Please Welcome

Our Spring 2008 Visitors:

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Visiting Professors:

Michael Marlo

Michael Marlo completed his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Spring 2007. His dissertation, which was advised by Andries Coetzee and David Odden, is a study of verbal tonology of two dialects of Luluyia, a Bantu language of western Kenya. His primary research interests are phonology, especially tonology, the interaction of phonology with other modules of grammar, and Bantu linguistics. He is currently working on a dictionary of the Lubukusu dialect of Luluyia with Aggrey Wasike (Michigan State University) and writing an article on prosodic domains and morphophonological interactions between the verb stem and prefixes in Bantu languages. This year at UCLA, He is teaching three phonology courses, 120A, 201, and 254, a seminar on Bantu tonology.

Peter Hallman

Peter Hallman specializes in the syntax-semantics interface. His recent research primarily concerns the relationship between predicate aspect, quantifier scope and Case, interactions which are especially salient in ergative languages. This research involves ongoing field work on Inuktitut and Finnish. Other interests include Semitic languages, especially Arabic, and pragmatics, especially presupposition projection out of 'beliefs'. This year Peter is teaching 200B, 120B, 20 and a graduate seminar on quantifier scope.

Felicia Lee

(introduction coming soon!)

Viola Schmitt

Viola Schmitt comes to us from the University of Vienna, and is here this quarter teaching Ling 127 (Typology). Viola works in syntax and semantics, mostly on German (dialects). She has done extensive work on relative clauses complementizer systems in (southern) German dialects. She is currently working on resumptive pronouns and also on a very intriguing German coordination construction (that both Daniel Büring and Peter Hallman worked on!) on which she just gave a joint paper at GLOW (and which we hope she will present here in the syntax and semantics

seminar this quarter).

Visiting Scholars:

Cristina Guardiano

Cristina Guardiano is assistant professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy). She earned her PhD from the University of Pisa in 2003; she discussed in her dissertation some aspects of the structure and the history of the DP in Ancient Greek in a parametric perspective. Her research interests focus on historical syntax, recent developments of parameter theories, and the syntax of the nominal domain. Currently she is working with Giuseppe Longobardi (University of Trieste) on a research program on 'History and Geography of Human Syntax', that aims to develop a genealogical comparison method based on the analysis of parametric data.

Her work on the DP domain is currently focused on the syntax and semantics of demonstratives. Her research stay at the Department of Linguistics will last until the end of June.