Winter Week 2 GM: ASL

We would like to invite you all to the first Winter Quarter meeting of the Bruin
Linguists!

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.

Fall Week 10 GM: Study group!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving break! We would like to invite you all to the last Fall Quarter meeting of the Bruin Linguists! Since finals weeks is approaching, our last meeting will be a study session. It’s just some Ling students preparing for finals together, but we aren’t necessarily studying for Ling classes. So bring along your papers, laptops, and some snacks and come study with us!

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

Free download “A Grammar of Modern Indo-European”

Most of us have heard of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the focus of all Historical Linguistics undergraduate courses, but what about its modern sibling? Modern Indo-European is an international auxiliary language, much like Interlingua or Ido, that was constructed by two students at Extremadura University, Carlos Quiles and María Teresa Batalla. What sets this particular conlang apart is that it is based solely on reconstructed PIE, giving us a unique look at how the language would be used in a modern setting.

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/

Fall Week 8 GM: Infant Perception

We would like to invite you all to the fourth Fall Quarter meeting of the Bruin Linguists!

This is the last General Meeting of the quarter, so be sure to make it out this time!

Our Speaker: Kristi Hendrickson
Topic: Studying Infant Perception

Kristi is a research coordinator at the Language Acquisition Lab here at UCLA and has previously worked at UC Davis with mentally challenged children. She will be discussing some of the methodologies for testing infants’ speech and visual perception.

When: Wednesday, November 18th, 6pm
Where: Campbell Hall 2122 (Second floor conference room)
Social activity: More BLing T-Shirts!
There were great ideas for this year’s BLing club t-shirts at our last meeting, so come by and tell us what you think about them! We are still taking submissions for designs, so if you couldn’t come to the last meeting, come share your ideas!