Research Groups: Friday, September 21

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Language Variation and Change Research Group
Laura Hare (Ph.D. 2018, Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations): "Gendered speech: A sociolinguistic study of conversations between men and women in biblical narrative."
In this study, I conduct a quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of a range of different linguistic variables from different levels of grammar, including syntax and vocabulary, that are used by men and women in mixed-gender conversations in the Hebrew Bible. The results of this analysis demonstrate that Hebrew as a written language presents a sociolinguistic world with consistent patterns of linguistic variation, including consistent patterns of gender-based variation. Because the biblical authors use adherence to and deviation from the expected patterns of speech as a way of expressing character traits and indicating unusual situations, an understanding of how linguistic variation functions in the Hebrew Bible provides deeper insight into the text.

11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Phonology Research Group
Radu Craioveanu's thesis proposal: "The larynx revisited: The realization, timing, and perception of laryngeal features."

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Semantics Research Group
Paper discussion led by Andrew Peters (Ph.D.).
We will discuss two recent papers by Anand and Toosarvandani on their bicontextual semantics for the English present tense, as well as extensions in the study of temporal sequencing. A discussion on competing approaches for handling temporal inferences in discourse will serve to background Anand and Toosarvandani's account of the 'historical' and 'play-by-play' present. Their approach employs Sharvit's (2004) context of assessment to unify both canonical and non-canonical uses of the English simple present, to explain how narrative backshifting arises and why it is unavailable in the historical present, as well as how the historical present can 'anchor' the past perfect, while canonical and play-by-play uses cannot. I will present discussions from two of Anand and Toosarvandani's papers which are to appear in Sinn und Bedeutung, 21 & 22 as well as from their course at the North American Summer School on Logic, Language, and Information in June 2018.