The Department invites both academic scholars and professionals using linguistics in careers outside of academia to speak on Fridays throughout the academic year. Lectures feature cutting-edge academic research (RESEARCH TALKS) or focus on career pathways for linguists in business, government, nonprofit and tech (CAREER TALKS).
The Friday Speaker Series takes place from 3:30-5:00 pm in Poulton 230 and on Zoom. For more information, including Zoom registration links, please see our Department Talks & Events flyer.
Spring 2025
Jan 15 (Wed) CAREER TALK – Nancy Frishberg, Linguist, User Experience Researcher, ASL interpreter/researcher, Document/Content Designer Shifting identity as a linguist outside of academia: A chameleon’s story
Jan 17 CAREER PANEL – Hannah Williams (PhD – Sociolinguistics), Yi Luo (MS – Theoretical), Dan Degenaro (MS – Computational) How I got my summer internship
Jan 24 RESEARCH (Applied) – Ekaterina Sudina, University of Maryland, College Park Self-citation in applied linguistics: When and how much is ethical?
Feb 18 (Tue) RESEARCH (Applied) – Hae In (Lauren) Park, Kyung Hee University Understanding proficiency assessment practices in SLA research: Insights from researcher beliefs, knowledge, and practices
Feb 21 RESEARCH (Theoretical) – Irina Burukina, University of Florida
Feb 28 RESEARCH (Applied) – Ron Darvin, University of British Columbia
Mar 14 RESEARCH (Theoretical) – Aron Hirsch, University of Maryland, College Park
Mar 21 RESEARCH (Computational) – William Schuler, Ohio State University
Mar 26 (Wed) CAREER TALK – Emily Pace, Linguistics Career Launch. An NLP linguist navigating career transition
Apr 4 RESEARCH (Computational) – Ellie Pavlick, Brown University
Apr 11 RESEARCH (Sociolinguistics) – Elena Semino, Lancaster University
Apr 15 (Tues) RESEARCH (Applied) – Jonathan Culpeper, Lancaster University
Apr 25 RESEARCH (Applied/Computational) – Sarah Mess, Board certified plastic surgeon, Johns Hopkins Hospital. Artificial intelligence scribe and large language model technology in health care documentation: Advantages, limitations and recommendations
Fall 2024
Sept 6 RESEARCH (Computational) – Maciej Ogrodniczuk, IPI PAN Warsaw. Universal discourse: Towards a multilingual model of discourse relations
Sept 13 RESEARCH (Theoretical) – Kate Mooney, University of Maryland, College Park Asymmetries in phonological reordering
Sept 20 RESEARCH (Computational) – Alexis Palmer, University of Colorado, Boulder. A tricky intersection: Natural language processing and endangered language documentation
Sept 27 RESEARCH (Theoretical) – Wilson de Lima Silva, Program Director, National Science Foundation Program Director, Dynamic Language Infrastructure and Documenting Endangered Languages (DLI-DEL) Programs. Applying to NSF: Program Officer Guidance with a focus on the Dynamic Language Infrastructure-Documenting Endangered Languages (DLI-DEL) and Linguistics Programs
Oct 4 RESEARCH (Sociolinguistics) – Kevin McGowan, University of Kentucky. Speech perception is social (except when it isn’t): implications for a theory of speech perception
Oct 11 CAREER TALK – Laurel Sutton, Sutton Strategies (formerly Catchword). Linguists in naming + naming workshop
Oct 18 RESEARCH TALK (Theoretical linguistics & Philosophy) – Elisabeth Camp Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Nov 1 RESEARCH TALK (Computational linguistics) – Kyle Mahowald University of Texas, Austin
Nov 8 RESEARCH TALK (Theoretical linguistics) – Travis Major University of Southern California
Nov 22 CAREER TALK – Reva Schwartz National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) Ethical artificial intelligence & risk assessment
Spring 2024
Feb. 23 – Daniel Ginsberg American Anthropological Association School for Linguists: Revisited
Mar. 15 – Matthew Kelley George Mason University Acoustic absement in spoken word recognition
Mar. 22 – Marije Michel Rijksuniversiteit Groningen The dynamics of language learning and well-being in highly-educated newcomers in the Netherlands
Apr. 5 – Nick Fleisher University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee The semantics and pragmatics of norm erosion
Apr. 12 – Biljana Cubrovic University of Belgrade Some observations on the development of L2 English varieties: in the 21st century: Between a rock and a hard place
Apr. 19 – Maria Kouneli Rutgers University Marked nominative as a type of ergative
Apr. 26 – Bryan Smith Arizona State University Language learning ‘in the wild’: Evidence from app-based extramural Spanish learning
Sept. 15 – Laura Tan Georgetown University Towards Including Second Language Varieties of English on High-stakes International Tests of English Proficiency: A Perceptual Adaptation Study
Sept. 29 – Francis Tyers Indiana University Codex to corpus: Processing and annotation for an open and extensible edition of the Florentine Codex
Oct. 13 – Laura Gurzynski-Weiss Indiana University, Bloomington 24k tasks and counting: Reconceptualizing exposure-track L2 Spanish in the US
Oct. 20 – Akiko Fujii International Christian University, Tokyo Overcoming challenges in promoting interaction in L2 language and content classrooms: Learners, tasks, teachers, and community
Oct. 27 – Matt Hewett Georgetown University The precedence component to intervention effects: Evidence from English passives
Nov. 3 – Lacey Wade University of Kansas Expectations, Experience, and Linguistic Convergence
Nov. 10 – Danni Shi Georgetown University The effects of repeated viewing of video-based lectures on L2 learners’ processing and acquisition of technical vocabulary
Nov. 17 – Elisabeth Camp Rutgers University Title TBD, Co-sponsored with the Department of Philosophy
Dec. 1 – Géraldine Walther George Mason University Grammar as information
Sept. 6 – Victor Fernández-Mallat Georgetown University Forms of Address in Interaction: Evidence from Chilean Spanish
Sept. 13 – Júlia Barón University of Barcelona Teaching Pragmatics to Advanced EFL Learners Through Podcasts
Sept. 20 – Vivek Srikumar University of Utah Natural Language Processing in Therapy: What Is and What Can Be
Sept. 27 – Geoff Pullum University of Edinburgh The Humble Preposition and the Sins of Traditional Grammar
Oct. 4 – Byron Ahn Princeton University (Mis-)Alignment of Semantic Focus and Focus Marking
Oct. 18 – Amelia Tseng American University Unpacking Positive Attitudes: The Intergenerational Social Life and Consequences of Reductivist Language Ideologies
Oct. 25 – Julia Goetze Pennsylvania State University FL Teacher Emotions and Instructed SLA: Why Do They Matter? What Do We Know? Where Do We Go From Here?
Nov. 1 – Marianne Mithun UC Santa Barbara Refining Our Explanations
Nov. 8 – Gabriela Caballero UC San Diego
Nov. 15 – Andrea Beltrama University of Pennsylvania
Jan. 11 – Laura Kalin Princeton University Word formation and derivational timing: A case study or Turoyo
Jan. 18 – Dan Isbell Michigan State University Connecting SLA, Language Teaching, and Language Testing: A Focus on L2 Pronunciation
Jan. 25 – Minjin Lee Yonsei University Tasks, cognitive processes and individual differences in second language acquisition
Feb. 1 – Dustin Crowther Oklahoma State University Promoting Comprehensibility in Second Language Speech: Bridgin Monologic- and Interactive-base Scholarship
Feb. 8 – Lara Bryfonski Georgetown University Task-based language teaching: Implementation and L2 outcomes
Feb. 22 – Youssef Haddad University of Florida Syntax and pragmatics, their interplay and respective independence: Evidence from Arabic attitude datives
March 1 – Abdulkafi Albirini Utah State University Standard Arabic: between typology and proficiency
March 15 – Naomi Feldman University of Maryland Modeling early phonetic learning from spontaneous speech
April 12 – Scott Kiesling University of Pittsburgh
April 19 – Atiqa Hachimi University of Toronto, Scarborough
Sept. 7 – Brendan O’Connor University of Massachusetts Amherst Demographics bias in social media language analysis: A case study of African-American English
Sept. 14 – Coptic Scriptorium Rebecca Krawiec (Canisius College) Christine Luckritz Marquis (Union Presbyterian Seminary) Beth Platte (ReedCollege) Caroline T. Schroder (University of the Pacific) Amir Zeldes (Georgetown University)
Sept. 21 – Omri Abend Hebrew University of Jerusalem UCCA: A computational approach to cross-linguistic semantic representation
Sept. 28 – Dongsook Whitehead President and Co-Founder of Connect 4 Education (C4E) and CEO and Chief Instructional Designer of C4EIS
Oct. 5 – Alastair Pennycook University of Technology, Sydney Semiotic assemblages: The pros and cons of trying to cover everything
Miyuki Sasaki Nagoya City University Measuring L1-L2 Writing Development with a New Longitudinal Cluster Analysis Statistics
Walt Wolfram North Carolina State University Film Screening: Talking Black in America
Florian Lionnet Princeton University Phonological Subfeatures: a Phonetically Grounded Account of Cumulative Effects in Phonology
Nelson Flores University of Pennsylvania Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Ideological Architecture of Whiteness as Property
Cristian Danescu-Niculescu- Mizil Cornell Conversational Markers of Social Dynamics
Anjali Pandey Salisbury University “When Size Matters”: Multimodality, Material Ethnography and Signage in Trump’s Race to the White House
Staci Defibaugh Old Dominion University Nurse Practitioners and Patient-Centered Care: What Linguistics Can Tell Us
Michael Krzyzanowski University of Liverpool Discursive Shifts, Recontextualisation & Multi-Level Critique: Challenging Discourses of Neoliberalism and Populism
Janet M. Fuller Southern Illinois University Linguistic Landscapes and the Making of an Imagined Community in Berlin, Germany
Wataru Suzuki Miyagi University of Education, Japan Hyeonjeong Jeong Tohoku University, Japan Using fMRI in Second Language Interaction Research: An Empirical Study
Fred Erickson UCLA Learning How to Look as Well as Listen: Highlights from a Conference on Video-based Interaction Analysis
Naoko Taguchi Carnegie Mellon University Theories of Pragmatics and L2 Comprehension of Indirect Meaning
Jacob Eisenstein Georgia Tech Social Networks, Social Meaning
Mark Norris University of Oklahoma The Compatibility of Imperatives and Negation: Insights from Estonian
Rhonda Oliver Curtin University Translanguaging: Using Technology-Enhanced Environments to Develop Multilingual Competence
Stefano Rasteli University of Greenwich (UK) The Discontinuity Hypothesis: Gemination and Superposition between Statistics and the Grammar in Second Language Acquisition
Stephen Wechsler University of Texas Self-Ascription in Egophoric Constructions and Infinitives
Mary Jane Curry University of Rochester The Push for Academic Publishing in English in Chile: Policy Pressures and Scholars’ Responses
Tracey Derwing Simon Fraser University A Longitudinal Study of L2 Pronunciation: Naturalistic Development and Challenges Along the Way
Richard Kayne New York Professor What is Suppletive Allomorphy? The Case of English went and English *goed
Yulia Tsvetkov Stanford University On the Synergy of Linguistics and Machine Learning in Natural Language Processing
Marine Capuat University of Maryland Toward Natural Language Inference Across Languages
Kara Morgan-Short University of Illinois at Chicago The Interplay of Individual Differences and Contexts of Learning in Second Language Acquisition
Ute Rӧmer Georgia State University Constructions in Usage and Acquisition: What Determines Second Language Learners’ Emerging Knowledge of Verb Patterns in English?
Luke Plonsky University College London The N Crowd: Sampling, Generalizability, and Statistical Power in L2Research
Marine Carpuat University of Maryland Modeling Semantic Divergence in Bilingual Corpora
Satoshi Tomioka University of Delaware Purposeful Questions in Japanese and Korean: A New Embedding Strategy
Margaret Thomas Boston College The Significance of Missionary Grammars
Colin Phillips University of Maryland Speaking, Understanding, and the Architecture of Language
David Poeppel New York University Speech is Special and Language is Structured
Hotze Rullmann University of British Columbia On the Interaction Between Modality and Tense/Aspect
Cristiana Sanz & Joe Cunningham Georgetown University Globalizing Language Learning: The Roles of Telecollaboration and Study Abroad
Amir Zeldes Georgetown University Digital Coptic: What, why, and how?
Ioanna Sitaridou Cambridge University Word Order in Old Spanish: (non-)V2, Participle Fronting and Information Structure
Scott Jarvis Ohio University Crosslinguistic Influence in the Domain of Meaning
Stefan Gries University of California, Santa Barbara On the Application of Statistical Methods in Linguistics: Lexico-grammar, Morphology, and Phono-syntax
Gareth Roberts University of Pennsylvania Experimental Simulations of Sociolinguistic Change
Ian Roberts Cambridge University A Parameter Hierarchy for Passives
David Reitter Pennsylvania State University Alignment in Dialogue: Beyond Syntax
Meredith Tamminga University of Pennsylvania When Factors Interact: Making Sense of the Conditions on Variation
Celeste Kinginger Pennsylvania State University Identity and Language Socialization in Study Abroad Settings
Colleen Fitzgerald University of Texas, Arlington Why Phonology Matters to Language Revitalization
Cynthia Gordon Georgetown University “We Were Introduced to Foods I Never Even Heard of”: Parents as Consumers on Reality TV
Terra Edwards Gallaudet University Tracking a Grammatical Divergence between Visual and Tactile American Sign Language: Movement, orientation, and geometries of reference in the Seattle DeafBlind Community
Kirk Hazen West Virginia University From Community Engagement to Public Outreach: Historical Analysis and Future Goals
Ruth Wodak Lancaster University Analyzing Narratives of Persecution, Flight, and Survival Children of Austrian Holocaust Survivors
Carmen Muñoz University of Barcelona Time and Input in Second Language Learning
Jennifer Leeman Michigan State Unive Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Race and Racialization in the US Census
Adrian Brasoveanu University of California Santa Cruz Incremental and Predictive Interpretation: Experimental Evidence and Possible Accounts
Michal Marmorstein Hebrew University of Jerusalem Getting to the point: The discourse marker yaʕni in unplanned discourse in Cairene Arabic
Graeme Porte University of Granada Lessons From the Laboratory: Should Applied Linguists Wear White Coats?
Amir Zeldes Georgetown University Compounding in Advanced L2 German Writing – A Corpus Study
Claire Nance Lancaster University The Phonetics of Language Revitalisation: A Case Study of Scottish Gaelic
Omer Preminger University of Maryland College Park The Syntax (and Morphology) of Non-Valuation
Charlene Polio Michigan State University Linguistic Development in Second Language Writing
Charles Yang University of Pennsylvania On Grammar and Usage
Panel on issues and trends in linguistics publishing
John Bitchener Auckland University of Technology The Contribution of Written Corrective Feedback to Second Language Development: The Theoretical Case and the Status of Empirical Evidence
Jason Kandybowicz University of Kansas Two Probes, One Goal, Different Copies: There’s No Wrong Way to Front a Predicate in Karachi
Fred Erickson UCLA Whatever Happened to the Ethnography of Communication, Especially Regarding Listening During Speaking?
Aneta Pavlenko Temple University Language Commodification in the New Economy or How Russian became the Third Language in Cyprus, Finland, and Montenegro
Christo Kirov Georgetown University Competition and Bias in Speech Production: A Bayesian Approach
Kathryn de Luna Georgetown University “Historical Linguists and Linguistic Historians”: the Comparative Method in African History
John McWhorter Columbia University Is the Creole Prototype Hypothesis Wrong?
Claudia Brugman University of Maryland-College Park Semantic Typology and Usage-Based Models
Ruth Wodak Lancaster University & Davis Chair Fellow, Georgetown University Resemiotizing Politics – Old wine in new bottles?
Kees de Bot Riksuniversiteit of Groningen Foreign Accent and Foreign Gesture
Karlos Arregi University of Chicago The Syntactic and Postsyntactic Derivation of Agreement
Steven Pinker Harvard University The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined
Otto Santa Anna UCLA The Cowboy and the Goddess: Television News Mythmaking about Immigrants
Ellen Woolford University of Massachusetts, Amherst No Object Agreement Without Subject Agreement
Mark Sicoli and Hiroto Uchihara Georgetown University The Zapotec-Chatino Linguistic Survey: A Family-Level Language Documentation and its Application to Comparative Linguistics
Wander Lowie Riksuniversiteit of Groningen Second language development as a journey through state space: perspectives from Another Planet?
Elena Semino Lancaster University Corpus Linguistics and Health Communication
Pia Lane University of Oslo Minority Language Standardisation and the Role of Users
Marcin Morzhcki University of Michigan The Origins of Nominal Gradability
Panel on Future in Publishing Panelists include: Heidi Byrnes, Editor-in-Chief, The Modern Language Journal (MLJ) David Lightfoot, Publications Advisor, Linguistics Society of America (LSA) Alison Mackey, Editor, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL) Lourdes Ortega, Journal Editor, Language Learning
Young Ah Do Georgetown University Biased Learning of Phonological Alternations
Hiroto Uchihara University at Buffalo, SUNY How Tonal is an Incipient Tone? A Case in Oklahoma Cherokee
Matthew Wolfgram University of Alabama Metaphors of Participation in Classroom Discourse: Language, Body, and Cognition
Daniel Jurafsky Stanford University Extracting Social Meaning from the Everyday: The Computational Linguistics of Dating, Restaurants, and the Spread of Scientific and Linguistic Innovation
Roy Lyster McGill University The Effects of Biliteracy Instruction on Morphological Awareness
Terry Odlin Ohio State University Determinism, Individual Variation, and Theories of Acquisition
Dan Johnson Lancaster University Variation won’t give the ghost up: Verb-Particle Constructions in and out of grammar
Elissa Newport Georgetown University, Neurology Department Statistical Language Learning: Computational, Maturational, and Linguistic Constraints
Leticia Boda Georgetown University, CCT Program Political Information 2.0: Learning Politics Through the Lens of Social Media
Marta Gonzalez-Lloret University of Hawaii Conversation Analysis of Computer-Mediated Communication for L2 Learning
John McEwan Davis University of Hawaii Impacts of accreditation-mandated assessment in college foreign language programs
Mandy Simons Carnegie Mellon University Not All in the Family: A careful look at the Family of Sentences Diagnostic for Projection
Jonathan Bobaljik University of Connecticut Syncretism, Person, and a Chukotkan Inverse? *næ-
Jean-Marc Dewaele Birkbeck, University of London Emotion in Applied Linguistics Research
Xiamoing Xi Educational Testing Service Research Supporting the TOEFL Test and Future Innovations
Sal Attardo Texas A&M University Humor in Discourse: Historical Overview and Current Issues
Lucy Pickering Texas A&M University The Role of Discourse Intonation in Comprehensibility & Interactional Success in NS-NNS & NNS-NNS (ELF) Spoken Interaction
Daniel Casasanto The New School for Social Research The Hands of Time
Benjamin Bruening University of Delaware Word Formation is Syntactic: Adjectival Passives in English
Luke Plonsky Northern Arizona University Assessing Quantitative Methods in L2 Research: Empirical Evidence and a Case Reform
Rebecca Rubin-Damari and Aubrey Logan-Terry Georgetown University “Why are you cuffing me? I’m the victim!” Authority-based institutional discourse
Natalie Schilling, Ana Nylund, Patrick Callier, Jessica Grieser, Jermay Jamsu, Jinsok Lee, Sinae Lee, Mackenzie Price, and Amelia Tseng Georgetown University Linguistic perspectives on social change in Washington, DC: The Language and Communication in Washington, DC, project
Asli Akkaya University of Illinois – Carbondale Devotion and Friendship through Facebook: An Ethnographic Approach to Language, Community, and Identity Performances of Young Turkish-American Women
Ted Supalla Georgetown University, Center on Brain Plasticity and Recovery The Role of Historical Research in Understanding Sign Language Typology, Variation, and Change
Shirley Brice Heath Stanford University Book Discussion: Words at Work and Play: Three Decades in Family and Community Life
Tammy Gales Hofstra University Interpersonal Stancetaking in Threatening Discourse: A Corpus and Discourse Analytic Approach
Michael Erard FrameWorks Institute What’s a Good Metaphor?
Florian Schwarz University of Pennsylvania Presupposition Projection in Online Processing – Negation and Conditionals
Michael Bamberg Clark University From Small Stories and Confessions to Narrative Practices
Terry Wiley Center for Applied Linguistics Linguistic landscapes as multi-layered representation: Suburban Asian communities in the Valley of the Sun
One Boyer Georgetown University Variability in the realization of voiced and voiceless stops in Sengwato
Ruth Wodak Lancaster University Analyzing Political Discourse – ‘Politics as Usual’
Alex Housen Vrije University of Brussels Re(de)fining the Noticing Construct – insights from eye-tracking about the role of attention and awareness in SLA
Maria Polinsky Harvard University The Tale of Two Ergatives
Robin Lakoff UC-Berkeley Who are We and What are we Doing Here? Some Problems About Indexicality and Intertextuality (and Probably Much More) or Whaddaya Mean ‘We,’ Paleface?
Michael Israel University of Maryland The Logic of Emotional Involvement: Affective Operators and the Feeling of Entailments
Teun van Dijk University of Pompeu Fabra Discourse and Knowledge
Fabrizio Cariani Northwestern University Three Grades of Decision-Theoretic Involvement (in Semantics)
Terry Wiley Center For Applied Linguistics A Brief History of the Struggle for Educational Language Rights in the United States: Three Steps Forward, Two Back
Julie Anne Legate University of Pennsylvania VoiceP: Lessons from Acehnese
Aubrey Logan-Terry and Rebecca Rubin-Damari Georgetown University Getting “Punked” in Afghanistan: A discussion of military cross-communication
John Wilson University of Ulster The Catholic, The Mormon, and The Alaskan: Pragmatics, Religion, and the Presidency
Daniel Lassiter Stanford University Is a unified semantics of modality possible? Modal scales and the additive/ intermediate distinction
Aynat Rubinstein Georgetown University Figuring out what we ‘ought’ to do: on weak necessity modals and modal discourse
Steve DeRose OpenAmplify Corpus Linguistics and the Web: Then and Now
Fred Erickson UCLA Microethnography as an approach to the study of listening and speaking: Its aims and methods
