The 10th MACSIM

6 April 2024 at the University of Maryland.

MACSIM is a regional workshop on issues related to meaning in natural language. It consists of oral presentations and posters by graduate students from the participating departments in the Mid-Atlantic: NYU, CUNY, Rutgers, Penn, Delaware, Johns Hopkins, Maryland, Georgetown. Faculty from these departments participate in audience discussion. There is also one invited talk by a faculty member, and plenty of time to get to know people and their work. 

Join us on the first Saturday in April for a full day of talks and posters by graduate students and an invited talk by Sam Alxatib (CUNY), followed by a dinner party. Please register here. Travel directions are here.

The 10th MACSIM is supported by the Department of Linguistics, the Department of Philosophy, the Maryland Language Science Center, and the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, College Park. The organizing committee comprises students and faculty from Linguistics and Philosophy. The MACSIM Executive Committee is Sam Alxatib, Chris Barker, Lucas Champollion, Valentine Hacquard, Elena Herburger, Anna Papafragou, Paul Portner, Kyle Rawlins, Florian Schwarz, Kristen Syrett, Satoshi Tomioka and Alexander Williams.

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Travel support

Thanks to a generous donation from the Department of Philosophy, we have funds to subsidize presenters who are driving a car or are taking a bus/train. (Car-pooling is encouraged, but there can be only one reimbursement per car.) The amount of support will be commensurate to the distance traveled: maximally $150 from NYU or CUNY, $100 from Rutgers, $90 from Penn, $75 from Delaware and $40 from Hopkins.

Directions for travel and parking are here. 

On Saturdays visitors can park for free in Lot 1 except where there is a sign reserving space for special events. Lot 1 is a huge lot for students at the western edge of campus. 

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Presenters

Talks: Zhuoye Zhao [NYU], Jiaxing Yu [Rutgers], June Choe [Penn], Daiki Asami [Delaware], Karl Mulligan [Hopkins], Caleb Kendrick and Jéssica Mendes [Maryland], Zhuosi Luo [Georgetown]

Posters: Nigel Flower [NYU], Matthew Loder [NYU], Auromita (Disha) Mitra [NYU], Jiayuan Chen [Rutgers], Mingyang Bian [Penn], Jonathan Lee [Penn], Uğurcan Vurgun [Penn], Keita Ishii [Delaware], Jane Li [Hopkins], Jimena Guallar-Blasco [Hopkins], Azia Knox [Delaware], Neemias Souza Filho et al. [Delaware], Anna Koppy [Delaware], Yunhui Bai [Maryland], Sarah Boukendour [Maryland], Fëdor Golosov [Maryland], Elizabeth Swanson [Maryland], Xiang Li [Georgetown], Mingyeong Choi [Georgetown], Erin Tirpak [Georgetown]

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Program

9:15-10:00 - Welcome and breakfast

10:00-10:10 - Greeting [Alexander Williams and Valentine Hacquard]

10:10-11:00 - Invited talk [Chair: Paolo Santorio] 

• Sam Alxatib [CUNY] "Or and any and modals and indefinites" 

Break (11:00-11:15)

11:15-12:00 - Poster Session 1: 

• Nigel Flower [NYU] "All at once: Semantic effects of quantification during parallel presentation in MEG"
• Matthew Loder [NYU] "The Proviso Problem: Pragmatic constraints on accommodation"
• Jiayuan Chen [Rutgers] "The syntax and semantics of quasi-names"
• Mingyang Bian [Penn] "A Commitment-based Analysis of ‘Believe’ as an Implicature Trigger"
• Keita Ishii [Delaware] "QUD-based approach to negative scope reversal in Japanese verb echo answer"
• Anna Koppy [Delaware]
• Jimena Guallar-Blasco [Hopkins] "The {reason|purpose} behind why-question ambiguity: A computational exploration"
• Yunhui Bai [Maryland] "The weakness of will"
• Sarah Boukendour [Maryland] "Perfection is conditional on speech act"
• Xiang Li [Georgetown] "On the interpretation of the participle -GAn in Uyghur"

Talk Session 1, 12:00-1:00 [Chair: Fabrizio Cariani]

• 12:00-12:30 - Talk: Zhuosi Luo [Georgetown] "Multidimensional causality and modality: A case study on Teochew periphrastic causatives" 
• 12:30-1:00 - Talk: Caleb Kendrick and Jéssica Mendes [Maryland] "Just in case"

1:00-2:00 - Lunch (falafel from Taïm)

2:00-2:45 - Poster Session 2

• Auromita (Disha) Mitra [NYU] "Temporal-modal links and the interpretation of tense-aspect in Bangla if-conditionals"
• Jonathan Lee [Penn] "Debunking the stigma of 'disfluency': Interpolation in naturalistic speech"
• Uğurcan Vurgun [Penn] "Cognitive signatures of aspectual coercion"
• Azia Knox [Delaware] "Do social challenges predict behavioral compensation in Autistic adolescents?"
• Neemias Souza Filho et al. [Delaware] "Two ways of obtaining word predictability estimates in negative sentences"
• Jane Li [Hopkins] "Two compositions of associative plurality in Tagalog"
• Fëdor Golosov [Maryland] "Indefinite bare duals in Kazym Khanty: Evidence against the classic neo-Carlsonian approach"
• Elizabeth Swanson [Maryland] "Temporal orientation and the acquisition of attitude verbs"
• Mingyeong Choi [Georgetown] "Disambiguating root subjunctives"
• Erin Tirpak [Georgetown] "Few dimensions to many interpretations: Ambiguity in many and few"

2:45-3:00 - Business Meeting / Break

Talk Session 2, 3:00-4:00 [Chair: Omar Agha]

• 3:00-3:30 - Talk: Zhuoye Zhao [NYU] "Why is 'then’ incompatible with the present?"
• 3:30-4:00 - Talk: Jiaxing Yu [Rutgers] "A VERUM account on the single negation interpretation of Mandarin double negation sentence"

Break (4:00-4:15)

Talk Session 3, 4:15-5:45 [Chair: Aron Hirsch]

• 4:15-4:45 - Talk: June Choe [Penn] "Distributional signatures of superordinate nouns"
• 4:45-5:15 - Talk: Daiki Asami [Delaware] "Resultative compounds again"
• 5:15-5:45 - Talk: Karl Mulligan [Hopkins] "All-Natural Questions Under Discussion"

6:00-9:00 - Dinner party at Pizzeria Paradiso in Hyattsville