Mayfest 2024 / The Science of Linguistic Diversity

Kermit the Frog learning about Chomsky from Jim Henson

All friends of the department are welcome to come. Just let us know you if plan to come in person, so we can plan accordingly. Attending in person requires registration.

Please send any questions to Luisa Seguin at lseguin9@umd.edu.

Directions for travel to the University of Maryland, including parking, can be found here.

Please register here

Mayfest is a workshop that brings together researchers from a variety of disciplines and perspectives to discuss fundamental issues in linguistics.

In 2024, our Mayfest will celebrate Maria (Masha) Polinsky. The event, titled "The Science of Linguistic Diversity", will bring together over a dozen syntacticians and semanticists who have worked closely with Masha on fieldwork, heritage languages, cross-linguistic diversity, and experimental psycholinguistics. It will also feature two round table discussions on "Experimental work and fieldwork on understudied and heritage languages" and "The Mayan-Austronesian Connection." The meeting will be held on the College Park campus on May 3-4, 2024. Information about our speakers and a tentative schedule is available below.

Invited participants

Maša Bešlin / PhD Student in Linguistics, University of Maryland (panel moderator)
Irina Burukina / Assistant Professor of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University (panelist)
Lauren Clemens / Associate Professor of Anthropology, SUNY Albany (panelist)
Jessica Coon / Professor of Linguistics, McGill University (panelist)
Zuzanna Fuchs / Assistant Professor of Linguistics, USC (panelist)
Vera Gribanova / Associate Professor of Linguistics, Stanford University (speaker)
Aron Hirsch / Assistant Professor of Linguistics, University of Maryland (speaker)
Idan Landau / Professor of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University (speaker)
Ellen Lau / Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of Maryland (speaker)
Ora Matushansky / Director of Research, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (speaker)
Polina Pleshak / Phd Student in Linguistics, University of Maryland (panelist)
Eric Potsdam / Professor of Linguistics, University of Florida (speaker)
Rodrigo Ranero / Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA (panelist)
Gregory Scontras / Associate Professor of Language Science, UC Irvine (panelist)
Juan Uriagereka / Professor of Linguistics, University of Maryland (panel moderator)
Ming Xiang / Professor of Linguistics, University of Chicago (speaker)

Program

Friday's presentations will be in Skinner Hall 0200. Saturday's will be at the Language Science Center, 2130 H.J. Patterson Hall.

Friday May 3

9:00-9:20 - Registration and breakfast
9:20-9:30 - Bill Idsardi / Opening remarks
9:30-10:30 - Idan Landau / The duality of control: A view across languages and constructions
10:20-11:30 - Aron Hirsch / Only scope in English and German
11:30-12:00 - Break
12:00-1:00 - Eric Potsdam / Voice and clausal ellipsis
1:00-2:45 - Lunch (free time)
2:45-4:15 - Poster session
4:15-5:30 - Irina Burukina, Lauren Clemens a Jessica Coon: Round Table on The Mayan-Austronesian Connection, moderated by Maša Bešlin
6:15 - Party of the Whole, at The Hall CP

Saturday May 4

9:00-9:30 - Breakfast
9:30-10:30 - Vera Gribanova / Degrees of (non-)isomorphism in three types of Russian TP ellipsis
10:30-11:30 - Ora Matushansky / The anatomy of an aggregate: On the Russian suffix -ьj-
11:30-1:00 - Lunch (free time)
1:00-3:00 - Zuzanna Fuchs, Rodrigo Ranero, Gregory Scontras and Polina Pleshak: Round Table on Experimental work and fieldwork on understudied and heritage languages, moderated by Juan Uriagereka
3:00-3:30 - Break
3:30-4:30 - Ellen Lau / What makes some relative clauses hard? Inspiration from cross-linguistic EEG
4:30-5:30 - Ming Xiang / Reducing uncertainty in contact-induced linguistic change
5:30 - Conclusion
6:00 - Speaker's Dinner

Register