Topics

Here you will find the topics to all of our club meetings past, present and future.

Present:

April 29, 2002, 6:30 PM: Professor Edwin F. Bryant will be speaking on Linguistics, the Indo-Europeans, and the Indo-Aryan Migration Debate.

ABSTRACT:

The origins of the Indo-Europeans and their linguistic offshoots, the Indo-Aryans of ancient India, has vexed scholars both in India as well as the West for well over a century, and has touched every nerve of both academic and political discourse. In this discussion, Edwin Bryant will touch upon some of the linguistic evidence that is relevant to a discussion of Indo-Aryan origins, and show how much of the same linguistic data can be configured to either support the idea of an Indo-Aryan Migration into the South Asian subcontinent, or contest it. Attention will be drawn to how the seemingly innocuous formulations of linguists are intensely relevant to the politics of identity in the context of the modern Indian nation state.

Future:

To be announced.

Past:

April 22, 2002, 6:30PM: Professor Carol Neidle, Boston University Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures, will present a talk entitled American Sign Language: Linguistic Perspectives.

April 15, 2002, 6:30PM: Professor Young-mee Yu Cho, Dept of Asian Languages and Cultures, we be speaking on "Disglossia in Korean Language."  [Flyer (PDF 9.28KB) | abstract]

February 18, 2002, 6:30PM: Professor Roger Schwarzschild, of the Rutgers Dept. of Linguistics, will be giving a talk entitled "Amount Talk". We'll talk about the difference between "14 karats of amethyst" and "14 karat gold", why the first has an 'of' and a plural on 'karats' while the second has neither and why in the first 'karat' has to be a weight while in the second, it can't be.

February 4, 2002, 6:30PM: Professor Jane Grimshaw, of the Rutgers Dept. of Linguistics, will be giving a talk on some issues in Syntax in Optimality theory entitled "Possible When Necessary: The Analysis of "do" Support".

April 26, 2001, 8PM: Zsuzsa Nagy, a graduate student in linguistics, will be speaking on the relationship between morphology and syntax as informed by OT. In particular, she will be discussing how typological variation in the order of functional categories within a clause can be determined by the morphology of the language if you adopt a certain OT "frame of mind." [abstract]

April 19, 2001, 7PM: The Language and Linguistics club is proud to present William Labov, of the University of Pennsylvania Dept of Linguistics, at the Rutgers Student Center Multipurpose Room. His talk is entitled "Is Linguistics Knowledge Useful Knowledge," and focuses on the use of knowledge of linguistic structues, particularly knowledge about African American English Vernacular, in dealing with social problems.
[ Flyer w/abstract in pdf format | abstract]

April 12, 2001 Bruce Tesar, of the Rutgers Linguistics Dept, will be presenting a brief introduction to Optimality Theory, and his Inconsistency Detection Learner, a learning algorithm set in the framework of Optimality Theory.[abstract]

March 23, 2001, 8PM: Nicole Nelson, a graduate student of the Rutgers Linguistics Dept., will be talking about the morphological proces of reduplication, in which all or part of a word is copied. [abstract]

March 1, 2001, 8PM: Dr. Judit Hajnal, of the Rutgers Institute for Hungarian Studies and the Rutgers University Program in Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures, will be giving a talk entitled 'The Structure and History of Hungarian'. [abstract]

February 23, 2001, 3PM: Mike Dillinger of Logos Corp. will be speaking on the topic of "Linguists and Jobs in the Industry" on Friday Feb 23rd at 3:00 in Room 108. All are welcome to attend. Mr. Dillinger has also sent some links to places where a linguist might start looking for a job in the industry. [links]

Wednesday, February 14, 2001, 8PM: Ron Artstein, a graduate student in linguistics will be speaking about conjunction in Hebrew and the semantics of plurals. [abstract]

February 1, 2001, 8PM : first meeting of spring semester. General introductions and a showing of the documentary "American Tongues" on the origin and diversity of American dialects of English.

December 6, 2000, 4PM : Discussion of the determinacy of meaning in literature, and the relationship between linguistics and literature studies with Professor William Dowling, of the Rutgers U. English Department, particularly in regards to his book, Senses of the Text. All members of the linguistics club are encouraged to attend this meeting. One needs not have read Professor Dowling's book in advance to find these discussions comprehensible and interesting. It is also an exciting opportunity to discuss a work with its author, and, of course, may ignite an interest previously unrecognized. [abstract]

Novmember 16, 2000, 8PM: Professor Matthew Stone of the Rutgers Computer Science Department will be talking about speech repairs and disfluent speech. NOTE: This meeting is at 8:00PM, not our usual meeting time of 9PM.

November 2, 2000: Professor Akin Akinlabi will be talking giving a general introduction and overview of contemporary work in the phonology of African languages. [abstract]

October 10, 2000: Professor Veneeta Dayal, director of Graduate Studies for the Linguistics Department, along with a few graduate students, will be speaking and answering questions about graduate school in Linguistics.

October 5, 2000: Professor Jose Camacho of the Linguistics Department and the Spanish and Portugese Department will speak to the club on issues pertaining to Romance linguistics. [abstract]

September 14, 2000: General Introductions for the New Semester. Our academic advisor Roger Schwarzschild will say a few opening words of welcome, the linguistics club officers and past members will introduce themselves, then there will be a special featured presentation of the documentary "Discovering Human Language," featuring such linguistics greats as Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker and Howard Lasnik.

April 27, 2000: . Professor Veneeta Dayal of the Rutgers Linguistics Dept. will be talking about the syntax/semantics interface and the semantics of questions. This will be the last meeting of the semester. [abstract]

April 13, 2000: Jim McCloskey, an emminent professor from the University of California at Santa Cruz, will be speaking on various issues in the Irish language. [flyer [abstract]

April 6, 2000: Professor Matthew Stone of Rutgers Computer Science Department will talk on corpus-based research in linguistics, as well as lucretive employment possibities for undergraduate research assistance. [abstract]

March 23, 2000: Kent Johnson, graduate student in the Philosophy department will be speaking on distinguishing various projects in the study of language - what different people think theories of language (particularly theories of language meaning) are for. . .

March 2, 2000: A brief history of linguistics: Professor Ken Safir will be giving a talk on the history of linguistics Thursday at 9 pm.