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WHASC is the weekly electronic newsletter of the UCSC Linguistics Department. We welcome your news items, comments and feedback.
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Congratulations to DYLAN HERRICK who successfully defended his dissertation prospectus on Monday. The committee is Jaye Padgett chair, Junko Ito and Armin Mester.
Dylan is on his way to the University of Girona, about an hour's drive from Barcelona, to do research for his dissertation. Bon Voyage, Dylan!
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Congratulations to VERA SCHOENFELD who was inducted into the Boston University Athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday, October 5 in Boston. During her undergraduate career, Vera scored 55 goals and accounted for 152 points on the school's field hockey team, marks that are still school records. Way to go, Vera!

http://www.bu.edu/athletics/fieldhockey/2002/news/10-05-02-fh-hall-of-fame.htm
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The Mind and Meaning Project of the INSTITUTE for HUMANITIES
RESEARCH, in cooperation with the Cognitive Program of the
Department of Psychology, announces the following co-sponsored talk.

ALVA NOE
Department of Philosophy
UCSC
Friday, October 11th
3:30PM
Social Sciences Two, 121
NEURAL PLASTICITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS
Abstract
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Why is neural activity in a particular area of cortex experienced
as one way rather than another -- as red, say, rather than green,
or as visual, say, rather than auditory? For that matter, why is it
experienced as like anything at all? These familiar questions point
to the explanatory gap between neural activity and conscious
experience. We naturally assume that the answer to these puzzles
must be framed in terms of instrinsic properties of neural activity
at the cortical region subserving the experience. A general
strategy for addressing the explanatory gap for consciousness would
be to expand our view of the relevant substrate in terms of which
we hope to explain consciousness. This is the strategy I pursue in
this paper. I argue that to find explanations of the qualitative
character of experience, our focus should be directed outward, to
dynamic relations between brain, body and world. I proceed by
examining a puzzle about neural plasticity

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LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM - MATTHIAS T. KROMANN
Friday, October 18, 3:30 p.m.
Cowell Classroom 131
Potluck dinner following the talk at 328 Union Street, hosted by Andy Wedel. DEPENDENCY GRAMMAR AND LOCAL OPTIMALITY PARSING
We will briefly present a heuristic parser based on local search,
and explain its potential benefits and dangers in terms of
parsing efficiency, robustness, disambiguation, linguistic
coverage, precision, and psycholinguistic plausibility.
We will then explain how the success of our parsing algorithm
depends on the locality of the underlying syntax formalism,
and why this encourages the use of a syntax formalism based on
dependency structure rather than phrase structure.

Finally, we will sketch the principles underlying dependency
theory, and how a number of important morphological and syntactic
phenomena can be described within a dependency-based framework --
including phenomena like topicalizations, relative clauses,
extrapositions, and scrambling.
For further reading, see:
http://www.id.cbs.dk/~mtk/files/011001-entcs.pdf
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The JET (Japan Exchange & Teaching) Program will be one of many programs represented at the annual campus Graduate School Fair:
UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ
Graduate & Professional School Fair
Monday, October 14, 2002; 10:00 AM - 2:30 PM
College Eight, West Field House
http://www2.ucsc.edu/careers
Every year the Japanese government offers university graduates the chance to spend a year
or more living and working in Japan through the Japan Exchange & Teaching
(JET) Program. This year, as the program enters its 17th year, over 6,200
participants from 38 countries are gaining a rare "inside" look at Japan,
its culture and its people, while team-teaching in Japanese public schools
as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) or assisting local governments as
Coordinators for International Relations (CIRs).
All majors and educational specialties are welcome to apply for the JET
Program, and no prior Japanese language ability is required for the ALT
position. Applicants must hold or expect to obtain a Bachelor's degree by
July 1, 2003, and must hold US citizenship by December 5, 2002.
Successful applicants will depart for Japan in August 2003, and round-trip
airfare from designated points in the US will be provided. The length of
the contract is for at least one year and the annual remuneration will be
¥3,600,000 Japanese yen per year.
Further information and a downloadable application packet for
the JET Program are also available from the Consulate's JET website at
http://www.cgjsf.org/jet, by phone at (415) 356-2462, or by e-mail to
jet@cgjsf.org.
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JUDITH AISSEN is an invited speaker at The Berkeley Linguistics Society's Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, to be held February 14-17, 2003 at UCB. Abstracts must be received by 4:00 p.m., November 27, 2002. For more information, contact: bls@socrates.berkeley.edu.
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REMINDER! The deadline to enter the Linguistics & Language Studies Majors Airline Ticket Contest is Friday, October 11, 2002, 12 noon. The winner will be announced at 4:00 p.m. on Friday in Silverman Conference Room at the UnderLing meeting.
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The following books were recently donated to the Linguistics Research Center Library.
Lyons, John. Semantics 1. 1977. Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, John. Semantics 2. 1977. Cambridge University Press.
Admajian, Adrian and Heny, Frank. An Introduction to the Principles of Transformational Syntax. 1975.MIT Press.
Abercrombie, David. Elements of General Phonetics. 1967. Aldine Publishing Co.
Hockett, Charles F. A Course in Modern Linguistics. 1958. Macmillan Company.
Davidson, Donald, & Harman, Gilbert, Editors. Semantics of Natural Language. 1972. D. Reidel Publishing Co.
Copi, Irving M. and Gould, James A.. Editors. Contemporary Philosophical Logic. 1978. St. Martin's Press.
Moravcsik, J.M.E., Editor. Logic and Philosophy for Linguists. 1974. Mouton & Co., The Hague.
Flynn, Michael J. Structure Building Operations and Word Order. 1981. (dissertation) Univ of Mass.
Glover, Jonathan, Editor. The Philosophy of Mind. Oxford Readings in Philosophy. 1976. Oxford University Press.
Anderson, John M. The Grammar of Case: Towards a Localistic Theory. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 4. 1971. Cambridge University Press.
Lees, Robert B. The Grammar of English Nominalizations. 1966.Indiana University. Bloomington.
Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words. 1962. Harvard University Press.
Allwood, Jens, Andersson, Lars-Gunnar, and Dahl, Osten. Logic in Linguistics. 1977. Cambridge University Press.
Admajian, Adrian, Demers, Richard A., Farmer, Ann K. and Harnish, Robert M. Lingistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication. 1990. MIT Press.
Massey, Gerald J. Understanding Symbolic Logic. 1970. Harper & Row.

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Correction to Oct. 2 WHASC: Emily and Jonah were married in Virginia, not Pennsylvania.
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