Carolina Working Papers in Linguistics | Professional Development Workshops | Colloquium Series |
New Requirements for TEFL | HLRG | Student Awards | Faculty Research |
Student Research | Faculty Profile: Laura Ahearn

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Word from the Director:
This past semester has seen further progress along the trajectory begun in Fall 1998. The Linguistics Program website has been developed to the point where it can be used both as a recruitment tool and an informational tool for our own students and faculty (thank you, Meg Campbell).
Some other significant developments this past semester include:

Graduate Council approval of two new courses (LING 715 Applied English Phonetics, and LING 747 [=ANTH 757] Language as Social Action)

Graduate Council approval of a revised set of TEFL requirements, designed to make the coursework more relevant to the certificate

the articulation of three additional Ph.D. minors: Speech Pathology, English Composition and Rhetoric, Medieval and Early Modern English Literature

cooperative program agreements between Linguistics and French, and between Linguistics and Spanish.

Also, we have worked very hard to promote our undergraduate Linguistics minor over the past year, and have seen our undergraduate enrollement climb 50% in one semester. As a result, we will be staffing LING 300 with advanced doctoral students for the first time.
— Stan Dubinsky

New Requirements for TEFL Certificate
The requirements for the graduate certificate in teaching English as a foreign language have changed. While students are still required to take LING 600 (Survey of Linguistics), LING 795 (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), LING 790 (Second Language Acquisition), and LING 798 (Practicum in TEFL), they no longer must take either LING 710 (Introduction to Phonology) or LING 720 (Introduction to Syntax).
Under the new program guidelines, the theoretical requirement has been replaced by an ESL/SLA elective. This elective can be filled by taking LING 715 (Applied English Phonetics), LING 725 (Applied English Syntax), LING 791 (Theory and Methodology in Second Language Acquisition), LING 890 (Seminar in Second Language Acquisition), LING 891 (Seminar in English as a Second Language), ENGL 790 (Survey of Composition), or any other course in English as a second language or in second language acquisition. Complete, updated information on the TEFL certificate is available on the program website.

Colloquium Series
The spring semester saw an active colloquium series once again, with several invited guests presenting, and several departments and programs co-sponsoring events with Linguistics. The Spring 1999 colloquia:
Aaron Broadwell (SUNY Albany) "Movement in the mind: The syntax and semantics of directionality in Choctaw." Co-sponsored by the Linguistics Progam and the Anthropology Department.
Aydin Durgunoglu (Univ. of Minnesota at Duluth) "Literacy development in a multilingual context." Co-sponsored by the Linguistics Progam, the College of Education, the English Department, and the English Programs for Internationals (EPI).

William D. Davies (University of Iowa) "Madurese Focus Questions: When Long Distance is a Really Local Call." Sponsored by the Linguistics Program.

Farida Cassimjee (USC and Benedict College, Columbia, SC) and Charles Kisseberth (USC and Tel Aviv University) "Optimality Theory and the Syntax-Phonology Interface." Sponsored by the Linguistics Program.

Anatoly Liberman (Univ. of Minnesota) "Where do words come from?" Co-sponsored by the Linguistics Progam, the Department of Germanic, Slavic & East Asian Languages and Literatures, and the Comparative Literature Program.

Kemp Williams (Florida International University) "Flannery O'Connor and the metaphorical imagination: Cognitive conflict on the road to grace." Co-sponsored by the Linguistics Progam, the English Department, and the Institute for Southern Studies.

Elizabeth Bates (University of California at San Diego) "Disordered Language Development" and "On the evolution and development of language." Sponsored by the South Carolina Honors College and the Department of Psychology.

Cathy Bridgeman (USC graduate student and winner of the B.L. Pearson award for scholarship in Linguistics) "Declaring peace: Public discourse, linguists, and the Middle East." Sponsored by the Linguistics Program.

Historical Linguistics Research Group
During the 1998-99 academic year the HLRG had its second series of Friday evening potluck meetings. The five evening talks and two afternoon talks by USC faculty and students were arranged by Kurt Goblirsch in conjunction with Don Cooper, Dorothy Disterheft, and Eric Holt. Silvia Luraghi (Università degli Studi di Pavia) and Anatoly Liberman (Univ. of Minnesota) were invited speakers. Topics included Romance, Celtic, Slavic, and Germanic historical linguistics, as well as languages in contact. The meetings were well attended, with usually 15 students and faculty present. The food was especially good and from a variety of ethnic traditions. Come and join the fun next fall!


Carolina Working Papers in Linguistics
The first issue of the Carolina Working Papers in Linguistics (CWPL) will be published in Fall 1999. The working papers provide students and faculty at USC and UNC to publish their work and receive feedback from their peers. Although the Fall 1999 issue will be web based, the editors are not ruling out the possibility of future hard-copy editions. So far there have been nine submissions for the Fall issue. Information on CWPL is available on the Linguistics Program website.


Professional Development Workshops
The professional development workshop series continued this semester with a January workshop entitled "Employment Opportunities for Graduates with MAs in Linguistics". The presenters were Jacqui Asbury (ESL Coordinator, SC Department of Education), Raymond Davis (Liberal Arts Program Manager, University Career Center, USC), and Alexandra Rowe (Director, English Programs for Internationals, USC). Participants were presented with an overview of job opportunities available both in the U.S. and abroad, including ESL jobs, jobs in consulting firms, and Internet-based business opportunities.


Student Awards
Agnes Bolonyai was one of four graduate students at USC to be presented with the Dean's Award for Excellence in Graduate Study. Cathy Bridgeman and Elena Schmitt (our program's representatives in the Graduate Student Day Presentation Competition) won prizes in the Communication category. Elena won 3rd prize ($100) for her paper "Listening Hard: Effects of Discourse Organization on Listening Comprehension in L2", a project directed by Barbara Hancin-Bhatt. Cathy won 2nd prize ($400) for her presentation "More than not war: Implications of peace metaphors", directed by Carol Myers-Scotton.
Cathy Bridgeman also won the B.L. Pearson award for Scholarship in Linguistics. As recipient of the Pearson award, Cathy is presenting a talk titled "Declaring peace: Public discourse, linguists, and the Middle East" as part of our colloquium series on April 23.

Faculty Research
Amittai F. Aviram

Reanalysis of Poetic Meter Across Languages. Paper presented at General Linguistics Discussion Group session ("Phonological Shifts and Reanalyses"), Modern Language Association Convention, San Francisco. December 1998.

Anne Bezuidenhout

Anti-Minimalism and the Local Pragmatic Processing Model. Invited talk for a special session on Experimental Pragmatics, given at the autumn meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, University of Luton. September 1998. (with C. Cutting, K. Robinson, and D. Poynor)

Stanley Dubinsky

Degree phrases and the distribution of postnominal infinitives. University of Iowa, Department of Linguistics, invited lecture. April 1999.
Functional licensing of infinitival modifiers in English. University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, Triangle Linguistics Club, invited lecture. March 1999.
Teinei/keigo hyoogen: Toogozyoo no soonyuu ni okeru goyooteki kinoo (Polite/honorific expressions: The pragmatic function of syntactic embedding). In Gengogaku to nihongo kyooiku (Linguistics and Japanese language education), Yukiko Sasaki Alam (ed.), 113-128. Tokyo: Kurosio Shuppan. (with Junko Baba)

Kurt Goblirsch

The correlation of voice in Germanic. North-Western European Language Evolution 35.115-40.
The Icelandic consonant shift. Paper presented at the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study Conference, Seattle. 1999.

Eric Holt

What you need to know to improve pronunciation of Spanish. Presentation made to South Carolina Foreign Language Teacher's Association, Columbia, South Carolina. February 1999.

Student Research
Cathy Bridgeman
Tool of the trade: A linguistic approach to media analysis. Paper presented at the International Communications Seminar Series (sponsored by the Doctoral Students Association, College of Journalism and Mass Communications). University of South Carolina. March 1999.
Critical discourse analysis and linguistic advocacy. Paper presented at the Ethics of Linguistic Practices Colloquium. American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Conference, Stamford, CT. March 1999.
Re-thinking Writing Center sessions: The complementary expertise model. Paper presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), Atlanta, GA. March 1999. (With Staci Stone)
Matt Ciscel
Universal Grammar and Codeswitching. Paper presented at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL), Norfolk, VA. April1999.
Steve Gross
A Minimalist/Cognitive Account of Berbice Dutch TMA. Paper presented at the Mid-America Linguistics Conference at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. October 1998. Published in the Proceedings of the 1998 MALC (1999).
Rick Hallett
Colloquium organizer: "The ethics of linguistic practices". American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) conference, Stamford, CT. March 1999.
On, for, and with: Ethical issues in SLA research. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) conference, Stamford, CT. March 1999.
Rachel Hayes
Native Speakers of Arabic and ESL Texts: Evidence for the transfer of reading strategies. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Stamford, CT. March 1999.
Negative Transfer and ESL Reading Strategies. Paper presented at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics, Norfolk, VA. April 1999.
Faculty Profile: Laura Ahearn

Laura Ahearn’s work on Nepali marriage practices was profiled in the New York Times SCIENCE section. Ahearn has been studying marriage practices in a Nepali village for the past 17 years. Traditionally, marriages in the village have been arranged, and both arranged marriages and elopements are not always favorable to brides. As the newest daughter-in-law of the groom’s family, the bride is generally responsible for the most unpleasant chores.

As villagers gain access to education and the media, arranged marriages are declining, while elopements are on the rise. The New York Times reports that between 1963 and 1983, elopements constituted only 15 percent of marriages in Junigau (fictitious name of the village where Ahearn conducted her research). Since 1993, elopements have made up about 90% of all marriages in the village. As dating is not acceptable in Junigau society, courtships are usually carried out through love letters.

Men generally initiate these love-letter relationships. If a woman answers a man’s love letter, she has pretty much agreed to marry him. Provided the courtship goes well and the couple agrees to marry, a Brahman priest performs the wedding ceremony at the man’s family’s house.

Elopements do not always solve women’s problems, however. The bride’s parents may not accept the marriage if it does not conform to caste or kinship norms. A woman estranged from her birth family who does not get along with her husband’s family may be left with nowhere to turn. Ahearn believes the decline in arranged marriages may completely change traditional Junigau society.

For a more complete account of the cultural aspects of Ahearn’s work, see The New York Times SCIENCE, Tuesday, February 9, 1999 (a link to the article is found on Laura Ahearn’s Linguistics Program webpage). In her book manuscript Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social Change in Nepal (currently under review at University of Michigan Press), Ahearn examines language in its sociocultural contexts.