WHASC Newsletter May 11, 2005
("What's Happening at Santa Cruz")
WHASC is the weekly electronic newsletter of the UCSC Linguistics Department and the Linguistics Research Center. We welcome your news items, comments and feedback. Please submit news items by noon on Tuesdays.
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Congratulations to David Teeple, who successfully passed his phonology
qualifying paper entitled "Foot Unarity: Parsing Effects in Maghrebi
Arabic". The committee consisted of Junko, Jaye, and Armin (chair).
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COLLOQUIUM THIS FRIDAY
GREGORY WARD
CASBS and Northwestern University
Noncanonical Equatives
Friday, May 13, 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Cowell College Conference Room
To view the abstract, please visit: http://ling.ucsc.edu/events/colloquia/index.html
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Vera Lee-Schoenfeld
will defend her dissertation
Beyond Coherence
Thursday, May 19, 2005
11:00 a.m.
Silverman Conference Room
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T SHIRT DEADLINE
Message from Jocelyn Laney (jalaney@ucsc.edu):
Orders for the Linguistics tshirts are due Wednesday! I am collecting
cash in Lx116, 140 and 151. There is also an envelope for money (checks
preferred) in Jaye Padgett's mailbox (Steno Pool) in Stevenson.
There will be no extra shirts ordered, so if you're interested, you need
to submit an order up front.
View the design at http://people.ucsc.edu/~jalaney/lx
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PHILOSOPHY TALKS
Brian Skyrms , Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, UC Irvine
"The Stag Hunt"
Thursday, May 12, 4:00 pm, Stevenson Silverman Conference Room
(Sponsored by the History & Philosophy of Science, Mathematics, and Formal Methods Group)
Scott Soames , USC Department of Philosophy
"Against Two-Dimensionalism"
Thursday, May 19, 4:00 pm ,Stevenson Silverman Conference Room
(Part of the SCLL Distinguished Visitors Series)
*Jason Stanley CANCELLED*
Chris Hom, UCSC Department of Philosophy
"The Semantics of Racism"
Thursday, May 26, 4:00 pm ,Stevenson Silverman Conference Room
(Part of the SCLL Distinguished Visitors Series)
Brett Bourbon, Department of English, Stanford University
"Meaning Something and Being Something"
Thursday, June 2, 4:00 pm, Cowell Conference Room
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INTERNATIONAL PLAYHOUSE V
Cowell and Stevenson Colleges, the Language Program and the Linguistics Department at UCSC cordially invite you to attend a performance of International Playhouse V, a program of diverse theater pieces in Chinese, French, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. Each of the pieces will be accompanied by supertitles projected in English. Performances will take place at the Stevenson Event Center on Thursday and Friday, May 19 & 20 at 8 pm and Saturday and Sunday, May 21 & 22, at 2:00 pm. Admission is free.
The following students are participating:
Chinese
Matt Berry
Michelle Sancho
French
Megan Morris
Laura Landriau
Napoleon Buenrostro - Linguistics major
Diana Morris
Michelle Elston
Brian Lane - Linguistics major
Peter Jenkins
Japanese
Kenneth Lee
Joseph Pak
Benjamin Schlotz - Linguistics major
Evan Weiss - Language Studies major
Russian
James Taman Davies - Language Studies major
Savannah Gentry
Linden Marno-Ferree
Allison Nowak
Marina Zotova
Staging Assistants:
Kevin Rothrock
Janette Wong
Spanish
Shannon Bowman
Jacob Farris
Daniel French - Language Studies major
Lianna Marmor
Nicholas Jon Reynolds - Linguistics major
Lindsey J. Shannon
Karina Vasquez
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UNDERGRAD RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - 2:00-6:00 p.m.
Silverman Conference Room, Stevenson College
The Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference is an annual event which
features presentations of the most significant pieces of research by
students majoring in Linguistics or Language Studies during the current
academic year.

A highlight of the event is usually a keynote presentation by an alumnus/a
with a BA in Linguistics or in Language Studies from UCSC. This year's
keynote speaker is Gina Taranto, who graduated UCSC in 1994 with a BA in
Linguistics (Kresge College, with College Honors). Gina went on to attend
graduate school in Linguistics at UC San Diego, where she graduated in 2003
with a Ph.D. with a dissertation on discourse adjectives. She currently holds
the position of Discourse Analyst/Linguist at H5 Technologies in San
Francisco (http://www.h5technologies.com/).
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Thanks to Chris Potts, editor of WHISC (http://www.umass.edu/linguist/about/whisc/whisc-current/), Kai von Fintel and Barbara Partee for this item:
Not "mere semantics", but a core life skill?
The semantics etc. Moscow correspondent, Barbara Partee, writes in with a tidbit found among the New York Times letters to the editor in the May 4, 2005 edition. In response to an April 29 column by Tom Friedman about American education falling behind, someone wrote in :
"I would limit the mandatory classes to a few core life skills: public speaking, self-defense, basic logic and semantics."
Virtually all occurrences of the term "semantics" in public discourse concern some matter's being an issue of "mere semantics". This is meant to categorize the matter as insubstantial, as being overly concerned with the right choice of words, rather than with the content of what is at the stake. So, this is quite a departure from the ordinary.
Of course, nobody outside academic circles has any idea of what the science of semantics actually is.
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Fulbright Student Grant Competition Opens
International Study, Research and Teaching Assistantship Grants Now Available
The Institute of International Education (IIE), in cooperation with the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, is pleased to announce the launch of the 2006-2007 Fulbright U.S. Student Program competition. 
For more than 58 years, the U.S. Government-sponsored Fulbright U.S. Student Program has provided future American leaders with an unparalleled opportunity to study, conduct research and teach in other nations. Fulbright student grants aim to increase mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchange while serving as a catalyst for long-term leadership development. 
The U.S. Student Program awards approximately 1,100 grants annually and currently operates in over 140 countries worldwide. Fulbright full grants generally provide funding for round-trip travel, maintenance for one academic year, health and accident insurance and full or partial tuition. Fulbright travel-only grants are also available to limited countries.
Applicants to the Fulbright U.S. Student Program must be U.S. citizens at the time of application and hold a bachelor's degree or the equivalent by the beginning of the grant. In the creative and performing arts, four years of professional training and/or experience meets the basic eligibility requirement. (Professional applicants lacking a degree but with extensive professional study and/or experience in fields in which they wish to pursue a project may also be considered.) The Fulbright U.S. Student Program does not require applicants to be currently enrolled in a college or university. Applications from young professionals interested in an international experience are also encouraged.
For more information, applicants should visit the Fulbright U.S. Student Program Web site at www.fulbrightonline.org. Students currently enrolled at UC Santa Cruz should contact the campus Fulbright Program Adviser Jennifer Mullin for application forms and further information. Applications must be submitted in full to Jennifer Mullin in The Office of International Education by the campus closing date of October 3, 2005, in order to be received by IIE by the October 21, 2005 national deadline.
Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 260,000 participants worldwide with the opportunity to observe each others' political, economic and cultural institutions, exchange ideas and embark on joint ventures of importance to the general welfare of the world's inhabitants. In the past 58 years, 98,000 Americans have benefited from the Fulbright experience.
The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Financial support is provided by an annual appropriation from Congress to the Department of State and by participating governments and by host institutions in the United States and abroad. The presidentially appointed J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board formulates policy guidelines and makes the final selection of all grantees.
The Institute of International Education administers and coordinates the activities relevant to the U.S. Student Program, including an annual competition for the scholarships.