BABBLE
Newsletter of the University of South Carolina Linguistics Program
Vol 8
2004-2005

In Memoriam: John Michael Witkoski
Check out our previous issues in Babble Archives

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Word from the Director
Greetings! Our program welcomed 9 new students into degree programs in Fall 2003. You can check out their backgrounds and interests below. We anticipate another dozen students joining the program this Fall (2004).

The Program also welcomed two new core faculty this past Fall. John Alderete joined us to take up a position in phonology/English linguistics in the English Department, and Amit Almor came to us from a postdoctoral position at the “other USC” (Southern Cal) to take up a position in the Psychology Department in psycholinguistics. In addition, we will be welcoming a new linguistic anthropologist, Jennifer Reynolds, in Fall 2004. She will join Jenina Fenigsen in the Anthropology Department as a core Linguistics Program faculty member.

Unfortunately, the happy picture painted here above is diminished by the fact that, having just welcomed John Alderete into the Linguistics Program, we are losing him to Simon Fraser University. We benefitted greatly from having John here for the year and we are sorry to see him leave us. We are currently engaged in a search for a Visiting Assistant Professor in phonology to replace John, have received a good number of very high quality applications, and expect to announce a hire very soon.

Thanks to the efforts and inspiration of Mila Tasseva, our Program hosted the 13th meeting of the Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics this past February. The meeting was organized by John Alderete, Curtis Ford, Mila Tasseva, and myself, and was an enormous success, judging from the level of participation, the quality of the papers and posters, and the comments received afterwards. A report on the conference from John Alderete, below, provides further details.

I am pleased to report that the Program is finally about to get (after six years of trying) a K-12 TESOL Certificate program on the books. The proposal being considered is a cooperative effort by the Linguistics Program and the Department of Instruction and Teacher Education. Assuming the proposal is approved in Graduate Council and by the Faculty Senate, the TEFL Certificate will be renamed as the “TESOL Certificate” and will have two tracks: a TEFL track such as already exists, and a K-12 TESOL track leading to add-on certification in TESOL through the South Carolina State Department of Education.

In other curricular news, the Program is proposing to renumber the introductory phonology and syntax courses, from LING 710 and 720 to LING 610 and 620. This will allow us to enroll undergraduates in these, and will open the door (downstream) to a full-fledged undergraduate major. In the interim, it will set things up so that BAIS undergrads and Honors College students wishing to specialize in linguistics would be able to have the same core as our MA students: 600, 610, 620 for MAs; and 300/301, 610, 620 for the BAs.

As many of you may be aware, this will be my last "Word from the Director" column for quite a while. As of July 1, Kurt Goblirsch be the Linguistics Program director. It has been a very satisfying six years for me, and we have made significant progress. Some things that are noticeably different now (as compared with July 1998):

we have welcomed a number of excellent new faculty to our Program in the past six years (the Fall 2004 faculty roster includes Amit Almor, Eric Holt, Jenina Fenigsen, Jennifer Reynolds, Hyeson Park, and Tracey Weldon among the core faculty, along with Junko Baba, Darrell Dernoshek, Laura Ducate, Curtis Ford, and Lara Lomicka in the consulting faculty category, none of whom were affiliated with the Linguistics Program in 1997-98);
the Program has a director and a graduate director, instead of merely a director, enabling us to better tend to the needs of our students and simultaneously to promote the interests of the Program at the College and University level;
the Program has a University sanctioned charter, which insures to some extent its access to resources;
the Program’s curriculum has seen a number of changes (including the implimentation of a non-thesis option for the MA, and a new process for PhD admission to candidacy) as well as the addition of a number of new courses, and the anticipation and good many more:
LING 140 Linguistic Diversity Awareness
LING 442 African-American English [= AFRO 442, ANTH 442, ENGL 457]
LING 505 Interdisciplinary Topics in Linguistics
LING 514 Contrastive English-Spanish Phonetics and Phonology [= SPAN 517]
LING 540 Language and Culture
LING 715 Applied English Phonetics
LING 747 Language as Social Action [=ANTH 757]
LING 796 Second Language Reading
LING 797 Technology in Foreign Language Education
LING 830 Seminar in Historical Linguistics
our graduate students now find support in a variety of units which had not previously had graduate assistants from Linguistics, including Center for Business Communication (in the Business School), Foreign Language Lab, Languages, Literatures and Cultures (teaching Chinese, German, Korean, Spanish, Swahili), Philosophy, Professional Communications Center (in Engineering), Psychology, and Statistics;
we have seen a dramatic increase in the Program’s ability to get College and University fellowships for its graduate students (in Fall 2004, nearly half of our 1st-4th year PhD students will be holding such fellowships);
we have a well-developed alumni webpage and have developed our connections to the most of the graduate students that have passed through our Program over the past 40 years;
finally, we now have a substantial and functional website that helps the Program internally and with its recruiting efforts.

—Stan Dubinsky

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Welcome New Students
We welcomed 12 new students into our program this year. Their interests are as varied as their backgrounds. Here is a "Who's Who" list of our new program members:

Olena Aydarova, I am working on a M.A. in Linguistics with a focus on SLA.

Yu Jeong Choi, I'm from Korea and I'm currently working on MA. Particular interest is Syntax and TEFL.

Emilie Elliott, I'm originally from Alabama but came to USC by way of Atlanta. My areas of interest include historical linguistics and language change; I'm not yet sure what my focus will be. I want to go to Barbados while I'm studying at
USC. I love everything French except literature and I can't wait to learn more languages.

Sam Hardy, Enrolled in the Ph.D. program. I am interested in discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, reading comprehension, and text production.

Melissa Jantz, I am working on a M.A. in Linguistics with a focus on TESL. I would like to use my degree to teach English either within the U.S. or overseas.

Takashi Okane, I am from Japan and here is my info: current major: Linguistics, TEFL certificate languages: Japanese, English, Spanish (daily conversation level) academic: bachelor's in International Relations work: Housing Coordinator and asistant to Student Service at English Programs for Internationals (EPI)

Kristen Simensen, Currently enrolled in the PhD program. Interests include SLA, adult literacy development and adult learning in general. Also interested in research methodologies.

Lynne Voit, I'm currently in my third semester of the TEFL certificate program. My undergraduate degree is from Randolph-Macon Woman's College (Virginia); I have an MA in English from Old Dominion University (Virginia). In a multi-employer, multi-discipline career built on writing and language, I have been a technical editor, a journalist, a propagandist (corporate communications and marketing), a brain washer (corporate training), and a teacher. In addition to working on the certificate, I am currently an adjunct English instructor at Midlands Technical College, where I would also like to teach ESL classes once I have the certificate. In addition, I work as an independent contract writer with agencies and businesses in Columbia. Sometimes, I also have to function as an executive spouse, but it has been suggested to me that I need more training in that area before I can be considered barely competent at it!

Fan Zhu, I am from China and I am getting my Ph.D. in Linguistics with a focus in Sociolinguistic,anthropological linguistics and SLA. I love reading books about various cultures and I wish to travel around the world.

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FASL Report

The 13th Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics conference was hosted by University of South Carolina. The website at www.cla.sc.edu/LING/FASL13/ contains a great deal of information not summarized here.

This memo is a summary of the following information about FASL 13:
1. Acknowledgements to financial supporters
2. Acknowledgements to organizing committee and student support
3. Acknowledgements to reviewers
4. Other acknowledgements
5. Number of abstracts received and accepted
6. Institutions from which accepted papers came from
7. Institutions that hosted FASL in the past

1. Financial supporters for FASL 13
College of Liberal Arts, USC
Department of English Language and Literature, USC
Department of Languages, Literature, and Cultures, USC
Linguistics Program, USC
Slavica Publishers at Indiana University
Princeton University, Program in Linguistics
The Slavic and East European Language Resource Center (SEELRC), Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill

2. Committees
The organizing committee was made up of John Alderete (chair), Stanley Dubinsky, Curtis Ford, and Mila Tasseva-Kurktchieva. The graduate students took on a number of responsibilities, including staffing the registration desk and book exhibit, AV setup, banquet preparation, transportation, conference packet preparation. The following students are acknowledged for their assistance with these activities: Olena Aydarova, Craig Callendar, Emily Elliot, Samuel Hardy, Melissa Jantz, Rachel Jones, Denis Kopyl, Theresa McGarry, Robert Moonan, Eva Moore, Sue Scriven, Kristen Simensen, Cherlon Ussery, Lan Zhang.

3. Reviewers
John Alderete, Maria Babyonishev, John Bailyn, Christina Bethin, Zeljko Boskovic, Wayles Browne, Barbara Citko, Katherine Crosswhite, Stan Dubinsky, Katarzyna Dziwirek, Hana Filip, Curtis Ford, Steven Franks, Elena Gavruseva, Kurt Goblirsch, Ben Hermans, Eric Holt, Tania Ionin, Edit Jakab, Tracy King, Alexei Kochetov, Mariana Lambova, Ora Matushansky, Roumyana Pancheva, Asya Pereltsvaig, Lilyana Progovac, Catherine Rudin, Roumyana Slabakova, Mila Tasseva-Kurktchieva

4. Other acknowledgements
Pasha: The web-based interface used for circulating and reviewing abstracts was Pasha, developed by Ezra Van Everbroeck, and implemented at USC by Mila Tasseva-Kurktchieva and Boris Kurktchiev.
Session chairs: Thanks to the following for serving as session chairs (USC affiliation unless otherwise noted) Hyeson Park, Eric Holt, Amit Almor, Kurt Goblirsch, Anne Bezuidenhout, Lawrence Feinberg (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Stan Dubinsky, Carolina Wiltshire (University of Florida), Mila Tasseva-Kurktchieva.
Opening/closing remarks: Thanks to Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, John Skvoretz, for giving the opening remarks, and Russian Program director, Judith Kalb, for giving the closing remarks.

5. Abstracts received and accepted
The conference had 3 plenary speakers, 25 regular talks, and 9 poster presentations over the three days (from Friday morning through Sunday early afternoon). 66 abstracts were submitted, making the acceptance rate 51.52%. The conference attracted 60 registered attendees of which 41 were from other universities and 19 were local.

6. Institutions of conference participants
The conference participants come from the following universities: Leiden University, University of Western Ontario, Yale University, Universite de Nice, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, MIT, University of Connecticut, University of Toronto, Tilburg University, University of Iowa, Moscow State University, Wayne State University, University of Sheffield, Bucknell University, Indiana University, Princeton University, RGGU, University of Southern California, University of Tromsø, Augsburg College, Wayne State College, University of New Mexico, McGill University, UCLA, University of Ottawa, University of Arizona, University of the Saarland, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, Johns Hopkins University, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, SUNY-Stony Brook, CUNY, and University of California-Santa Cruz.

7. Institutions that have hosted FASL in the past
1992 - U of Michigan (1st meeting)
1993 - MIT
1994 - U of Maryland
1995 - Cornell U
1996 - Indiana U
1997 - U of Connecticut
1998 - U of Washington
1999 - U of Pennsylvania
2000 - Indiana U
2001 - U of Michigan
2002 - U of Massachusetts
2003 - U of Ottawa
2004 - >>>USC<<<
2005 (tentative) - Princeton U
2006 (tentative) – U of Toronto

--John Alderete

Colloquium Series
The Colloquium Series of 2003-2004 was a great success. As the list below shows, this year's colloquia have covered diverse topics of interest presented by our faculty at University of South Carolina and by our distinguished guests. Some of the talks have been co-sponsored by the Linguistics Program and other departments. For detailed information about the talks, please refer to the 2003-04 Colloquia webpage. The list of the 2003-2004 colloquia are as follows:
Bruce Pearson Award Papers:
Craig Callender, "The Interplay of Sound Law and Lexical Diffusion in Middle German Dialects"
Eva Moore, "Indexicals, demonstratives, and deferred reference"
Curtis Ford, University of South Carolina, "Bosnian as a "Normal" Language"
Craige Roberts, Ohio State University, "Implicature: The Interaction of Conventional and Conversational Factors"
Paul Roberge, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, "Reconstructing a Historical Pidgin Language"
Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 13, keynote speakers:

Leonard H. Babby, Princeton University, "Case, argument structure, and double-object structures"
Christina Bethin, SUNY-Stony Brook, "Stress and length in Belarusian and Ukrainian dialects"
Roumyana Slabakova, University of Iowa, "Perfective prefixes: What they are, what flavors they come in, and how they are acquired"
Additional colloquia:

Eric W. Healy, University of South Carolina, "Measuring the Frequency Resolution Employed During the Perception of Speech"
Stefan Frisch, University of South Florida, "On the convergence of internal and external evidence in linguistics"
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Graduate Student Linguistics Organization (GSLING)
We are extremely pleased to have gotten to know the bright and promising new group of students who entered the program last fall. This year has seen a renewed interest in participation the research groups. Both the Second Language Acquisition Research Group and the Syntax Reading Group had two meetings. In the future, we are hoping for more student research presentations, perhaps in Historical Linguistics and Language and Culture as well. Presenting at a research group is an excellent low-stress way to get feedback and develop your ideas into future conference presentations. Dust off those old class papers!

In addition to the research groups, we got a healthy dose of professional development this spring; Stan Dubinsky led a Professional Development Workshop on developing class papers into conference presentations and journal articles. Several students from the program also participated in USC’s Martin Luther King Day of Service, volunteering at a local community center.

—Craig Callendar

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Second Language Acquisition Reading Group (SLARG)
In the fall semester of 2003, the Second Language Acquisition Research Group met once to hear Theresa McGarry informally discuss her research "Language Ideology and Second Language Learning". Theresa proposes that pedagogical literature is inevitably influenced by cultural ideology even in the absence of explicit ideological language.

—Sue Scriven
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Syntax Reading Group (SynRG)
SYNRG met twice this year. The fall meeting featured Hyeson Park and Lan Zhang discussing Subject (non) specificity in Chinese. Hyeson and Lan were preparing for a presentation at the LSA Annual Meeting in Boston. The spring meeting featured two topics. In preparation for a workshop on "Control verbs in cross-linguistic perspective" at Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung (ZAS), Stan Dubinsky discussed Obligatory control in Japanese manner adverbials. Additionally, Robert Moonan and Cherlon Ussery presented Possessor raising in English. Robert and Cherlon were preparing for their talk at the UNC-Chapel Hill Spring Linguistics Colloquium.

—Cherlon Ussery
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Professional Development Workshops
During the spring semester GSLING sponsored a professional development workshop on how to turn term papers into conference presentations and journal articles. Stan Dubinsky provided insights into the publishing process, tips for submitting abstracts, and feedback on individual student projects. In addition to students in linguistics, the students in composition and rhetoric, and creative writing attended the informal talk; the Linguistics Program contributed refreshments for the event.
In a separate event faculty and students critiqued two practice presentations by linguistics students in preparation for Graduate Student Day. Graduate students in linguistics are encouraged to raise ideas for future PDWs on the graduate student listserv, as well as all other venues.

—Lori Donath
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Social Activities

Students and faculty that know each other well can support each other better when doing projects, getting feedback on writing projects, and forming support groups that faciliate the thesis/dissertation process. For this reason, First Friday was instituted last semester.

First Friday offers an opportunity for graduate students and faculty to get to know each other better. These events occur on the First Friday of each month. Announcements for First Friday go out on the LINGGRAD listserv.

There was also the potluck for Craige Roberts at my house and a back to school party to welcome everyone back to the grind.

---Kristen Simensen

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Faculty Research
John Alderete

Publications:

2003. Structural Disparities in Navajo Word Domains: A Case for Lex-Cat Faithfulness. The Linguistic Review 20: 111-158.
2003. Morphological Effects on Default Stress Placement in Novel Russian Words. In G. Garding and M. Tsujimura (eds.), Proceedings of WCCFL 22, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, pp. 151-164. [With Katherine Crosswhite (first author), Tim Beasley, and Vita Markman]
2003. Surgery in Language Learning. In G. Garding and M. Tsujimura (eds.), Proceedings of WCCFL 22, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, pp. 477-490. [With Bruce Tesar (first author), Graham Horwood, Koichi Nishitani, Nazarre Merchant, Alan Prince]
2003. Phonological Processes: Dissimilation. In William Frawley (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2nd Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 323-324.
In Press. On Tone and Length in Tahltan (Northern Athabaskan). In Sharon Hargus & Keren Rice (eds.), Athabaskan Prosody, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
In Press. A Corpus-Based Approach to Tahltan Stress. In Sharon Hargus & Keren Rice (eds.), Athabaskan Prosody, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [With Tanya Bob]
2002. Learning Covert Phonological Interaction: An Analysis of the Problem Posed by the Interaction of Stress and Epenthesis. Report no. RuCCS-TR-72, Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science. [With Bruce Tesar]
Invited talks:

2003. Navigating the overlap between morphology and phonology: Perspectives from Optimality Theory. (Johns Hopkins University, University of South Carolina, University of Rochester).
2002. Voicing Polarity in Luo, An Argument for Anti-faithfulness. (State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York University).
2002. Structural Disparities in Navajo Prefix Phonology. (University of Delaware).
Conference presentations:

2003. Default Stress Placement in Novel Russian Words. (WCCFL 22, UC San Diego).
Anne Bezuidenhout

Publications:

Bezuidenhout, A. (2003). ‘Procedural Meaning and the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface’ in C. Bianchi (ed.) The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction, CSLI Publications.
Conference presentations:

Bezuidenhout, A., ‘Perspective shifting with indexicals’, presented at the joint meeting of the South Carolina Society for Philosophy and the North Carolina Philosophical Society, Raleigh, NC, February 6-7, 2004.
Bezuidenhout, A., ‘Context-shifting’. Invited paper read at conference on Aspects of the Philosophy of Language, Yale University, November 7-9, 2003.
Bezuidenhout, A., ‘Explaining lexical-pragmatic processes: The role of Q- and I-Principles vs. the Principle of Relevance’. Invited contribution to Panel on Relevance and Lexical Pragmatics, organized by Tomoko Matsui & Deirdre Wilson. Presented at the 8th International Pragmatics Association meeting in Toronto, July 13-18, 2003.

Stanley Dubinsky
2004 (with William Davies). The grammar of Raising and Control: A course in syntactic argumentation. London: Blackwell Publishers.
2003 (with William Davies). "Raising (and Control)." State-of-the-Article. Glot International Vol. 7, No. 9/10, November/December 2003 (1–14).
2003 (with William Richey). "Assessing the stylistic proclivity of the poet: Evidence from the -ed/-’d alternation." Southern Journal of Linguistics 25.136-44.
2003 (with William Davies). "On extraction from NPs." Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21.1-37.
2003 (with Shoko Hamano). "Case checking by AspP: The syntax and semantics of predicative postpositions." Japanese/Korean Linguistics 12. Stanford: CSLI, Stanford University, pp. 231-242.
Kurt Goblirsch

Publications:

"Language." The Year's Work in Old English Studies 1998. With Kathleen D. Turner and Robert Fulk. Ed. Peter S. Baker and Robert D. Fulk. Kalamazoo, MI: The Medieval Institute of America, 2002. 15-35.
"Scandinavian Consonant Shifts." Michail Ivanovich Steblin-Kamenskij Centennial Conference Pre-Prints. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2003. 15-18.
Presentations:

"Der Mechanismus von Lautverschiebungen im Germanischen: Das Zeugnis vom Skandinavischen und vom Hochdeutschen." Phonologischer Wandel in den germanischen Sprachen: Die Lautverschiebungen. Kolloquium des Zentrums für Mittelalterstudien, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Germany, May 2003.
"Entwicklungstendenzen im germanischen Konsonantismus." Nordeuropa-Institut and Institut für Deutsche Sprache und Linguistik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, 5 June 2003.
"Scandinavian Consonant Shifts." Michail Ivanovich Steblin-Kamenskij Centennial Conference. Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences and the Philological Faculty, St. Petersburg State University, Russia, September 2003.

D. Eric Holt
In press:
"Optimization of syllable contact in Old Spanish via the sporadic sound change metathesis." Probus 16 (2004). 43-61. (Issue on language change, Jean-Pierre Montreuil, ed.)
"Sobre los cambios fónicos esporádicos que optimizan el contacto silábico en el español antiguo: El caso de la metátesis" Proceedings of the XIII Congreso de la Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de América Latina (ALFAL), Universidad de Costa Rica, February 18-23, 2002. To appear in spring 2004.

In print:
Book (ed.): Optimality Theory and Language Change. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 56, 459 Pp. 2003.)

"Remarks on Optimality Theory and Language Change." In Optimality Theory and Language Change. (D. Eric Holt, ed.) 1-30. 2003.

"The emergence of palatal sonorants and alternating diphthongs in Hispano-Romance." In Optimality Theory and Language Change. (D. Eric Holt, ed.) 285-305. 2003.

Michael B. Montgomery

Books:

2003 The Knaresborough Workhouse Daybook: Language and Life in 18th-Century North Yorkshire. Yorkshire Dialect Society. (with María F. García-Bermejo Giner)
2003 A Blad of Ulster-Scotch frae Ullans: Ulster-Scots Culture, Language, and Literature. Belfast: Ullans Press. (with Anne Smyth)
2004 The Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. (with Joseph S. Hall).
Chapters:

2003 The Structural History of Y'all, ?You All, and You'uns. Southern Journal of Linguistics 3.19-27.
2004 Historical Perspectives on the pen/pin Merger in Southern American English. Studies in the History of the English Language II: Conversations between Past and Present, ed. by Anne Curzan and Kim Emmons, 429-49. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (with Connie Eble)
2004 The History of American English. Needed Research in American English, ed. by Dennis Preston. Publication of the American Dialect Society 87: 1-23.
Carol Myers-Scotton

Articles:

Myers-Scotton, C. & Jake, J. (2002). Second generation shifts in socio-pragmatic orientation and codeswitching patterns. In Rouchdy, A. (ed) Language contact and language conflict in Arabic. London: Routledge, pp. 317-30.
Myers-Scotton, C. & Jake, J. (2003). The out of sight in codeswitching and related contact phenomena. In Mondada, Lorezna & Doehler, Simon (eds.) Plurislinguisme, Mehlsprachigkeit, & Plurilingualism. Tübingen & Basel: A. Francke, pp. 221-33.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2003) Code-switching: Evidence for both flexibility and rigidity in language. In Dewaele, J-M, Hausen, A. & Li, W. (eds) Bilingualism: Beyond basic principles. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 189-203.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2004). What lies beneath: Split (mixed) languages as contact phenomena. In Matras, Y. & Bakker, P. (Eds) The mixed language debate. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 74-106.
Articles, Chapters in press:

Myers-Scotton, C. (2004). Precision turning of the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model of codeswitching. To appear in Sociolinguistica.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2004). Supporting a differential access hypothesis: Codeswitching and other contact data. To appear in Kroll, J, & DeGroot, A. (eds) Handbook of bilingualism, psycholinguistic approaches. New York: Oxford University Press.
Book forthcoming:

Myers-Scotton, C. (2004). Multiple voices: Introduction to Bilingualism. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Publication in 2004.
Conference/Colloquia Presentations:

Myers-Scotton, C. (2002) Codeswitching in multilingual African urban communities. Congress of the International Applied Linguistics Association, Singapore, December 12, 2002.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2003). Creole formation and the divide in morpheme types. Annual meeting, Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, Atlanta, GA, January 3, 2003.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2003). Invited instructor (contact linguistics), LSA Summer Linguistics Institute, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MA. June 30-July 17, 2003.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2003) Intersections between the Markedness Model and Relevance Theory. 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism, Arizona State University, May 4, 2003.
Myers-Scotton, C. & Jake, J. (2003). Nonfinite verbs in Acholi/English codeswitching. 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism, Arizona State University, May 5, 2003.
Myers-Scotton, Main speaker, 2nd International Conference on Chinese Sociolinguistics. Macau, People’s Republic of China, November 3, 2003.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2004). Comparing cognitive models: The Markedness Model and Relevance Theory. Bilingualism lecture series, University of Wales, Bangor, March 10, 2004.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2004). Language contact as evidence for a differential access model of language production. Department of Psychology lecture series. University of Wales, Bangor, March 11, 2004.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2004). To codeswitch or not: Empowering speakers. Main speaker, LAUD biennial conference, University of Landau-Essen, Germany, April 21, 2004.
Hyeson Park

Publications in calendar year 2003

Why-questions in L1 and L2 acquisition. Language Research 39(2). 415-440.
(with Soyeon Kang) English as a medium of instruction for engineering majors. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of Korean Engineering Education.
Research paper presentations in Academic Year 2003

2003 (with Soyeon Kang) English as medium of instruction for engineering majors. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of Korean Engineering Education. Kyungju, Korea.
2003 Acquisition of English complex predicates in L2. Paper presented at the 2003 AAAL Conference. Arlington, VA
2003 (with Lan Zhang) Verb copying and situation delimiters in Chinese. Paper presented at Annual Meeting of Linguistic Society of America. Atlanta, GA.
Bruce Pearson
Bruce L. Pearson (prof. emeritus) is in the second year of a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a dictionary and related materials for the Delaware language. He is completing work on a two-volume collection of Wyandotte narratives and an accompanying handbook-dictionary.
Tracey L. Weldon

Publications:

Forthcoming. 2004. The sound system of Gullah. To appear in The Varieties of English Handbook. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Forthcoming. 2004. African-American English in the College Curriculum. To appear in the Journal of English Linguistics.
2003. Copula variability in Gullah. Language variation and change 15: 1. 37-72.
2003. Revisiting the Creolist Hypothesis: Copula Variability in Gullah and Southern Rural AAVE. American Speech 78: 2. 171-191.
Presentations:

2003. “Copula variability in Gullah and AAVE.” Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Atlanta Georgia.
2003. “African-American English in the College Curriculum: Ideological and Pedagogical Issues.” LSA, Atlanta, Georgia.
Professional Activities

2004. Chair, Committee on Ethnic Diversity in Linguistics (CEDL), Linguistic Society of America (LSA)

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Student Research
Craig Callender
‘The Interplay of Sound Law and Lexical Diffusion in Middle German Dialects.’ Presented at the University of South Carolina Fall 2003 Colloquium Series. Columbia, SC (Sept. 2003).
Lori Donath

Publications

2004 (forthcoming). "Linguistic Evidence of Distributed Cognition." American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Proceedings. Salt Lake City, UT. June. (with Roxanne Spray)
2001. "Unravelling the Confederate Flag: Discourse Frameworks as Ideological Constraints." Texas Linguistic Forum. (Proceedings of the Ninth Symposium on Language and Society). Austin: The University of Texas. August.
Presentations

2004 (forthcoming). "Linguistic Evidence of Distributed Cognition." American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). Salt Lake City, UT. June. (with Roxanne Spray)
2002. "Final-s Deletion in Cuban Spanish." Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL). Memphis, TN. April.
2001. "What is the EPP, and does Spanish have it?" Presented at the Subtropical Summer Syntax Workshop. University of Georgia, Athens. July.
2001. "Unravelling the Confederate Flag: Discourse Frameworks as Ideological Constraints." Symposium on Language and Society (SALSA). Austin, TX. April.
2001. "Styleswitching in Televangelists' Talk: Interactional Power and Discourse Cohesion." Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL). Knoxville, TN. April.
2001. "Terms of Agreement: The Absence of African American Experience in Confederate Flag Discourse." Graduate Student Day. University of South Carolina. April.
Theresa McGarry

Forthcoming. It was because of that that I spoke: Self-justification in Wijesinghe's "Roots". Text.
2004. The research communications studio as a tool for developing undergraduate researchers in engineering. June, 2004. Salt Lake City, UT: American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference. (with Chris Long, John Brader, Eric Vilar, Roxanne Spray, Lori Donath, Mike Matthews, Elisabeth Alford, and Nancy Thompson)
2004. Linguistic evidence of cognitive distribution: Quantifying learning among undergraduate researchers in engineering. June, 2004. Salt Lake City, UT: American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference. (with Lori Donath, Roxanne Spray, Elisabeth Alford, S.Elizabeth Davidson, and Nancy Thompson)
2004. Adverbial clauses and shared expertise in an intentional discourse community. April 2004. Tuscaloosa, AL: SECOL LXX.
Robert Moonan and Cherlon Ussery

Possessor Raising in English. Presented at UNC-CH Spring Linguistics Colloquium 2004.
Mila Tasseva-Kurktchieva

Publications:

To appear. "The possessor that came home". Possessives and Beyond: Semantics and Syntax. UMOP 2x (University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers). Ed. Ji-yung Kim, Barbara H. Partee, and Yury Lander. Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications.
To appear. "Possessives, Theta Roles, and the Internal Structure of Bulgarian DPs." Proceedings of FASL 12. Ed. Olga Arnaudova, Wayles Browne, Maria Luisa Rivero, and Danijela Stojanovic. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications.
Presentations:

"Possessives, Theta Roles, and the Internal Structure of Bulgarian DPs." Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 12. May 9-11, 2003. Ottawa.
"NP internal possessives in Bulgarian: The problem of syntactic inequality." Bulgarian Studies Conference. October 9-12, 2003. Columbus, OH.
Lan Zhang

2004 (with Hyeson Park). Subject (non)specificity in Chinese. Paper presented at LSA, Boston, MA.

Alumni News

Laurie Berry (M.A. 1993), I'm at Midlands Technical College in Columbia, happily negotiating the intricacies of State Tech as we retrofit an ESL program into a system not designed with ESL in mind. Plus coordinating our French and Spanish language offerings. Had a good time catching up again with Miriam Moore at last year's TESOL.

Janet Fuller (Ph.D. 1997), Life as a tenured Associate Professor (as of August, 2003) is good.

In 2003 and early 2004 I finished up various projects, publishing a few pieces on discourse markers ‘Use of the discourse marker like in interviews.’ Journal of Sociolingiustics 7:3.365-377.

‘Discourse marker use across speech contexts: A comparison of native and non-native speaker performance.’ Multilingua 22. 185-208.

‘The influence of speaker role on discourse marker use’. The Journal of Pragmatics 35:1.23-45.

And then moving on to present some data on a survey project I did on female titles: 'Miss Scarlet, Mrs. Peacock, and Ms. White: Female title usage in the South Midlands. Paper presented at the American Dialect Society, January 8-11, Boston, MA. ”Come in, Mrs. Johnson – or is it Miss?”: Female title usage in the South Midlands.’ Poster presented at NWAVE 30, October 8-12, Philadelphia, PA.

Now, I am in the luxurious position of being able to focus on one major project. I have been collecting data since the fall of 2003 in a Spanish-English bilingual program in an elementary school in Southern Illinois and am combining my interests in bilingualism and language contact, language and gender, and discourse analysis.

Douglas Gordon (M.A. 1988), I was feeling a bit nostalgic for my times at USC and looking on the alumni page, and saw the request for donations so I thought I'd send something. I received a J.D. from Univ. of California, Hastings Coll. of the Law in 1992 and have been practicing law since then in Fresno, CA. Our new web site is http://www.mse-law.com. Married since 1994, with first kid due in May!!

Richard Hallett (Ph.D. 2000), I have been promoted to Associate Professor of Linguistics. (I went up early for promotion. I go up for tenure next year.) The promotion is effective September 1, 2004.

Deborah Kela (Trottier) Ruuskanen (B.A. 1968), Professor in University of Vaasa, Finland. I was a Visiting Professor at Shandong University from 5 September until 21 December, 2003 and taught western translation theory. Highly recommend anyone who gets invited to GO. Had a wonderful time.

Meg Sloan (M.A. 2001) Unfortunately I don't have any academic news to report, but did want to say hello to everyone and to say that we're expecting our first child any day now.

Karen Stanley (M.A. 1998), My TESL-EJ Forum articles in the past year have covered, "Teaching about Language," "Practical and Theoretical Approaches to ESL/EFL Student Evaluation of Teachers," "Innovation in ESL and EFL Textbooks," and "A Question of Definitions: An investigation through the definitions and practices of communicative and task-based approaches." My review of "Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan" appeared in the January 2004 issue of Language Magazine.

I made three presentations at TESOL 2003, "Where does grammar fit?," "Creating an inhouse academic ESL placement test," and "Assessing placement test validity." At the SE Regional TESOL last September I presented on, "Helping Students Move Grammar Beyond the Classroom."

In addition to my full-time job at CPCC (20 years there as of this July 2004), I do an occasional freelance item-writing assignment for the TOEIC, am working with an Australian ESL materials producer, and do freelance work for a subscription ESL website out of Australia and New Zealand.

I continue working on the steering committee of TESOL's Caucus on Part-Time Employment Concerns and run its two email lists. I also am a co-moderator of two of the TEFLChina email lists, and still manage TESLJB-L.

Mike Stephenson (M.A. 1984), I got my MA in linguistics from USC back in 1984. I then taught ESL/EFL for almost 10 yrs., about 8-1/2 of those yrs. at the American Cultural Center in Alexandria, Egypt. I was out of TESOL for the next 9 yrs. However, I'm now about to start my 2nd term teaching at Emmaus Bible College in Dubuque, Iowa, where I teach courses in missions and cross-cultural communications. I'm also developing a minor in TESOL. I taught an intro. to linguistics course last term, and I'll be teaching intro. to TESOL this term. I'll be adding two more TESOL courses next academic yr. which will focus on the "how-to's" of teaching grammar, writing, vocabulary, listening, speaking and pronunciation. My wife, Kathy, and I have two sons, Tim (21) and Andy (18), both of whom are in school here at Emmaus.

USC Linguistics at
the LSA 2004 Annual Meeting in Boston

The (January 2004) LSA meeting in Boston was quite exciting, with plenary talks by Ray Jackendoff, Larry Horn, Morris Halle, Lynn Frazier, Judy Kegl, and Noam Chomsky (the only time he has ever addressed an LSA meeting, to my knowledge). There were over 1200 registered participants (an LSA record!).

Our program was represented by two presentations by current students and faculty, as well as by two presentations by program alumni. Hyeson Park (U SC) & Lan Zhang (U SC) were on the program with "Subject (non)specificity in Chinese" and Butsakorn Yodkamlue (U SC) presented "A new look at quantifier 'float' in Thai: A classifier phrase analysis". Our alumni presenters were Janet Fuller (Ph.D. 1997) and Erica Benson (M.A. 1992). Janet Fuller (Southern Illinois University - Carbondale) presented "Miss Scarlet, Mrs. Peacock, and Ms. White: Clues to the use of female titles" at the American Dialect Society (ADS) meeting, and Erica Benson (University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire) was on the ADS program with "Teaching about dialects in large classes: Uncover, confront, and engage".

In including those mentioned above, a number of USC faculty, students and alumni were in attendance. These included four faculty (John Alderete, Tracey Weldon, Michael Montgomery, and myself), four students (Roberta Chase, Cherlon Ussery, Bustakorn Yodkamlue, and Lan Zhang), and five alumni (Erica Benson, Janet Fuller, Rachel Hayes, Sonja Launspach, and Elena Schmitt).

—Stan Dubinsky

In Memoriam:
John Michael Witkoski (Ph.D. 1982)

"Cancer claims life of mentor"
by Gabrielle Sinclair
Friday, February 27, 2004 in The Gamecock.

Mike Witkoski a USC public relations professor and mentor to students, died of cancer Wednesday (February 25, 2004) after a yearlong fight. He was 52.

Witkoski was a standout teacher known for his calming presence and dedication to students, said fourth-year advertising student Diana Carey, who asked Witkoski to be her independent study adviser for the spring semester.

"He challenges you to do things, but he's so willing to help you out in doing them," she said. "He's what every teacher wants to be remembered as."

Witkoski joined the College of Journalism and Mass Communications in 1998, first as an adjunct and then as an assistant professor.

He anchored his teaching with experience as vice president of Ferillo and Associates, a public relations and advertising firm.

Witkoski continued to teach throughout his illness.

"His spirit was pretty remarkable all the time," said dean Charles Bierbauer, who spoke with Witkoski Tuesday. "He said that the classes are the easy part; the classes are what he looks forward to."

PR professor Bruce Konkle said there is a somber atmosphere since the news broke.

"He was one of those personal professors who got to know his students really well," Konkle said.

Second-year advertising student Carrie Frondorf said Witkoski used his breadth of PR experience to his class's benefit.

"He wasn't like a regular lecturer," she said. "He was very much about getting us involved ... He wasn't one of those teachers who wanted you to memorize everything in the book. He wanted you to be able to apply it in real life situations."

Witkoski didn't talk much about his cancer and instead tried to focus on the positive.

"He was a fairly private person, and really highly thought of at the journalism school," Konkle said.

Advertising professor Van Kornegay said Witkoski's Introduction to Public Relations course is being taken care of.

"We've got a group of people who immediately stepped up and said we'll be happy to carry the ball for him to the finish line," he said. "So there are about four different faculty who will take turns to finish it out." Media law professor Erik Collins will take over for Witkoski's graduate class.

A Beaufort native, Witkoski earned his bachelor's and master's in English and his doctorate in linguistics at USC. He worked on the staff of the S.C. House of Representatives and served as director of research for the Medical, Military, Public and Municipal Affairs Committee.

Witkoski is survived by his wife, Maggie, and four children. Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Columbia.

******************************************************
Obituary from The State newspaper (February 27, 2004):
Michael Witkoski

COLUMBIA Rosary for John Michael Witkoski, 52, will be recited Saturday at 1 p.m. at St. Joseph Catholic Church followed by the Funeral Mass. Burial will be in Barbourville, Kentucky.

Dunbar Funeral Home, Devine Street Chapel, is in charge.

Dr. Witkoski died Wednesday, February 25, 2004. Born in Beaufort, he was the son of the late John Albert and Lois Barker Witkoski. A graduate of Beaufort High School, he received BA and MA degrees in English as well as Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. He was an instructor in Continuing Education at USC 1985-1996 and an instructor in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at USC from 1996 until his death.

Among Dr. Witkoski s honors and awards are Phi Beta Kappa in 1970, Havilah Babcock Creative Writing Award in 1972, Academy of American Poets Award in 1976 and 1978, Frank Durham Creative Writing Award in 1977, Outstanding Young Men of America in 1982, Leadership Columbia in 1982 and Accredited in Public Relations in 1991.

Dr. Witkoski was a member of St. Joseph Catholic Church where he was a religious education instructor for nine years.

Surviving are his wife, Margaret Gallagher Witkoski; children, Patrick, Nicholas, Andrew And Dana Witkoski; and sister, Regina Witkoski of Swansea.

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