Seiler at the International Morphology Meeting

Joining Kersti at the 13th International Morphology Meeting in Vienna will be our new colleague in the German Department, Guido Seiler, with a talk entitled “Variation and change of quantity alternations across Upper German dialects.”

Börjars, the where’s waldo of Manchester linguistics

Where will she turn up next? (We at Manchet are working on honing our skills in hyperbole. )

In the words of David Denison “Kersti is giving a paper on behalf of the possessives mob” (that’s Kersti, David Denison, and Alan Scott) at the 13th International Morphology Meeting next week in Vienna. The paper is entitled “What makes clitics tick?” View the program and other details for the conference here.

Börjars to talk at UCL

Kersti Börjars is scheduled to give a talk entitled “Germanic possession and the clitic-affix distinction” at the UCL Department of Phonetics & Linguistics on 27 February. You can see the rest of their talk-lineup here.

Welcome to Candide Simard

This semester we welcome a new PhD student to the department, Candide Simard₁. Her supervisor, Eva Schultze-Berndt₂, describes her₁ project on her₂ website thusly:

“Candide Simard is currently working on a PhD thesis on the prosody of the Australian language Jaminjung, jointly supervised by myself and Philippe Martin (Paris-7). Candide is conducting fieldwork as part of the ”Jaminjungan and Eastern Ngumpin” Project funded by the Volkswagen foundation, with the goal of describing word stress, the intonation contours for different sentence types such as questions and commands, and the interaction of intonation and other markers of information structure such as special particles and word order.”

Schultze-Berndt in Linguistics

Reporters at Manchet have been tipped off (thanks, Kristine!) to a recent paper coauthored by Eva Schultze-Berndt in what looks like a very exciting special issue in Linguistics on the semantics of positional predicates. Take a gander here.

Welcome to Stephen Laker

In the words of our able chair, Martin Barry:

“I’m very pleased to be able to welcome Stephen Laker, who has joined us today – I’m delighted to say, in time for the first lecture of LELA30042 The History of English Dialects! – from the University of Leiden. Stephen is with us for the next five months, and will be teaching the aforementioned, plus LEL70852 English in Britain….

Anyway, a warm welcome, Stephen.”

Reminder: 17th postgraduate conference in linguistics

Here’s a repost of the earlier posting on the postgraduate linguistics conference—be there or be square (10% payout from Manchet’s massive endowment for the first person who can send me some new cliche to use in place of this one…):

The 17th annual Postgraduate Linguistics Conference (7–8 Feb 2008) is taking shape and it’s looking very exciting! The schedule and abstracts are now up on the website, along with plans for a number of excursions, both in Manchester and outside of it. We’ll look forward to seeing you there!

Meakins to give talk in Berkeley

Felicity Meakins, previously a PhD student in linguistics at Melbourne Uni and now a postdoc in our department working on Eva Schultze-Berndt’s Dobes project, is giving a talk on 11 February at the UC Berkeley Linguistics Department entitled “Two to tangle: The origins and structure of Gurindji Kriol, an Australian mixed language.” Further details here.

Talk schedule for the semester taking shape

The schedules for the Langwidge Sandwidge and the department seminar series are taking shape. Take a look at the schedules here and here. Be there or be square. You will also be declared square if you don’t make it for drinks in W3.13 following the seminars.

MA Funding in Linguistics & English Language at Manchester

If you are planning to begin postgraduate work in linguistics or English language in 2008, then you’ll naturally be considering one of Manchester’s MA programmes (of course!). If so, now is the time to start thinking about funding applications. All European Union citizens are eligible to apply for an award from the AHRC. If you have been resident in the UK for the past three years, then you’ll qualify for a full award; otherwise you can apply for your tuition fees. In either case, Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero will be happy to guide you through the application process and to help you make the most effective application possible. But the deadlines are tight, so contact him now!