Guest Lecture by Carol Chapelle

On Friday Dec. 2nd, the Applied Linguistics program at UCLA will be having Carol Chapelle, a linguistics professor at Iowa State University, as a guest speaker. She will be speaking about “Issues in Applied Linguistics Raised by Validation in Language Testing” from 10:30am – 11:30am in Rolfe 2118. See the flyer below for more details.

General Meeting #4

BLing’s fourth general meeting of Fall quarter is tomorrow night, 6pm in Campbell 2122. Professor Kie Zuraw will be giving advice on writing the Personal Statement for graduate school applications. Snacks and refreshments will also be provided Don’t miss out on this informative opportunity!

Upcoming Colloquium at USC

Ian Roberts of Cambridge University will be speaking at a colloquium held at USC on November 14th, 3-4:30pm in room GFS 118. Here is a description of the talk:

Parameter Hierarchies and Comparative Syntax

“This talk looks at a way to break new ground in syntactic theory by reconceptualising the principles-and-parameters approach to comparative syntax, retaining its strengths and attempting to deal with its perceived weaknesses. The central idea is to organise the parameters of Universal Grammar (UG) into hierarchies, which define the ways in which properties of individually variant categories may act in concert; this creates macroparametric effects from the combined action of many microparameters. The highest position in a hierarchy defines a macroparameter, a major typological property, lower positions define successively more local properties. Parameter-setting in language acquisition starts at the highest position as this is the simplest choice; acquirers will “move down the hierarchy” when confronted with primary linguistic data (PLD) incompatible with a high setting. Hence the hierarchies simultaneously define learning paths and typological properties.

I will introduce five hierarchies: those determining word-order, null arguments, word structure, discourse-configurationality and case/agreement alignment. These five hierarchies, although not exhaustive, combine to give a typological footprint of many languages, as well as providing the basis for the study of the interaction of micro- and macroparameters. In this way, the criticism that formal comparative syntax has little to offer typological studies can potentially be answered. Lastly, a more purely theoretical component of the talk aims to show that the nature of the hierarchies is determined, not directly by UG, but by UG interacting with domain-general principles of simplicity and efficiency.”

UCLA Department of Applied Linguistics 2nd Annual Public Conference

On Friday Nov. 4th, UCLA’s Department of Applied Linguistics will be holding their 2nd annual public conference. It will be on the subject of language and migration. There will be various presentations taking place in Kerckhoff Grand Salon from 8:30 am to 5 pm, with a breakfast in the beginning and a reception at the end. Feel free to attend whichever presentations you like – see the flyer below for a list of speakers and topics.

Flyer