Friday, May 31, 2019

Spelling-Out NEG


In Collins and Postal 2014, a set of mapping rules were given for spelling out the abstract morphemes NEG and SOME. In this paper, I eliminate these mapping rules without loss of empirical coverage.


Thursday, May 23, 2019

Imprinting

There is an effect when students start to learn syntax that I will call imprinting: Whatever proposal is presented first to a student becomes the standard. Subsequent proposals face a burden of proof not faced by the original, in the sense that subsequent proposals need to show how they are superior to the original proposal (and why the original proposal is wrong). All things being equal, the original wins.

Friday, May 17, 2019

The Khoisan Languages

This is a website built by students in my Spring 2018 seminar: The Khoisan Languages.
We are still interested in getting volunteers to add languages and data, and to make
the site more accessible. This summer (2019), we have a volunteer Mirella B.,
who will be working on the project.

https://sites.google.com/site/thekhoisanlanguages/

Friday, May 10, 2019

Instructions for Grammar Elicitation Session Bundles.

These are the instructions from our ELAR deposit for N|uu. The way that I store my data is very useful to me as a syntactician, so I thought I would share it. For elicitation, I record every sentence that I elicit individually, at the time I elicit it. One immediate benefit of this procedure is that I can use the recording to verify my transcription right away. As a consequence, my transcriptions are usually pretty accurate. Another benefit is that I can play the recording over and over, without having to bother the consultant with several repetitions of the same sentence (which can be tiring for them). 

Saturday, May 4, 2019

ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies) Fellows for 2019-2020

I have applied for this in the past, but did not get it. This time I was successful. Judy B. helped a lot, reading over my proposal and giving me feedback. So that is an important tip: Try to get advice from a successful past awardee.

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Summary of Fieldwork Discussion Group 2018-2019


Here is a summary of our series of fieldwork talks for the academic year 2019-2019.
If you are interested in presenting next semester, please contact me.