Newsletter

This is the 196th issue of the Newsletter published by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Konstanz. It covers informations about the plans of the members of the department in October 2024 as well as short reports about events, presentations, etc. in September 2024.

New to Konstanz

Alexander Hixson has started a PhD under the supervision of Bernhard Brehmer and Regine Eckardt. He will work on Framing in Russian media, specifically in news on the Ukraine crisis. A warm welcome to Alex Hixson!

Events at/by the Department

Department and Research Colloquium in Octorber

October

The University of Konstanz and its Department of Linguistics look forward to awarding an honorary doctorate to Annie Zaenen on the 14th of October, 2024.

Several activities will take place to mark this occasion:

1. A Workshop on Large Language Models (LLMs) in Linguistic Theory
2. The formal presentation of the honorary doctorate.
3. Activities on the weekend of October 12th-13th, featuring an excursion
   to the Reichenau in honor of its 1300th anniversary.

More information here.

September

On September 5th to 6th took place via Zoom the Workshop Large Language Models (LLM) for Linguists: a Practical Introduction.
The workshop was aimed at researchers in linguistics and the humanities who don’t regularly work with LLMs and it was meant as a practical introduction to the topic and to conducting research with LLMs.

Conferences, Workshops and Presentations

In October

• Tianyi Zhao will present a poster Language redundancy effects on prosodic prominence and f0 pattern in Standard German at Phonetik & Phonologie im deutschsprachigen Raum (P&P) 2024 on October 1st in Halle (Saale), Germany.

In September

• Chiara Riegger gave a talk presenting a joined work with Tina Bögel and George Walkden titled The prosody of the verbal prefix ge-: historical and experimental evidence at INTERSPEECH 2024 (Kos, Greece) on September 3rd.
   
• Also Benazir Mumtaz and Miriam Butt have been accepted for an oral presentation entitled Urdu Alternative Questions: A Hat Pattern at INTERSPEECH 2024, hold on Kos Island, Greece, from September 1st to 5th, 2024.
   
• Philine Link presented the joint work with Massimiliano Canzi and Tamara Rathcke titled Individual Differences in Sensorimotor Synchronization and Pupillometry at AMLaP in Edinburgh on September 5th.
   
• Philine Link also presented the work titled If it Moves Like a Person, and it Talks Like a Person, it is Probably an Avatar at AMLaP in Edinburgh on September 6th. It is a joint work with Duangkamol Srismith, Maria Alejandra Quiros Ramirez, Judit Vari, Susumu Shikano, Stephan Streuber, Tamara Rathcke, and Diego Frassinelli.
   
• Hyewon Jang presented her joint work with Diego Frassinelli entitled Detecting sarcasm using LLMs when sarcasm is way too broad on September 5th at "Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing" (AMLaP ), in Edinburgh, Scotland
   
• Alec Gallo presented a poster at the 1st IMPRS Summer School of Cognitive Neuroimaging at the University College London, UK. The poster was entitled Hierarchical Network Architectures in Autism: Investigating Speech-Motor Integration. The work is co-authored by Alec Gallo and Sofie Louise Valk.
   
• George Walkden gave a talk at the University of Bergen in Norway on 12th September, as part of the Language Data and Language Change research group. The title of his talk is Sociolinguistic typology reevaluated.
   
• Regine Eckardt presented at the workshop “Evidentials in non-canonical speech acts“, at Siracusa (Sicily) on September 16th, 2024.
  Her talk is on The logics of inferential evidentiality.
  For more details see here.
  The workshop took place as a satellite event to SuB 2024, September 17th - 19th at Noto (Sicily).
  Also Doris Penka and Maribel Romero gave a paper presentation, titled The German particle 'denn' in a Scoreboard model of discourse, at Sinn und Bedeutung 29 (Noto, Italy, Sept 17th-19th, 2024).
  At the same confernce Raquel Montero, Leah Doroski and Maribel Romero gave a poster presentation, titled Spanish Neg-Raising: Mood effects on NPI licensing.
   
• Laura Hund, Svenja Krieger, and Tanja Kupisch gave a talk on Perception of nasal vowels in L2 French through the lens of eyetracking on September 27th at the Frankromanistiktag in Passau.
   
• Svenja Krieger gave a talk at Langues & Langage à la croisée des Disciplines entitled Prosodic aspects of discourse particles in L2 learners of French at Sorbonne Université, September 11th 2024, Paris.

More News

• The LFG conference took place in Accra, Ghana this year and featured several Konstanz contributions.

* Bögel, Tina, Mila Freiseis, Romi Hill, Daniel Wambach and Tianyi Zhao: Language redundancy and acoustic salience: an account in LFG
* Butt, Miriam, Tina Bögel, Benazir Mumtaz and Mark-Matthais Zymla: Alternative questions in Urdu: From the speech signal to semantics
* Butt, Miriam and Saira Bano: Persian perception verbs revisited: Evidence from Hazaragi
* Zymla, Mark-Matthias: New developments in Computational Glue: Insights into the role of f-structure in semantic ambiguity

In addition Miriam Butt co-organized a Workshop on West African Languages together with Adams Bodomo (Vienna)

• Manfred Bierwisch, one of the most prominent German linguists, died on 31st July 2024 in Berlin. One month later, on 31st August 2024, a funeral service was held that was attended by many of Manfred's colleagues, students, friends and admirers. Josef Bayer gave a short speech next to Manfred Krifka, Dieter Wunderlich, Hans Kamp, Klaus von Heusinger and Carla Umbach.
  A condolence list of can be seen under the web site of the ZAS.
   
• Kengatharaiyer Sarveswaran (aka Sarves), substitute professor from the Department of Linguistics and the Computational Linguistics group, delivered a course on the Challenges of Processing South Asian Languages (together with Tafseer Ahmed) at the 35th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI), held in Leuven, Belgium, from August 5th-9th, 2024.

Publications by Members of the Department

• Tamara Rathcke published a new paper in Music & Science: Rathcke, T., Falk, S., Dalla Bella, S. Why does speech sometimes sound like song? Exploring the role of music-related priors in the speech-to-song illusion. The paper is available open access and is accompanied by a short podcast by the co-authors.
   
• Tamara Rathcke’s team published a new open-access article: Smit, E., Rathcke, T. (2024). The role of native language and beat perception ability in the perception of speech rhythm. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1-10.

Acquisitions of the Library

• Zufferey, Sandrine: Connectives and discourse relations
• Müller, Horst M.: Einführung in die Neurolinguistik
• Lightbown, Patsy: How languages are learned
• Ziem, Alexander: Konstruktionen als soziale Konventionen und kognitive Routinen
• Bücker, Jörg: Konstruktionen im Spannungsfeld von sequenziellen Mustern, kommunikativen Gattungen und Textsorten
• Ziem, Alexander: Konstruktionen und Narration
• Stumpf, Sören: Konstruktionsgrammatik; 10: Textsorten und Textmuster als Konstruktionen?
• Božić Lenard, Dragana: Languages of politics
• Zalabardo, José L.: Pragmatist semantics: a use-based approach to linguistic representation
• DuFeu, Veronica: Rapanui
• Lasch, Alexander: Wandel im Sprachgebrauch
• Šipka, Danko: The Cambridge Handbook of Slavic Linguistics
• Adelaar, Karl Alexander: The Oxford guide to the malayo-polynesian languages of Southeast Asia
• Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen; 260. Band = 175. Jahrgang (2023)        
• Italian journal of linguistics; Volume 35 (2023)
• Word; Volume 68 (2022)
• Deutsche Sprache / im Auftr. des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, hrsg.; 51. Jahrgang (2023)
• Journal of Germanic linguistics; Volume 35
• Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik; Band 90 (2023)
• Comparative American studies; Volume 19 (2022)
• The journal of medieval Latin; Volume 34 (2024)
• Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik; Band 230 (2024)
• Italian studies/publ. by the Society for Italian Studies: Volume 78 (2023)
• Nueva revista de filología hispánica/Centro de Estudios Lingüísticos y Literarios, El Colegio de México; Tomo 71 (2023)
• Revue de linguistique romane/publ. par la Société de Linguistique Romane; Tome 87, nos. 345/346-347/348 (2023)
• Studi linguistici italiani; 3. serie, 27 = volume 48 (2022')
• Čtenie v besědě ljubitelej ruskago slov : 5
• Slavic and East European journal/ American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, AATSEEL; University of Wisconsin; Volume 67 (2023)
• Wiener slavistisches Jahrbuch; Neue Folge 12 (2024)
• Bulletin de la Société Française d'Egyptologie; N° 204/205
• Journal of Chinese linguistics/Project on Linguistic Analysis, University of California; Volume 50 and 51 (2022)

Photo copyright touchingpics.com/pixelio.de