McLing

At this week’s MCQLL meeting on October 26 at 3:00 PM, Tom McCoy will give a talk titled “Discovering implicit compositional representations in neural networks.” An abstract of the talk follows. If you haven’t already registered for the Zoom meeting, you can do so here. ———————————- Abstract: Neural networks excel at processing language, yet their inner workings […]

McGill linguists will be presenting their work at the upcoming 52nd meeting of the Northeast Linguistics Society (NELS 52), hosted virtually by Rutgers University October 29–31. More information and the full program are available here: https://sites.rutgers.edu/nels-52/. Talks: Subeventive modal projection: the case of Spanish subjunctive relative clauses Luis Alonso-Ovalle (McGill University), Paula Menendez-Benito (University of Tuebingen), […]

Michael Wagner gave a colloquium talk at Michigan State University October 14th titled “Projecting and operating over syntactic alternatives”. The handout is available here: https://osf.io/h9cxn/ Abstract: Many grammatical phenomena have been analyzed based on the assumption that constituents can introduce semantic alternatives, and that these alternatives can project by point-wise semantic composition, following Hamblin’s 1973 analysis of […]

There will be no syntax-semantics reading group meeting this week. Since NELS is taking place this Friday (and continuing throughout the weekend), everyone is encouraged to attend that instead and listen to some interesting talks! We will resume meeting on Friday, November 5th at 2:30pm.

MULL-Lab will be meeting Tuesday, October 26, at 4:30pm.  Jessica Coon and Justin Royer will be presenting their paper titled Object raising bleeds binding: A new correlate of high-absolutive syntax in Mayan (see abstract below).  If you have not registered for MULL-Lab but would like to attend, you can register here. Abstract: A subset of Mayan languages prohibit the extraction of subjects from […]

MULL-Lab will be meeting this Tuesday at 4:30pm.  Sigwan Thivierge (Concordia University) will be presenting on community-led language reclamation.  If you would like to attend but haven’t registered, you can do so here.

The next talk of the 2021-2022 McGill Linguistics Colloquium Series will be held on Friday, November 5th at 3:30pm. The talk will be given by Heidi Harley (University of Arizona), see the abstract below. If you would like to meet with Heidi before the talk on Friday, please email Connie with your availability (connie.ting@mail.mcgill.ca). ————————————————— Abstract: Hiaki (Yaqui) exhibits […]

At this week’s P group meeting, Oct 21 1pm,  Wei will lead a discussion on the paper “A non-contrastive cue in spontaneous imitation: Comparing mono- and bilingual imitators” (Kwon, 2021). Abstract: This study tests the hypothesis that imitators of different native languages imitate the same targets in distinct ways predicted by their native phonology, by investigating […]

McGill Linguistics was represented at the Annual Meeting on Phonology 2021, held Oct. 1-3 (virtually) in Toronto: Morgan Sonderegger gave an invited talk, “Corpus studies of variation in obstruent ‘voicing’ across languages and speakers: phonetic variation and implications for phonology” Jeff Lamontagne (PhD ’20, now at Indiana University) gave a talk: “Contrasting Community and Individual Grammars in Laurentian […]

MULL-Lab will be meeting Tuesday, October 12, at 4:30pm.  This week, Will Johnston will be presenting on motion predicates in Hmong.

This week’s syntax-semantics reading group meeting will take place Friday, October 15th at 2:30pm. Jonny Palucci will be discussing the paper “Affected Experiencers” by Bosse et al. The paper can be downloaded here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11049-012-9177-1. Abstract: Numerous languages permit an NP that is not selected by the verb to be added to a clause, with several different possible […]

We are happy to report that the former McGill Fieldwork Lab has been reconfigured into the Montreal Underdocumented Languages and Linguistics Lab (MULL-Lab), led by McGill faculty members Jessica Coon, James Crippen, and Martina Martinović, together with Lisa Travis, Richard Compton (UQAM) and Sigwan Thivierge (Concordia). Learn more at the new website:

At this week’s P group meeting, Oct 7 1pm,  Connie will lead a discussion on the paper “Tonogenesis” (Michaud and Sands, 2020). Abstract: Tonogenesis is the development of distinctive tone from earlier non-tonal contrasts. A well-understood case is that of Vietnamese (similar in its essentials to that of Chinese and many languages of the Tai-Kadai […]

This week’s syntax-semantics reading group meeting will take place Friday, October 8th at 2:30pm. Zoë Belk will be presenting joint work with Kriszta Eszter Szendrői, “Word order in Contemporary Hasidic Yiddish”.   Abstract: Yiddish has been variously argued to be an OV language with innovative VO effects, a VO language with remnants of OV characteristics, and even as […]

Luis Alonso-Ovalle presented collaborative work with Paula Menéndez-Benito (U. Tübingen) and Aynat Rubinstein (Hebrew University Jerusalem) last week at the 2nd meeting of SENSUS Constructing Meaning in Romance, hosted virtually by UMass Amherst. The title of their talk was “Subeventive Modal Projection: The Case of Spanish Subjunctive Relative Clauses” (abstract).

MULL-Lab (formerly Fieldwork Lab) will be meeting Tuesday, September 28, at 4:30pm.  Richard Compton (UQAM) will be presenting a paper titled On the structure of (personal) pronouns in Inuktitut.  If you would like to attend but still haven’t registered, you may do so here.

This week’s syntax-semantics reading group meeting will take place Friday, October 1st at 2:30pm. Michael Wagner will be presenting his work, “Projecting and Operating over Syntactic Alternatives”. Abstract: Many grammatical phenomena have been analyzed based on the assumption that constituents can introduce semantic alternatives, and that these alternatives can project in a pointwise fashion, following Hamblin’s […]

The first syntax-semantics reading group meeting will take place Friday, September 24th at 2:30pm. Alex Göbel will be presenting his work, “Accommodation, Global and Local: Experimental Data from English & Vietnamese“. We will also set up the schedule for the semester. Abstract: The ability of (some) presuppositions to be accommodated – either relative to the global […]

The time of the P* group meeting will be 1-2 pm on Thursdays. The first meeting will be on Sept 23 (1: 00 pm). To attend the meeting, please first register here: https://mcgill.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUofu6oqzwvGNcO_blbZvGfDVIeVp2G71mb.  The meeting link will be sent to you after the registration. You only need to register for the first meeting. If you would like […]

Montreal Underdocumented Languages Linguistics Lab (MULL-Lab, formerly Fieldwork Lab) will be having its first meeting this Tuesday, September 21, from 3:30-4:30pm.  If you would like to attend, please fill out this registration form.  We will be setting our schedule of talks for this semester, so please come with ideas!