Penn Linguists at #NWAV53!

Penn Linguistics's @garicgymro.bsky.social will be giving this year's first 60-Second Lecture at noon on September 3, 2025, entitled How Old is Language? www.sas.upenn.edu/events/60-se...

A touching piece by Rolf Noyer in memory of our colleague and friend Gene Buckley, who died in June and will be very deeply missed. www.ling.upenn.edu/news/2025/07...

The video of the memorial for William Labov, held at the LSA Annual Meeting January 9, 2025, is now available on the LSA website: resourcehub.lsadc.org/Play?pId=fe7...

Huge congratulations to our graduating majors (here pictured with our Undergraduate Chair Florian Schwarz)! We're proud but we'll miss you!

On Wednesday, May 14, Gareth Roberts was the featured speaker at the Penn Club of Metro NJ’s Wesley A. Stanger, Jr. Annual Spring Dinner, with a talk entitled "Unlocking the Secrets of Language”.

On Tuesday, May 20, Florian Schwarz gave an invited talk entitled "Fun filtering facts, if not presupposition projection” at the 35th meeting of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT 35) saltconf.github.io/salt35/confe...

Current and former Penn linguists at WCCFL 43 in Seattle! From left to right: Thomas McFadden (PhD 2004), Matthew Hewett (Assistant Professor 2025), Lefteris Paparounas (PhD 2023), Luke James Adamson (PhD 2019)

Congratulations to Eric Tao, Linguistics major and 2025 Dean's Scholar!

Huge congratulations to former Penn Linguistics PhD Milena Šereikaitė, who has been hired as a tenure-track assistant professor at Cornell! sereikaite.com

Delighted to announce that the Penn linguist Marlyse Baptista has been elected a 2024 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow! penntoday.upenn.edu/news/five-pe...

Congratulations to Penn Linguistics's May Pik Yu Chan, who is the winner in the Natural Sciences category of the 2025 Penn Grad Talks. her talk was entitled "When High Notes Challenge Speech: What Opera Singers Teach Us About Language" pan-school.sas.upenn.edu/penn-grad-ta...

Postdoc opportunity in syntax at Penn! apply.interfolio.com/162306

We are delighted to report that Gillian Sankoff was honored on Saturday, January 11, with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. A very well-deserved recognition of her long and influential career!

A memorial was held for Bill Labov on the evening of Thursday, January 9, at the 2025 LSA Meeting in Philadelphia. There were many laughs as well as tears.

Gillian Sankoff has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. The award will be presented at 3:15 today (Sat, Jan 11) at the #LSA, in conference rooms 407-408 of the conference Marriott. Please join us to help celebrate her lifetime of achievements!

We are deeply saddened by the passing of Bill Labov. He shaped the field of variationist sociolinguistics and helped countless linguists on their paths to stellar careers. His kindness, generosity, and brilliance have been a profound source of inspiration for so many of us.

We are delighted to report that May Pik Yu Chan (www.ling.upenn.edu/~pikyu/) has been awarded the Raymond H. Stetson Scholarship in Phonetics and Speech Science (acousticalsociety.org/fellowships-...)!

The Language & Cognition Lab (langcoglab.com) will have a strong presence in January at the 98th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America with five abstracts accepted as talks.

We are delighted to report that Uğurcan Vurgun, who successfully defended his thesis titled, "From Words to Worlds: Telicity and the Malleability of Event Representations” in August, has accepted a position as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Penn Medicine! Congratulations, Uğurcan!

We are delighted to report that Tyler Knowlton has accepted a position as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Alon Hafri in the Linguistics & Cognitive Science department at the University of Delaware. Congratulations, Tyler! tylerknowlton.com

We are delighted to report that Andrea Beltrama has accepted a position as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Linguistics and Cognitive Science department at the University of Delaware. Congratulations, Andrea! andreabeltrama.com

We are delighted to report that Le Xuan Chan (ling.upenn.edu/people/le-xu...) was a finalist for best student paper at this year’s New Ways of Analyzing Variation conference!

Congratulations to former Penn Linguistics student Nattanun (Pleng) Chanchaochai, who has been awarded the prize for the best paper by an untenured scientist at #BUCLD! www.chanchaochai.com

Busy Friday this week featuring 3 scientists! Oct 25 10:15 - Linguistics Speaker Series: Ann Bradlow 12:00 - MindCORE/DDDI Seminar: Mala Murthy 1:30 - ILST Seminar: Iris Nowenstein Details for all: mindcore.sas.upenn.edu @pennlinguistics.bsky.social

This was quite good fun to do youtu.be/mey9EsOwhDo?...

#CallForPapers open for the 49th Penn Linguistics Conference, to be held from April 5 to 6, 2025, with keynotes from Jessica Coon and Annette D'Onofrio! Abstract deadline is November 18, 2024 More details here: sites.google.com/sas.upenn.ed...

New #publication: Sunghye Cho et al. (2024). Automatic classification of AD pathology in FTD phenotypes using natural speech. Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association. doi.org/10.1002/alz....

Congratulations to Christine Soh Yue, who passed her proposal #defense on September 12, 2024! Her title is "Learning Variation and Systematicity in Language" and she is advised by Charles Yang. Anna Papafragou, Marlyse Baptista, and Kathryn Schuler sat on her committee.

Congratulations to Gwen Hildebrandt, who passed her #PhDDefense today (June 24)! Her dissertation was entitled "Distributional cues to syntactic structure: case studies in Korean", and she was advised by Charles Yang. Julie Anne Legate and Martin Salzmann served on her committee. www.penngwen.net

Congratulations to George Balabanian, who passed his #PhDDefense today (June 20)! His dissertation was entitled "A Diachronic Analysis of Western Armenian Verbal Morphology", and he was advised by Don Ringe. www.ling.upenn.edu/people/georg...

Congratulations to Daoxin Li (daoxinli.github.io), who passed her #PhDDefense yesterday (June 17)! Her dissertation was entitled "Distributional learning of syntactic generalizations", and she was advised by Charles Yang.

Congratulations and good luck to our graduating students!

Lots of PhD student success to list!

#NewPaper: Sunghye Cho et al. (2024). Automatic classification of AD pathology in FTD phenotypes using natural speech. Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association. doi.org/10.1002/alz....

Four Penn Linguistics presenters at 10th MACSIM (April 6, 2024): June Choe, Minyang Bian, Jonathan Lee, Uğurcan Vurgun macsim.us/the-10th-mac...

Penn Alumni Global Discovery series talk by @garicgymro.bsky.social at noon on March 6! www.alumni.upenn.edu/s/1587/gid2/...

New #publication Agmon, G., Pradhan, S., Ash, S., Nevler, N., Liberman, M., Grossman, M., and Cho, S. (2024) Automated measures of syntactic complexity in natural speech production: Older and younger adults as a case study. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. doi.org/10.1044/2023...

We are hiring a Postdoctoral Fellow in Syntax for the 2024-2025 academic year! Review of applications will begin February 10, 2024, and will continue until the position is filled.  The expected start date is July 1, 2024.  Full details here: apply.interfolio.com/139608

Several talks by Penn (and formerly Penn) linguists at #NELS54! (nels54.mit.edu/program)

Congratulations to Marlyse Baptista, who has won the 2024 LSA mentoring award! www.linguisticsociety.org/content/2024...

Congratulations to Daoxin Li, who was awarded second prize in the 2024 LSA Student Abstract Award for her abstract entitled "Modelling the distributional learning of verb argument structure"! www.linguisticsociety.org/content/2024...

Congratulations to Lefteris Paparounas, who successfully defended his #dissertation, entitled "Voice from syntax to syncretism”, on Nov 17, 2023! Lefteris was advised by Dave Embick and his committee consisted of Julie Anne Legate, Florian Schwarz, Martin Salzmann, and Elena Anagnostopoulou.

Abstracts for the 48th Penn Linguistics Conference are due Nov 17! PLC is run by Penn Ling grad students and we welcome a wide variety of submissions from faculty, students (graduate and undergraduate), and independent researchers. More details here: www.ling.upenn.edu/Events/PLC/p...

Daoxin Li and @KathrynSchuler's paper “Acquiring recursive structures through distributional learning” was selected by the Language Acquisition editorial team as the 2023 best original research article by an untenured scientist! daoxinli.github.io kathrynschuler.com

Recent (10/23/23) invited #talk by @garicgymro.bsky.social to Nijmegen Language Evolution and Emergence group (LEE): The emergence of phonological organization: Evidence from non-linguistic communication games

Upcoming (11/09/23) Common Ground #Colloquium by Florian Schwarz at University of Tübingen: Exploring the Role of Linear Order in Common Ground Updates: Projection from Conjunction and Disjunction

On 11/08/2023 Florian Schwarz will be giving a tutorial on PCIbex at X-PPL (www.comparativelinguistics.uzh.ch/en/events/x-...)

Upcoming talk by Florian Schwarz and collaborators at X-PPL: Two types of definites – cross-linguistic experimental study www.comparativelinguistics.uzh.ch/en/events/x-...

Recent #colloquium by Florian Schwarz at Northwestern: Exploring the contrast between weak and strong definite articles experimentally