·:[ phonoloblog ]:·
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(apologies for cross-postings)

Pending final approval, the Department of Linguistics invites applications from scholars with expertise and research interests in any aspect of Middle Eastern languages and linguistics. We are seeking a Ph.D. in any subfield of linguistics or a related discipline who has analyzed primary data (e.g.,
experimental data, field data, or natural language corpora) in order to address theoretical issues with a focus on the languages of the Middle East, including but not limited to Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and Persian. This is a tenure-eligible position at the rank of Assistant Professor, to begin in fall 2009. The Linguistics Department is participating in a multi-departmental search; thus there is the opportunity for a joint hire with another department.

Applicants should submit a curriculum vita, a letter describing research and teaching interests, two writing samples, and three letters of reference. Review of applications will begin on October 15th, 2008.

E-mail inquiries should be directed to linguistics@northwestern.edu.

The web page for the Department is: http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/linguistics.

Please send all materials to:

Middle East Faculty Search Committee
Department of Linguistics
Northwestern University
2016 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208-4090
(Tel: 847-491-7020, Fax: 847-491-3770)

Letters of reference can be sent electronically (to the email above), or by mail (to the mailing address above) by October 15, 2008.

Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer, and applications from minority and women candidates are especially welcome.

Faithful readers: the e-mail barrage about phonoloblog being down the past few days has been overwhelming. I can’t possibly reply to it all, so I’m just going to apologize here to each and every one of you for depriving you of your phonolofix. I can’t promise it will never happen again, but I can assure you that I have no intention of allowing it to happen again…

OK, I’m kidding. No, not about that last bit — it’s true that I have no such intention — but about the e-mail barrage. Exactly two people wrote (evidence for binarity?), and neither one of them was Ed (which was surprising, because he has apparently not had anything better to do). I guess the remaining mass of readers relies on the RSS feed and don’t visit the blog directly, so they didn’t even notice we were down. (Should we post more often? Nah, this isn’t Language Log, just all things phonology.)

Anyway, the deal is that the security of our server (camba.ucsd.edu) was somehow compromised by comment spam and the like. This came to the attention of the systems security folks at UCSD, who brought it to the attention of the Linguistics computing staff — big thanks and props to Ezra van Everbroeck and even more to Marc Silver for doing what it took to bring things back online quickly and safely. If you notice anything that doesn’t seem to have survived the change-over intact, please let me know and I’ll take care of it if I can (or I’ll very politely ask Marc and Ezra for help if I can’t).

Location: Amsterdam and Leiden

Dates: September 11 and 12, 2008

The phonetic difference between b and p, or z and s has been described as a difference in (timing of) vocal fold vibration, but it well-known that there are subtle differences in the precise implementation of ‘voicing’, as well as its function in the phonologies of the world’s languages. This workshop brings together researchers who study the phenomenon from a variety of perspectives, both theoretical and empirical, and both synchronic and diachronic. What’s the right phonological interpretation of voicing? How does it interact with other phonological features? How do phonological processes involving voice — such as intervocalic voicing, devoicing and voicing assimilation — interact with other phonological processes?

The workshop takes place in Amsterdam and Leiden. The last talk is a Dutch-style inaugural address, followed by a party, which is open to participants in the workshop. Participation is free; but please announce your presence beforehand to marc.van.oostendorp@meertens.knaw.nl.

The full programme and other details are here.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Sixth Old World Conference in Phonology

22-24 JANUARY 2009
Deadline for abstracts: 15th September 2008

Invited speakers:
B. Elan Dresher (University of Toronto)
Jennifer Hay (University of Canterbury)
Marc van Oostendorp (Meertens Instituut & Leiden University)

The conference will be preceded by a workshop on subsegmental phonology on 21st January, organised by Bert Botma (Leiden) and Patrick Honeybone (Edinburgh), with the title “the Privative Project: is it still worth pursuing?” Those attending the conference will be very welcome to attend the workshop, too. (Further details of the workshop are to follow.)

Conference website: www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ocp6

OCP homepage: www.ocp.leidenuniv.nl

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Hello, this is basically avoidance behavior, but I thought some of you might like to know…

“Tatamagouche” is a small town in Nova Scotia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatamagouche,_Nova_Scotia). The similar “Tatamagouchi” appears in SPE (Chomsky and Halle 1968, 114) as an example word, as part of the data justifying a phonological rule that assigns secondary stress in long words.

A Google search on “Tatamagouchi” yields mostly works in phonological theory addressing English stress assignment. I conjecture, therefore, that Chomsky and Halle made a spelling mistake in SPE (or used an archaic spelling) which has since been carried forward by other phonologists, myself included. Cheers, Bruce Hayes

[ See the obituary on LINGUIST List. ]

GLOW 32 will take place in Nantes, France, April 15-18, 2009. The general call for papers is here; the theme is “On the Architecture of the Grammar: Y, if and how”. Danny Fox and Paul Smolensky are the invited speakers. There will be three workshops: one on acquisition, one on semantics, and (of course) one on phonology, the theme of which is “The lexicon (if any)”. Call deadline: November 1, 2008.

[ Via LINGUIST List. ]

[ Via LINGUIST List. ]

Dear colleague,

We would like to invite you to the 10th National Congress / 4th International Congress of Phonetics and Phonology, which will take place during the period of November 24 - 26 (2008), at Universidade Federal Fluminense (Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).

This event is sponsored by the Brazilian Society of Phonetics and it counts with the support of several national and international phoneticians and phonologists.

The general theme of the congress is ”Phonetics and Phonology: Theory and Application”, but we also expect the following sub-themes: (1) Phonetics and Phonology within current theoretical perspectives; (2) Phonetics and Phonology in teaching: Literacy and the teaching of foreign languages; (3) Phonetics and Phonology in linguistic research: Prosody, description of languages, and diachronic phonetic and phonological processes; (4) Interdisciplinary Phonetics and Phonology: Speech pathology and speech synthesis and recognition; and (5) Experimental Phonetics: Current research.

We hope you will be able to participate and/or publicize this event to colleagues and students. For more information: (1) visit the site of the Brazilian Society of Phonetics; (2) e-mail mtmatta@terra.com.br; (3) or phone 21-2522-8881 or 21-9334-5457.

Profª Drª Mirian da Matta Machado
Presidente da SBF

Daniela Isac and Charles Reiss have recently published I-Language: An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science, which apparently has more phonology in it than your typical textbook of this type. (As the book description notes: “Contains phonological parallels to familiar syntactic arguments”.) There’s also a companion website with various resources, including a great page demonstrating Turkish vowels (previously noted by Mr. Verb). The vowels are arranged in a cube-like format that may be familiar to many of us. (This is the way I learned about Turkish vowels from Jorge Hankamer, and it clearly had a lasting effect on me.)

The publisher’s website also includes this sample chapter (Chapter 1, “What is I-language?” — a good place to start), which begins with an autobiographical story about how Charles used his knowledge of Turkish vowels and vowel harmony to save himself and a friend from a near-death experience (hey, read it yourself).

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Via LINGUIST List (follow the links):

1. Prosodic Alignment at the Word Level
   • Nov. 20-21, 2008
   • Mannheim, Germany
   • This specialized workshop is on alignment, with focus on word-internal morphological and prosodic constituents.
   • Deadline for abstracts: July 1, 2008
2. Insertions and Deletions in Speech
   • Mar. 4, 2009
   • Osnabrück, Germany
   • This workshop will provide a forum for phonologists, phoneticians, and morphologists to discuss the forms and functions of deletions and insertions found cross-linguistically, as well as their consequences for phonological systems.
   • Call Deadline: Sept. 1, 2008
3. Rhythm Beyond the Word
   • March 4-6, 2008
   • Osnabrück, Germany
   • The goal of [this workshop] is to bring together researchers who focus on the role of rhythm in various subdomains of linguistics. We invite contributions from scholars working in morphology, phonology and syntax, psycho- and neurolinguistics, aphasiology and language acquisition.
   • Call Deadline: Sept. 1, 2008