
A warm, but belated Sesquipediwelcome to our new phonetician:
Meghan Sumner.
Meghan received her PhD in Linguistics from Stony
Brook University in 2003. After that, she was an NRSA Fellow with
Arthur Samuel for three years. During her post-doc, she examined the
accommodation of phonetic variation in spoken word recognition and the
types of units (lexical vs. sublexical) used during recognition.
Since coming to Stanford, she has been busy getting the Phonetics Lab
up and running for its many users and starting new projects examining
the use of acoustic cues in new environments (new words, new speakers,
new languages), the mapping of acoustic information onto lexical
forms, and the acoustic differences between two schwas in r-dropping
languages.
Congratulations to Vivienne Fong on her new job at the
UAR! No, that's not the United Arab
Republic (for those of you still clueless about the Middle East,
Syria seceded from the UAR in 1961 and Egypt hasn't used that name
since 1971). Vivienne is now an Academic Advisor at the Undergraduate
Advising and Research (which, for those of you still clueless about
Stanford bureaucracy, resulted from the recent merger of Undergraduate
Advising Programs (UAP) and Undergraduate Research Programs (URP).
But don't worry. Viv will still be teaching 130B for Linguistics
in the Winter Quarter!
Barbara Hemforth and Hal Tily were in town last week
for a work session on the project Barbara and Tom Wasow
are heading up.
Tom Wasow frames the future of Stanford Athletics (and more...). Really!
Read about it HERE.
And last, but certainly not least: Arto Anttila was named by
the School of Humanities and Sciences as a Hellman Faculty Scholar for
2007-08. This is a prestigious honor for outstanding junior
faculty. Congratulations, Arto!
Both Alex Jaker and Yuan Zhao recently gave talks
in the Berkeley Phonetics and Phonology Phorum. Alex on
`Gemination and Tonal Feet in Yellowknife Dogrib' and Yuan on `The
effect of lexical frequency on tone space dispersion: Evidence from
Cantonese tone production'.
Both Meghan Sumner and Daniel Casasanto are off to
Long Beach next week to present at the annual Psychonomics conference.
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Laura Staum tells all!
Here's
Laura Staum Casasanto after her dissertation
proposal, which was jointly sponsored this Thursday by Sociorap and
SPLaT. Laura's dissertation will show beyond any shadow of a doubt (no
pressure, Laura) that people use sociolinguistic information in
real-time language processing. Sociopsycholinguistics (or, if you
prefer, Experimental Sociolinguistics) will soon be an obligatory
component of every linguistics department!
A man was walking home alone late one foggy night,
when behind him he hears:
BUMP...
BUMP...
BUMP...
Walking faster, he looks back and through the fog he makes out the
image of an upright casket banging its way
down the middle of the street toward him.
BUMP...,
From the Mouths of Babes
A first grade school teacher in Virginia had twenty-five students in
her class.
She presented each child in her classroom the first half of a
well-known proverb and asked them to come up with the remainder of the
proverb. It's hard to believe these were actually done by first
graders.
Their insight may surprise you. While reading, keep in mind that
these are 1st graders, 6-year-olds, because the last one is a classic!
- Don't change horses...........until they stop running.
- Strike while the............................bug is close.
- It's always darkest before..............Daylight Saving Time.
- Never underestimate the power of ...................termites.
- You can lead a horse to water but........................how?
- Don't bite the hand that..........................looks dirty.
- No news is.........................................impossible.
- A miss is as good as a....................................Mr.
- You can't teach an old dog new...........................math.
- If you lie down with dogs, you'll .....stink in the morning.
- Love all,trust................................ me.
- The pen is mightier than the...................... ......pigs.
- An idle mind is........................the best way to relax.
- Where there's smoke there's.......................pollution.
- Happy the bride who.....................gets all the presents.
- A penny saved is ..................................not much.
- Two's company, three's ...................the Musketeers
- Don't put off till tomorrow what ...... tastes good.
- Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and..... You have to blow your nose.
- There are none so blind as.......................Stevie Wonder.
- Children should be seen and not.....spanked or grounded.
- If at first you don't succeed................get new batteries.
- You get out of something only what you ...............see in the picture on the box.
- When the blind lead the blind................get out of the way.
For events farther in the future consult the
Upcoming Events Page.
- FRIDAY, 9 NOVEMBER
Speech Lunch
Lauren Hall-Lew
Plotting your Vowels with Plotnik and NORM
12:00
(This presentation will include a demo on how to use this vowel
plotting software.)
-
Gerald Cohen (All Souls College, Oxford)
A Truth in Conservatism
3:15 PM, 90-92Q
-
Mirella Lapata (University of Edinburgh)
Modeling Local Coherence
3:30 PM, MJH Room 126
Weekly Social!
5:00 in the department lounge.
- MONDAY, 12 NOVEMBER
-
Yuni Kim (UC Berkeley)
Vowel breaking and palatalization in Huave
3:15 PM, Linguistics Chair's office, MJH
- WEDNESDAY, 14 NOVEMBER
POSTPONED TO NOVEMBER 28
Fei Xu (University of British Columbia)
"Statistical Inference and inductive learning in infants and children"
-
Phillip Wolff (Emory University)
"Force dynamics and the semantics of negative causation"
5:30 PM, MJH 126
(cosponsored with SPLat!; refreshments at 5:15 PM)
- FRIDAY, 16 NOVEMBER
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- 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?
Blood needed!
The
Stanford Blood Center is reporting a shortage of O-, O+, A-, A+, B-, and AB-. For
an appointment: http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call 650-723-7831.
It only takes an hour of your time and you get free cookies. The
Blood Center is also raising money for a new bloodmobile.
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? Contribute something at the
top of this page or write directly to
sesquip@gmail.com.
9 November 2007
Vol. 4, Issue 7
IN THIS ISSUE:
Sesquipedalian Staff
Editor in Chief:
Ivan A. Sag
.
Reporter:
Beth Levin
Humor Consultants:
Susan D. Fischer, Tom Wasow
Assistant Editor:
Richard Futrell
Inspiration:
Melanie Levin and Kyle Wohlmut