Linguistics News and Events RSS

CU Linguistics researchers help native speakers save history: Boulder Daily Camera
An April 13th Boulder Daily Camera story features the work of CU Linguistics professors David Rood, Andy Cowell and Zygmunt Frajzyngier. The story notes that the three "have invested much of their careers in documenting dying languages-and, in effect, preserving the culture and history that live in words."

Bhuvana Narasimhan joins CU Linguistics department
Dr. Buhvana Narasimhan, a specialist in the cross-linguistic study of child-language development, has joined the CU Linguistics faculty as an assistant professor. Dr. Narasimhan, who received her PhD from Boston University in 1998, comes to the Department from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where she has served as a scientific staff member since 1999. Prof. Narasimhans's work focuses on children's early event descriptions in a variety of languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Dutch and English. In addition to her teaching duties, Prof. Narasimhan will head up a child-language lab at the Center for Innovation and Creativity, a research center on east campus.

Dallas Morning News Story features work of CU linguist David Rood
A January 19th Dallas Morning News story, 'The Last Voice of the Wichita', focuses on Doris Jean Lamar McLemore, of Anadarko, Oklahoma, an 80-year-old elder of the Wichita tribe who is the last fluent speaker of the Wichita language. The Morning News story describes the efforts of CU Professor of Linguistics David Rood to document the Wichita language over the past 40 years, and the vital role that Ms. McLemore has played in this work. The story quotes from a proclamation presented to Ms. McLemore by Prof. Rood at a 2006 tribal dance in her honor. It reads in part: "Because of her cooperation, future generations of Wichitas and linguists will know about the wonders and beauty of the Wichita language".

CU Linguistics faculty featured in CU Boulder news podcasts on world's vanishing languages
CU Linguistics professors Andrew Cowell, David Rood and Zygmunt Frajzyngier are featured in new CU podcasts. The CU Boulder podcast channel features official news and feature stories from the University of Colorado at Boulder. In the podcasts, the three researchers describe their work with endangered languages in Oklahoma (Wichita), Wyoming (Arapaho) and in Africa (Gidar). They explain the role of language documentation in the preservation of vanishing knowledge systems and cultures.

CU Linguistics doctoral student wins Endangered Language Fund grant for Wichita documentation
CU Linguistics doctoral student Armik Mirzayan has been awarded an Endangered Language Fund grant to build a digital database of Wichita songs and music. Says Mirzayan, "Music is one of the last cultural niches in which dying languages survive". The material collected under this project will supplement the video and audio archiving of elicited and conversational Wichita that Mirzayan helped to start under a Volkswagen Foundation grant awarded to CU Linguistics Professor David Rood in 2000-2005. Wichita is a Caddoan language historically spoken near Anadarko, Oklahoma. Like many native North American languages, Caddoan languages are nearing extinction. The few remaining fluent speakers of Wichita are elderly, and English is the dominant language of the tribal community. Mirzayan's project, which will form part of his dissertation research, will help to preserve a rich part of the tribe's cultural history for scholars and community members.

CU Linguistics website wins CASE award
The Colorado Linguistics website has been honored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). The website received a Bronze Award in the CASE 2007 District VI website design awards competition. The site was judged on the design and content in competition with entries from several other midwestern universities. Colorado Linguistics shares this honor with the CU Office of Web Communications, which designed this site in collaboration with Department faculty and staff.

CU Linguistics Professional TESOL MA website goes live
CU Linguistics has created a new MA in Linguistics for TESOL Professionals, which enrolled its first graduating class in the 07-08 academic year. This professional MA degree program will provide a cohesive, professionally oriented program that addresses the increased demand for professionalization in the field of teaching English as a second or foreign language.

Martha Palmer receives new DARPA grants for research in computational semantics
Martha Palmer, CU associate professor of Linguistics and Computer Science, has received two new grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to perform semantic annotation of large language databases for machine translation and other natural-language processing applications. The aim of the first project is to expand Prof. Palmer's Propbank database for English and Chinese; the aim of the second is to build a pilot Propbank database for Arabic. The Arabic Propbank pilot project involves researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, as well as CU Linguistics PhD student Aous Mansouri, who is serving as a research assistant on the project.

Andrew Cowell authors two new works on indigenous languages of the West
Andrew J. Cowell, CU associate professor of Linguistics and French and Italian and director of CU's Center for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the West has authored The Arapaho Language, published by the University Press of Colorado. A co-edited volume, Healing the West, will also be published by University of Arizona Press this spring.

David Rood receives National Science Foundation grant for Lakota documentation
David S. Rood, CU Professor of Linguistics, has received a National Science Foundation grant that will underwrite large-scale video documentation of Lakota, an indigenous language of the northern plains with approximately 8,000-9,000 living speakers. The grant will provide full support to three Lakota speakers for three years each, starting in the Fall of 2007. The support packages will enable these students to earn the MA degree in Linguistics while assisting in the video documentation of everyday Lakota conversation. The Lakota documentation effort will join an array of research and outreach projects already underway at CU's Center for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the West.