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9/1/21

Support for research on constraints on movement, and on exceptive constructions.

Congratulations to Adam Liter and to Maria Polinsky, whose work has earned new support from the National Science Foundation. Adam has received a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant for work with his supervisor, Jeff Lidz, on “Subjacency, the Empty Category Principle, and the nature of constraints on phrase movement.” Masha is the recipient of a Collaborative Research Award on “Variation in exceptive structures,” on how languages express thoughts like ‘everybody laughed except you,' a project on which Hisao Kurokami has already begun to work. See the abstracts below.

Adam Liter and Jeffrey Lidz, BCS #2116270, Subjacency, the Empty Category Principle, and the nature of constraints on phrase movement

In general, it is possible to form a question by 'moving' a wh-phrase like "who” or "which boy" out of a seemingly arbitrary number of clauses, as in "Who did Allie say that Amy saw?", "Who did Alicia hear that Allie said that Amy saw?", and so on. In these questions, "who" is the logical object of "saw" yet appears at the beginning of the sentence. However, there are certain syntactic environments, commonly called 'islands,' in which question formation is not possible. A question like "Who did the book by delight everyone?"--whose intended meaning is 'who is the person such that the book by that person delighted everyone'--sounds unnatural to speakers of English, suggesting that it is not a possible question despite having a reasonable meaning. Some linguists have claimed that these constraints disappear when the offending structure is elided, such as in a sentence like "Amy said that the book by someone delighted everyone, but I don't remember who". Such sentences sound a bit more natural to speakers of English, but their status isn't entirely clear. This dissertation project will advance linguistic theory by using recent experimental techniques to ascertain whether such sentences are grammatical. In advancing the field, this project will also support education and diversity by training an undergraduate research assistant in these experimental techniques, scientific thinking, and statistical analysis.

Using behavioral methods, this doctoral dissertation project probes the link between speakers' reported judgments and their sensitivity to structure in questions with and without ellipsis. The goal is to determine whether the same principles apply to dependencies involving ellipsis as those that do not, with the longer term goal of identifying the computational principles governing syntactic locality. More generally, the project addresses the consequences of mismatches between reported acceptability and subliminal sensitivity to structure in acceptability judgments.

Maria Polinsky, BCS #2116344, Variation in exceptive structures

All languages are able to express universal statements, even though we realize that they are seldom literally true. Consequently, languages also have means of expressing exceptions to such generalizations, via exceptive constructions. English examples include "Everybody but Sandy laughed" and "Everybody laughed except Sandy". Linguistic means of expressing exclusion have received modest attention from philosophers of language and semanticists, whose focus has been primarily on English. Beyond that small body of work, little is known about exceptive constructions across the world's languages: how they are built, what their distribution is within individual languages and across languages, and how they compare to other constructions expressing comparison or contrast. This research project fills this gap as the first cross-linguistic investigation of lexical, morphological, and syntactic properties of the construction. Understanding exceptive constructions allows linguists to create better theories of language structure and to predict the range of variation in natural languages; it helps computer scientists build better parsing models; it gives language educators new dimensions that should be emphasized in language teaching, and it provides cultural anthropologists with additional tools to study societal (dis)similarities in the concept of exclusion. 

This research project employs methodologies from linguistic typology, theoretical syntax, and formal semantics to carry out in-depth investigations of exceptive constructions in a wide range of the world's languages. The project aims for maximum linguistic coverage by using sampling techniques of modern linguistic typology. Theoretically, the project addresses a range of questions that arise from the empirical findings. In particular, it analyzes the contrast between free and connected exceptives, phrasal and clausal exceptives, and coordinated and subordinated exceptives. The project develops diagnostics that reliably identify the different types of exceptives and identifies independent linguistic properties that correlate with these different types of exceptives in a language. Therefore, it allows researchers to predict the type of exceptive constructions in an individual language. Beyond developing a picture of exceptive structure cross-linguistically, the project has notable implications for current theories of ellipsis. The project provides data on low-resource and endangered languages and highlights the importance of linguistic diversity for a complete understanding of the human language system.

 

Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Gildenhorn Recital Hall
Thursday, October 21, 2021 - 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM

Esteemed violinist and social justice advocate, Vijay Gupta will present "Creating Justice through the Arts".

The Graduate School invites applications for the Faculty-Student Research Award. Full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members and full-time professional track faculty who advise and mentor graduate students at the University of Maryland at College Park are eligible to apply.

The wide variety of faculty research, scholarship, and creative projects on campus provide unique opportunities to mentor and support graduate students. The Faculty-Student Research Award provides $10,000 to support a faculty project that directly involves graduate students. Proposals require a detailed description of the faculty-led project, an explanation of how graduate students will benefit, and a proposed budget.

FSRA complements the Independent Scholarship, Research, and Creativity Award (ISRCA) offered by the Office of the Provost and the Division of Research and replaces the former Research and Scholarship Awards (RASA) and Creative and Performing Arts Awards (CAPAA). Unlike FSRA, ISRCA has no requirement for graduate student involvement. Faculty may not apply for both the FSRA and ISRCA in the same academic year.

Friday, October 01, 2021 - 5:00 PM

Awards $10,000 to support a faculty-led project that directly involves graduate students.

6/7/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Lisa W. Carney, who completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese last year, has won a 2021 Charles A. Caramello Distinguished Dissertation Award for her dissertation that explored the stories told about dreams in Kichwa, a Quechuan language spoken in Ecuador. The annual award, given by the Graduate School, recognizes four students who defended their dissertation in the previous calendar year. 

Carney is currently a postdoctoral associate at the Latin American Studies Center and coordinator of the Dissertation Success Program at the Graduate School Writing Center. 

“It matters profoundly what stories we as a society pay attention to and whose voices we listen to,” Carney said. “It means a lot to me to have been able to support the ongoing efforts of Amazonian indigenous communities to have their languages and knowledge recognized and supported more broadly.” 

Carney holds a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish literature from Dartmouth College and a Master of Arts in Latin American literature and culture from the Ohio State University. While volunteering for a summer in Ecuador as an undergraduate, she heard Kichwa-speakers (who call themselves Runa) reference their dreams in decision-making processes. She was drawn to the narratives and storytelling techniques and set out to learn Kichwa to be able to dive deeper.

To research the topic, Carney made video recordings of Kichwa narrators as they told their dream stories, transcribed and translated the recordings and worked with a handful of Runa women to learn to interpret the stories.

Carney found that Runa tell the stories of their dreams when they learn something valuable from the dream experience. Her dissertation, “By the Authority of Dreams: Truth and Knowledge in Kichwa Muskuy Narratives,” explores the storytelling elements and their significance. 

“They use a range of performative techniques like gestures, vocal modulations and descriptive language to evoke imagery and emotion,” she said, “which is key to conveying their credibility as speakers and the authoritativeness of the knowledge they are sharing.” 

Carney’s larger research interests include indigenous cultural production, like narrative and song. 

Though researching and writing her dissertation was challenging, Carney said she was propelled by the collaborative nature of the work and the opportunity to recognize the artistry and knowledge of the Runa women she worked with. 

“I kept myself motivated by thinking of the collaborators who generously shared their knowledge and time with me in hopes of promoting their communities’ values,” she said.

The Graduate School and Vice President for Research are pleased to announce the launch of proposal development support services for graduate student external fellowship and grant applications. Proposal managers are available to consult with graduate students about fellowship/grant opportunities, help shape competitive proposals, and provide review and editing of proposal drafts. In the future we also expect to offer several types of asynchronous training resources. Interested graduate students are invited to submit a request for support here.  Please reach out directly with any questions (proposals@umd.edu).

We would also like to point you to three resources to help graduate students identify fellowship/grant opportunities.

Friday, May 07, 2021 - 12:00 AM

The College of Arts and Humanities is seeking nominations for the Mary S. Snouffer Dissertation Fellowship for 2021-2022.

Friday, May 07, 2021 - 12:00 AM

The College of Arts and Humanities awards travel monies to support the professional development of its graduate students through the presentation of original work. These awards are for competitive presentations of scholarship or creative works at national and international conferences.

Wednesday, February 03, 2021 - 5:00 PM

The College of Arts and Humanities is now accepting nominations for the University of Maryland’s Charles A. Caramello Distinguished Dissertation Award. Eligible candidates are UMD Ph.D. graduates who have submitted their dissertation to the Graduate School in the 2020 calendar year. Each ARHU unit may nominate one dissertation to the college.

Friday, December 04, 2020 - 12:00 AM

The Graduate School invites colleges to choose graduate students for Outstanding Graduate Assistant Awards for exemplary achievement as a GA in AY 2020-21. The Graduate School will make approximately 80 Outstanding Graduate Assistant Awards annually and will recognize the awardees for 2020-21 at the Annual Fellowship and Award Celebration in May 2021.

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