In order to consolidate the workload into a more efficient board, the duties of Social Chair and Webmaster have been delegated among the five officers.

This upcoming year will be the third year of BLing’s successful operation. We hope that you will continue to support us as a member of the linguistics community.

Our Speaker: Professor Kendra Willson
Topic: Icelandic Nicknames

Kendra Willson is an Assistant Professor in the Scandinavian Section at UCLA. She works on Old and Modern Icelandic language, literature, and culture and Nordic language history. She has written on Icelandic nicknames, language politics and syntactic change in Icelandic and other Nordic languages.

When: Wednesday, May 5th, 6-8pm
Where: Campbell Hall 2122 (Second floor conference room)

We will be accepting candidacies for officer positions for next year (2010-11). Please attend the meeting if you would like to be considered.

Why I’m going to this BLing meeting: Prof. Ed Stabler
What’s he gonna talk about: Computational Models of Language Universals

Ed Stabler is professor in the Linguistics department and has taught courses such as Syntax, Semantics, Computational Phonology, and plenty more. He is also currently teaching Ling 185A (Computational Ling). Some of his research interests include human language processing, language learning and variation, and philosophy of logic and language.

What time do I show up: Wednesday, April 21th, 6-8pm
Where do I get free food: Campbell Hall 2122 (Second floor conference room)
Why… what?: We’ve attempted to play pyramid as our social activity for several months, and now we might actually get the chance to play it! You wouldn’t want to miss out.

***For those interested in being part of the BLing crew for next year (AY 10-11), we will be holding elections during our meeting in WEEK 6. As part of being on BLing’s board, you’ll get to plan our meetings throughout the year, waste time making up ling jokes, and plan the second (and awesome) annual SCULC! More information will be sent out regarding different officer positions and how you can apply.***

Our Speaker: Professor Pat Keating
Topic: “Pitch and Voice Quality Variation in English and Mandarin”

Professor Keating is a professor in the Linguistics Department, as well as the Director of the UCLA Phonetics Lab.  She specializes in phonetics and her current research pertains to the linguistic uses of phonation across languages.  She teaches Ling 103 (Intro to Phonetics), 104 (Experimental Phonetics), 120A and 165A (Phonology I and II), 130 (Lg Development), and many graduate proseminars.

When: Wednesday, February 24th, 6-8pm
Where: Campbell Hall 2122 (Second floor conference room)
What to expect: An excellent talk on phonation variations, uber fun social activity, food and drinks, chatting with fellow BLingers, and FUN.

Topic: “Discourse, Sentence Intonation, and Word Order”

Professor Yokoyama is a professor and the Chair of the Applied Linguistics Department at UCLA.  Some of her research interests include functional syntax and semantics, discourse grammar, Russian intonation and word order, gender linguistics, and folklore.  She teaches courses within the Applied Linguistics Department as well as GE courses, particularly in functional grammar and gender linguistics.

Our Speaker: Professor Susie Curtiss
Topic: Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Professor Curtiss is a member of the UCLA Linguistics faculty.  She will be speaking about what SLI is, what the major linguistic impairment(s) seems to be, and why should linguists be interested in studying SLI.

When: Wednesday, January 27th, 6-8pm
Where: Campbell Hall 2122 (Second floor conference room)
What to expect: An excellent talk on language impairment, uber fun social activity, food and drinks, chatting with fellow BLingers, and FUN.

Social activity: IPA Spelling Bee!

We are proud to announce the official call for abstracts for the Southern California Undergraduate Linguistics Conference. It will be held on April 10, 2010 on the UCLA campus in Westwood, Los Angeles. Abstracts should be submitted by Friday, March 5 at 11:59 pm (PST) to BLing AT bruinling.org. Accepted students will give a 20-minute presentation followed by 5-minutes for Q&A.

For more information visit: http://bruinling.org/sculc/

Our Speakers: Dan Levitt and Natasha Abner
Topic: American Sign Language

Dan Levitt is the Assistant Director of the Office for Students with
Disabilities.  He has been involved with interpreter training and ASL
instruction since 1970!  He will be speaking about some of the structural
aspects of ASL, as well as demonstrating what the language looks like.

Natasha Abner is a graduate student in the UCLA Ling department.  She will be
speaking about WH-Questions in American Sign Language, particularly six question
formation strategies in ASL and how language-internal variation of this type
fits into our theory of syntax.

When: Wednesday, January 13th, 6-8pm
Where: Campbell Hall 2122 (Second floor conference room)
What to expect: Not one but TWO speakers, food and drink, a chance to talk to
your fellow Blingers, and FUN.

When: Wednesday, December 2nd, 6pm (until whenever everyone leaves)
Where: Campbell Hall 2122 (Second floor conference room)

The main site for MIE, Dnghu.org gives a comprehensive overview of the language and its international “revival” effort. That particular word is used because, of course, PIE is considered to have ‘died’ out thousands of years ago. Their main goal, while lofty, is admirable—they hope to facilitate “the adoption of Modern Indo-European by the European Union as its main official language”. Not just one of its official languages, the official language. Although Esperanto, the internationally recognized success story of conlangs, has failed to gain such a status even with its purported upwards of 2 million fluent speakers, MIE does have a significant advantage in that it wasn’t just kludged from a random assortment of living languages, it was assembled from the very history of the languages that we all speak in a way that couple produce very little, if any unnatural bias (one of Esperanto’s failures was its inaccessibility to East Asian languages, African languages, etc.); that is, it doesn’t claim to be any more than a language reconstruction of PIE languages, while Esperanto tries to be but can never be truly “international”.

Quiles and Batalla have put out a massive, 800-page grammar to the Modern Indo-European language, that has sold 45 copies within the first month of release, spectacular for such an esoteric subject and even more so for a book that is readily available for free. You can find a PDF download of it at the following link: http://dnghu.org/en/Grammar-Indo-European-Language/