Semantic Typology Lab @ University at Buffalo

Spring 2019 – Wednesdays 2-3:20pm (or Friday 2-3:20/3:30-4:50) — Baldy 617

30 January –  Juergen’s Stanford talk dry run: ‘The semantic typology of causatives: quantitative evidence and pragmatic explanation’. Classes cancelled!

15 February (Friday 2-3.20pm) – First meeting of the semester, nibbles & coffee, season’s preview, Juergen’s Tokyo & Stanford travelog.

20 February – Juergen – The distribution and evolution of motion framing constructions.

27 February – Stephanie’s dissertation proposal pep prep

8 March – Prospective student day Speed Dating event

15 March (Friday) – Toronto workshop dryruns (Juergen and Erika)

20 March SPRING BREAK NO LAB

29 March (Friday) – 1. Saima’s dissertation proposal dry-run. 2. Causality readings Part 1

3 or 5 April – Causality readings Part 2

10 April NO LAB THIS WEEK (conflicting meetings, Cog Sci, Linguistics Colloquium)

17 April – 

24 April – Juergen dryrun: Agentivity symposium

1 May JB AWAY

8 or 10 May – Erika ICLC dryrun

15 May – 

 

Potential Topics:

• Erika – event structure and aspectual coercion (Croft, Michaelis papers)
• Len Talmy’s new book “The targeting system of language.”
• Anastasia – project report
• Ali – Field trip report
• Ali, Juergen – RRG conference and ICLC dryruns.
• Juergen – Professionalism topic on time management
• Juergen – Liberating syntactic typology from its weird pre-modern folk theory of semantics.
• Causality-related readings:
  • Haspelmath, M. (2016). Universals of causative and anticausative verb formation and the spontaneity scale. LINGUA POSNANIENSIS LVIII(2): 33-63.
  • Levshina, N. (2016). Finding the best fit for direct and indirect causation: a typological study. LINGUA POSNANIENSIS LVIII(2): 65–82.
  • Martin, F. (2018). Time in probabilistic causation: Direct vs. indirect uses of lexical causative verbs. In: Uli Sauerland and Stephanie Solt (eds.),Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, vol. 2, ZASPiL 61, pp. 107–124. ZAS, Berlin.
  • Neeleman, A. & H. van de Koot. (2012). The Linguistic Expression of Causation. In M. Everaert, M. Marelj, and T. Siloni, eds.,The Theta System: Argument Structure at the Interface, OxfordUniversity Press, Oxford, UK, 20-51.
  • Rappaport Hovav, M. (2014). Lexical content and context: The causative alternation in English revisited. Lingua 141: 8-29.
• Robustness of cognition readings:
  • Woodward – 2006 – Sensitive and Insensitive Causation
  • Lombrozo – 2010 – Causal–explanatory pluralism: How intentions, functions, and mechanisms influence causal ascriptions
  • Hitchcock – 2012 – Portable Causal Dependence: A Tale of Consilience.
  • Vasilyeva et al. – 2018 – Stable Causal Relationships are Better Causal Relationships
  • Gerstenberg et al. – 2015 – How, whether, why: Causal judgments as counterfactual contrasts.
  • Grinfeld et al. – 2018 – Causal Responsibility and Robust Causation

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Fall 2018 – Wednesdays 2-3:20pm, Baldy 603

29 August – First meeting for Fall 2018

5 September – Juergen ICSC Dry run, Erika on Embodied Construction Grammar

12 September – NO LAB (Juergen away)

19 September – NO LAB (CogSci event)

21 September (Friday @ 3.30pm) – Ali & Juergen field reports

26 September – Juergen UBC colloquium dry run (Counterfactuals in Yucatec)

3 October – Monique Flecken lab-fest: event representation in language and cognition (Presentations by Juergen, Erika, and Ali)

10 October – Juergen: “Inside the macro-event property”

19 October (Friday @ 3:30pm)- Presentations of 4 papers on whether iconicity effects in grammar can be reduced to frequency-based iconicity. Presentations are given by Ali, Anastasia, Erika, and Juergen

24 October – Stephanie’s AMPRA dry run, Juergen on “iconicity in Yucatec causatives: frequency vs. complexity”

31 October – No lab this week

7 November – Dr. David Braun’s presentation of his paper: “Questions are not Answers”

14 November (Friday at 3:30pm) – Yu Li: “degree expressions in Zauzou”

21 November (THANKSGIVING, NO MEETING)

30 November – 1. Anastasia (Field work report), 2. Juergen (discussion of advising models)

5 December – 1. Juergen & Erika: Talmy’s Windowing of Attention chapter, 2. Kate: LSA dry run

14 December – 1. Juergen : motion macro-event property (Practice run), 2. Saima: Proposal brainstorming

Potential topics:

• Stephanie dissertation proposal brainstorming
• Majid lab-fest, von Stutterheim lab-fest,
• Juergen on Event Semantics for RRG,
• field report (Anastasia),
• dissertation proposal brainstorming (Saima),
• dissertation updates (Ali, Anastasia, Erika),
• Erika on Frame Semantics, coherence and event representations
• more on Bayesian regression analysis (Kruschke 2015)
• professionalism topics
• Erin research
• Philosophy of Language appreciation day

 

 

 

 

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Spring 2018 – Thursdays 1-2:20pm, Baldy 617

1 February: First meeting for Spring 2018

8 February: 

• Kruschke: Doing Bayesian Data Analysis. Review of material covered last semester.
• The conquest of manipulable space: The case for a pan-simian geocentrism bias. (Juergen Bohnemeyer)

15 February: Kruschke: Doing Bayesian Data Analysis.

22 February: Regierfest: Terry Regier lab update

• Joe: Yang Xu, Terry Regier, and Barbara C. Malt (2016). Historical semantic chaining and efficient communication: The case of container names. Cognitive Science, 40, 2081-2094.
• Juergen: Terry Regier, Naveen Khetarpal, and Asifa Majid (2013). Inferring semantic maps. Linguistic Typology, 17, 89-105. [Preprint] [Supplementary material]
• Erika: Terry Regier and Yang Xu (2017). The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and inference under uncertainty. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, e1440. [Preprint]

1 March: CAL Language and Cognition update: new datasets, possible incorporation of linguistic predictors & sociocentrism survey

8 March: Spatial reference frames

9 March (Friday 2-3pm, 617 Baldy): Prospective student weekend – Speed Dating!

15 March: The history of linguistics: the jet perspective (Juergen)

22 March: Spring Break, no meeting

29 March: Erika dissertation proposal

5 April: Stephanie dissertation brainstorming

12 April: Anastasia dissertation update

19 April: Ali dissertation proposal workshopping

26 April: Myth-busting semantics for typologists – brainstorming (Juergen)

3 May: “Temporal remoteness markers in a tenseless language” SULA dry-run (Juergen)

10 May: Narrative relative clauses (brainstorming)

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Fall 2017 – Fridays 2-3:20pm, Baldy 617

8 September: Doing Bayesian Data Analysis (Kruschke, 2015): Chapters 2, 4, 5

15 September:

1. Dry run: Juergen “Causality Across Languages: State of the Art”

2. Reading: Doran, R., Ward, G., Larson, M., McNabb, Y., & Baker, R. E. (2012). A novel experimental paradigm for distinguishing between what is said and what is implicated. Language, 88(1), 124–154.

(22, 29 September, 6 October: No lab)

13 October: 

1. Reading: Li P & Abarbanell L. (2018) Competing perspectives on frames of reference in language and thought. Cognition. 170:9-24.
2. Doing Bayesian Data Analysis (Kruschke, 2015): Chapter 5

20 October: Saima Hafeez: QP Update

27 October: Doing Bayesian Data Analysis (Kruschke, 2015): Chapters 6 & 7

3 November: 

1. Stephanie QP Research Update

10 November:

1. Saima Urdu Causality Research Update
2. Doing Bayesian Data Analysis (Kruschke, 2015): Chapter 15

17 November: Dry run spectacular! Randi (AAA); Erika (ALT); Juergen (ALT)

1 December: Language Evolution/Complex Adaptive Systems

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Spring 2017 – Tuesdays, 4-5:20 pm, Baldy 617

April 4Data talk: Ali

January 31	First meeting!
February 7	Future in tenseless languages: Juergen Bohnemeyer
February 14 12:30-2:00	Space Robots in love
February 21	Data talk: Saima
February 28	Data talk: Erika
March 7	Data talk: Kate
March 10 2:00-3:30	*Friday* Speed dating
March 14	**SNOW DAY** Data talk: Holly
March 21	Spring Break
March 28	AAG Dryrun: Randi Moore (and Holly Data)
March 31 12:30-2:00	Special cross-pollination: SemTyp and SynSem combined for future time reference
April 4	Ali Alshehri
April 11	Discussion: Li & Abarbanell in response to Haun 2006
April 18	BTLI Dryrun: Randi Moore
April 25	QP Dryrun: Stephanie
May 2	Event description with LSTM-RNNs
May 9	IPrA Dryrun: Erika

Other topics of interest:

Data discussions: Ali, Erika, Holly, Kate, Saima

Robot direction paper: Michael Spranger “The evolution of grounded spatial language”

Stats paper: Eager & Roy (2017) “Mixed effects models are sometimes terrible”

Iconicity LSA

 

Selected Papers to discuss:

Lupyan, G. & R. Dale (2010), Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PLOSone http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0008559

Li, P. & L. Abarbanell (submitted), Alternative spin on phylogenetically inherited spatial reference frames. http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/peggyli/files/liabarbanell_cups.pdf

Li, P. & L. Abarbanell (submitted), Competing Perspectives: Frames of Reference in Language and Thought. http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/peggyli/files/liabarbanellanimals.pdf

New papers from Terry Regier’s webpage:

Emily Cibelli, Yang Xu, Joseph L. Austerweil, Thomas L. Griffiths, and Terry Regier (2016). The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and probabilistic inference: Evidence from the domain of color. PLOS ONE 11(7): e0158725. [Preprint]

Terry Regier, Alexandra Carstensen, and Charles Kemp (2016). Languages support efficient communication about the environment: Words for snow revisited. PLOS ONE 11(4): e0151138.

Yang Xu, Terry Regier, and Barbara C. Malt (2016). Historical semantic chaining and efficient communication: The case of container names. Cognitive Science, 40, 2081-2094. [Supplementary material]

Terry Regier, Charles Kemp, and Paul Kay (2015). Word meanings across languages support efficient communication. In B. MacWhinney & W. O’Grady (Eds.), The handbook of language emergence (pp. 237-263). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

Terry Regier, Naveen Khetarpal, and Asifa Majid (2013). Inferring semantic maps. Linguistic Typology, 17, 89-105. [Preprint] [Supplementary material]

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