactly the same as your brother's. Did you copy his?
    CLYDE: No, teacher, it's the same dog.
  • TEACHER: Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer interested?
    HAROLD: A teacher



• Are these definitions in your dictionary?

  1. Resent: To post an e-mail a second time (Stan Kegel)
  2. Zeus: God of caged animals. (Pun-American Newsletter)
  3. Node: Was aware of. (Geoff Tibballs)
  4. Gardener: A man who never lets grass grow under his feet (Art Moger)
  5. Abstain: To apply too much sun tan coloring to one's body. (Pun Define)
  6. Bookkeeping: the practice of never returning library books. (Douglas Drill)
  7. Eyebrows: What I do in a book store. (Brandy Brandon)
  8. Falsehood: A wig. (Leonard Fechtner)
  9. POP Server: Mom (Stan Kegel)
  10. Impromptu Party: Revel without a cause.

• FRIDAY, 27 APRIL

  • WCCFL 26

    all day in 370 Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)

  • Berkeley International Computer Science Institute Talk Series

    ICSI, Rm 607 (UC Berkeley)
    
    Florian Metze (Deutsche Telekom Laboratories)
    Articulatory Features for Discriminative Speaker Adaptation
  
  
• Saturday, 28 APRIL

  • WCCFL 26

    All day in 370 Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
  
  
• Sunday, 29 APRIL

  • WCCFL 26

    All day in 370 Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
  
  
• MONDAY, 30 APRIL
  

  • Stanford Phonology Workshop

    16:00 in MJH 126
    
    Alessandro Jaker
    Geminate Ejectives and Tonal Feet in Yellowknife Dogrib (a practice-talk for WAIL)
  
  
• TUESDAY, 1 MAY
  

  • Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop

    12:00 in MJH 126
    
    Manfred Krifka (Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin)
    Postposed additive particles as markers of givenness (abstract)

  • CSLI Tea

    15:00 in the Cordura Hall Greenhouse
    

  • Linguistics Department Talk

    16:45 in MJH 126
    
    Steve Whittaker (with Simon Tucker) (University of Sheffield)
    Dynamic Summarization: Exploring New Interfaces for Extracting Information from Speech and Text

  • Stanford Syntax Workshop

    17:30 in MJH 126
    
    Douglas Ball
    A Unified Analysis of Niuean/Tongic (`)Aki
    


• WEDNESDAY, 2 MAY

  • Developmental Brown Bag Lunch

    12:00 in Jordan Hall (Bldg. 420), room 102
    
    Jay McClelland (Psychology)
    Causal reasoning in children


• THURSDAY, 3 MAY

  • UC Santa Cruz Syntax Circle

    12-13:30 in Humanities One, Room 200 (UC Santa Cruz)
    
    Ed Keenan (UCLA)
    Voice and Relativization without Movement, or Is Malagasy a Perfect Language? ( abstract)
  
  
• FRIDAY, 4 MAY

  • Department of Asian Languages and the DLCL Research Group "Diversity in Language" Lecture

    12:00 in Bldg. 50, Asian Languages Library
    
    Masako K. Hiraga, (Rikkyo University and UC Berkeley)
    How Iconicity Works in Basho's Haiku: A Linguistic Analysis of Revisions

  • Berkeley Syntax and Semantics Circle

    14:30 in 1229 Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
    
    Geoffrey Nunberg (UC Berkeley School of Information/CSLI)
    TBA

  • Friday Cognitive Seminar (Psychology)

    15:15 in Jordan Hall (Bldg. 420), room 050
    
    Sandra Lozano and Daniel Casasanto (Psychology)
    Metaphorical meaning in motion.

  • QP Fest

    14:15 in MJH 126
    
    Program TBA

  • Weekly Social

    16:30 in the department lounge. Gourmet delights from the QP Fest Committee!.
    
  
  

• END OF THE YEAR PARTY now confirmed for Saturday, June 9. Live Music by Creole Formation and Dead Tongues!
• 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.