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UNC linguists at SSILA 2025

January 29, 2025

Several UNC linguists and alumni presented last week at the 2025 meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, hosted online. They presented the following works …

Caitlin Smith in Proceedings of WCCFL 40

November 18, 2024

A paper by Charlie O’Hara (National Council of State Boards of Nursing) and Caitlin Smith, “Typological asymmetries in underapplication opacity: A gestural account” has appeared in the Proceedings of the 40th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. The open-access paper is available …

Brian Hsu and Yiwen Peng in Proceedings of WCCFL 39

November 18, 2024

A paper by Brian Hsu and Yiwen Peng (MA 2021), “Positions of Mandarin Classifiers in and out of Compounds: Implications for Distinctness, Selection, and Projection” has appeared in the Proceedings of the 39th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. The open-access paper is available …

UNC linguists at BUCLD 49

November 12, 2024

Several UNC linguists and alumni presented last weekend at the 49th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. They presented the following works …

Brian Hsu and Caitlin Smith at NELS 55

October 23, 2024

Brian Hsu and Caitlin Smith presented last weekend at the 55th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, hosted at Yale University. They presented a talk: “Emergent strength strata in Cherokee hiatus resolution.”

Caitlin Smith in the Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony

October 13, 2024

A book chapter by Caitlin Smith, “Harmony in gesture-based phonology” has appeared in the recently-published Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony, edited by Nancy A. Ritter and Harry van der Hulst.

Elliott Moreton and Katya Pertsova at the Expression, Language, and Music Conference

October 9, 2024

Elliott Moreton and Katya Pertsova recently presented a poster (with co-authors Joe Pater, Brandon Prickett, Lisa Sanders, and Chris White) at the 2nd Expression, Language, and Music Conference (ELM2), hosted at the University of Connecticut. Their poster “Explicit and implicit reversal of musical and phonological stimuli” can be viewed …

Brian Hsu and Benjamin Frey in Language

September 23, 2024

An article by Brian Hsu and Benjamin Frey (UNC Asheville), “Word order in Cherokee: Information structure, thematic structure, and variability,” has been published in Language. The article is available online …

Mike Terry to deliver annual Freeman Lecture at UMass Amherst

September 11, 2024

Mike Terry has been invited to give the annual Freeman Lecture, hosted by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He will present his work “Can Linguistic Differences Affect African American English Speaking 2nd Graders Performance on Math Tests?” on September 23, 2024 …

Jen Smith receives Distinguished Term Professorship

September 9, 2024

Jen Smith has been awarded a Zachary Smith Distinguished Term Professorship for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, effective July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2029. This award “recognizes tenured faculty who are making exceptional contributions to undergraduate education at UNC-Chapel Hill” and provides awardees with funding …

Katya Pertsova receives IAH Faculty Fellowship for Spring 2025

September 9, 2024

Katya Pertsova has been awarded an Institute for the Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellowship for the Spring 2025 semester. During the fellowship, she will pursue a project “The Language of Propaganda”. The list of 2023-2024 fellows can be found …

Abigail Amick and Paul Roberge at 30th Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference

April 29, 2024

Abigail (Abbie) Amick and Paul Roberge each presented talks at the 30th Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference, hosted at Indiana University Bloomington. Abbie presented “Pitch accent adaptation in speech islands: the case of Texas German,” and Paul presented “Caste nomenclature in the Cape Dutch vernacular: Imposition, appropriation, reclamation.”

Mónica López-Vázquez in Quality and Quantity

April 22, 2024

An article by Mónica López-Vázquez (MA 2022, current PhD student in Romance Studies, Hispanic Linguistics concentration), “A Comprehensive Examination of Emoji Usage in Mexican Spanish WhatsApp Corpus: A Mixed-Methods Linguistic Approach,” has been accepted for publication in Quality and Quantity.

Misha Becker in Language Acquisition

April 18, 2024

An article by Misha Becker and Kristen Syrett (Rutgers University), ‘More hard words: Learning emotion and mental state adjectives from linguistic context’ has been published in Language Acquisition. The article is available online …

Elliott Moreton and Katya Pertsova in Phonology

March 25, 2024

An article by Elliott Moreton and Kayta Pertsova, “Implicit and explicit processes in phonological concept learning,” has been published in Phonology. The article is available online …

Erin Humphreys and Brian Hsu at PLC 48

March 19, 2024

Erin Humphreys and Brian Hsu presented last weekend at the 48th Penn Linguistics Conference, at the University of Pennsylvania. They presented a talk: “How much overt agreement is needed for polysynthesis? Quantitative evidence from Cherokee.”

Article by David Mora-Marín in Ancient Mesoamerica

March 19, 2024

An article by David Mora-Marín, “The duplication diacritic: A case study of variation and change in Mayan writing” has been published in Ancient Mesoamerica. The article is available online …

Jen Smith in Barcelona

February 5, 2024

Jen Smith gave a keynote address at the workshop “Nominal Inflection and Word Formation at the Phonology-Morphology Interface” (NoWPhoMo), held at the University of Barcelona and the Autonomous University of Barcelona in late January.  She also gave a colloquium talk in the Department of Catalan Philology and General Linguistics at the University of Barcelona, on implementing a stratified-lexicon analysis of loanword phonology in Harmonic Grammar. Her presentations reviewed …

Lucas Adelino and Caitlin Smith at NELS 54

January 29, 2024

Lucas Adelino and Caitlin Smith presented last weekend at the 54th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistics Society, hosted at MIT. They presented a poster: “Height harmony and nasal vowels: An argument for agreement by correspondence.”

Brian Hsu receives IAH Faculty Fellowship for Spring 2024

December 6, 2023

Brian Hsu has been awarded an Institute for the Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellowship for the Spring 2024 semester. During the fellowship, he will pursue his project “Principled Probability in Language,” on the modeling of probabilistic word order patterns in formal syntactic theory…