Author Archives: psv000

This week CASTL is hosting not one but two mini-courses! One on using software in OT analysis, and the other on experimental methods in the pragmatics-syntax interface. Each will be taught by an international team of guest experts. For the … Continue reading →

Roman Jakobson wrote eloquently about the insights which linguistic analysis could bring to our understanding of poetry and of the importance of poetry to a full understanding of language (Jakobson 1960, apparently his most cited article ever). These days many … Continue reading →

According to Chris Golston, California State University Fresno, who will present this topic at Friday’s colloquium talk in room E-0105 starting at 14.15. His abstract: I show that thirty common grammatical categories are used in animal cognition and are in no way … Continue reading →

This workshop investigates the role of sonority, the sonority hierarchy and the sonority sequencing principle in the internal organization of syllables. The current mainstream theory of syllable organization has often been challenged by language-specific instantiations of the sonority hierarchy or … Continue reading →

This week’s colloquium talk by Krzysztof Migdalski (Wroclaw) addresses the relation between tense and second position effects, especially in Germanic and Slavic languages. It will be held in E0105 starting at 14.15. Tense Dependency of Second Position Effects In this … Continue reading →

We just had a fun week grilling Charles Yang over his book, The Price of Linguistic Productivity. We discussed the mechanisms and principles in his framework, and how to apply to them to declension class and gender features, and to … Continue reading →

This week we grill Charles Yang, focusing on his 2016 book ‘The Price of Linguistic Productivity.’ For those who haven’t experienced the Tromsø Grill, it’s basically something like an hour talk with seven hours for questions.  

Morris Halle has passed away. He was a colossus of linguistic theory, one of the most important linguists ever, and he was also a terrific person. I (Peter Svenonius) have learned an immense amount from his articles and I learned … Continue reading →

Gillian Ramchand’s new Research Council of Norway-funded project on Modality will start up this year with a workshop in June. The project is an innovative approach to exploring the meaning of natural language as manifested in cognition. From the proposal: … Continue reading →

What do you think are the most influential works in linguistics? Peter Svenonius has compiled a list here of the most cited works, according to Google Scholar. Near the top are general works by Saussure, Sapir, and Jespersen, Lakoff’s work … Continue reading →