Author Archives: chael

article on language and thought in nyt

By chael | Published: August 27, 2010
Here’s an article by Guy Deutscher on language and how it influences thinking. Mercifully, Deutscher discusses this fascinating topic without trying to further inflate its public appeal by vague claims on how it all devalidates generative linguistics and most of all Chomsky (it sure sounds cool to argue against a big name, and why not [...]
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B E Z, mind it not

By chael | Published: August 24, 2010
In case anyone is still worried that texting abbreviations are a sign that the English language is deteriorating they should have a look at the article in the Guardian a few days ago about an upcoming exhibition on language at the British Library in London, which provides evidence that these abbreviations are actually a time-honored [...]
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radiolab on language

By chael | Published: August 12, 2010
Radiolab’s interesting current podcast is about language. Radiolab is a great radio show about science, and it differs from your typical media outlet on science in that its topics are often drawn from cognitive science. I can think of a bunch of questions relating to the strong claims made in the show about how [...]
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paper on rhyme

By chael | Published: August 8, 2010
Something everyone seems to have intuitions about is: What types of rhyme sound good? What types of rhyme sound bad? One particular type of rhyme, called ‘identity rhyme’ (write/right, to bear, a bear), is licit in French but quite poor in English (So poor indeed that King James proscribed the use of identity rhymes [...]
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mosaic 2

By chael | Published: May 21, 2010
Mosaic 2, the second workshop of semanticists active in Canada, is just around the corner. The program is posted here.
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angelika kratzer and lisa selkirk at mcGill

By chael | Published: May 21, 2010
Angelika Kratzer and Lisa Selkirk will be visiting at McGill. The schedule of the presentations is posted here. This visit is part of the mcsirg interface group at McGill. They will also present as invited speakers at the Mosaic workshop on June 1st.
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6th international workshop on language production

By chael | Published: May 6, 2010
This looks like it’s going to be an interesting event, conveniently scheduled right before AMLaP at York University: The School of Psychology at The University of Dundee and the Department of Psychology at The University of Edinburgh are pleased to announce the 6th International Workshop on Language Production. The workshop is dedicated to fostering an interdisciplinary [...]
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cornell workshop on grammar induction

By chael | Published: May 6, 2010
Another reminder about the Cornell Workshop on Grammar Induction, which is coming closer. The workshop features quite an amazing line up of talks: Cornell Workshop on Grammar Induction will bring together researchers from the fields of linguistics, psychology, and computer science who work on issues of learning and learnability in language. Our goal is to [...]
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florian jaeger and dave embick at mcgill

By chael | Published: May 2, 2010
Florian Jaeger will give an invited lecture for the CRLMB consisting of two mini-talks this Monday, May 3rd, as part of the WOMM! Statistics workshop on logit mixed models. Titles: “Efficiency in production: How speakers design their utterances to distribute information uniformly” and “Syntax in flux: Syntactic adaptation in adults.” The lecture is [...]
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endangered languages in urban settings

By chael | Published: April 28, 2010
The NYT features an article on an interesting project on endangered languages spoken in NYC.
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