Announcements

Dr. Rich Sandoval speaks about the language of calendars in Ancient Maya texts

Laura A Michaelis-Cummings — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 08:14:58 +0000

Dr. Rich Sandoval speaks about the language of calendars in Ancient Maya texts Laura A Michae… Sat, 01/17/2026 - 01:14

Monday, February 16 | 3:30–5:00 p.m. | Hellems N253 & Zoom
https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/92608985989

CU Linguistics, Anthropology, and CNAIS welcome Richard A. Sandoval of Metropolitan State University of Denver for a lecture exploring how Ancient Maya scribes encoded time, cosmology, and social meaning through a richly multimodal calendrical language.

Dr. Sandoval’s talk examines the central role of calendars in Ancient Maya cosmology and sociocultural life, as evidenced by thousands of inscriptions in which calendar-date expressions figure prominently. These expressions were not merely numerical records: they were governed by a specific grammar, offered scribes multiple formal options for expressing a single date, and carried layered meanings tied to cycles of time, ritual force, and ancestral resonance. Numerals themselves participated in this semantic enrichment, appearing in multiple hieroglyphic forms—from iconic bar-and-dot notation to elaborate figural depictions of patron deities.

Moving beyond hieroglyphic writing alone, Sandoval argues that Maya calendrical expression extended into the visual and gestural domain. Drawing on recent work deciphering textual hand signs, he shows how depicted figures within Maya art encode dates and calendrical relations through their hands. These signs can harmonize local events with cosmological cycles and generate intentionally polyvalent expressions—texts designed to be experienced nonlinearly, mirroring the structure of time itself.

Dr. Sandoval, an alum of the CU Linguistics PhD program, is a linguistic anthropologist whose research centers on Indigenous communication traditions of the Americas, with particular attention to signed and multimodal language. His earlier work documented the integration of hand signs and speech in Arapaho storytelling; his current research brings this multimodal perspective to Ancient Maya texts, revealing a sophisticated scribal practice that unites hieroglyphs, gesture, and cosmological meaning.

The talk is open to all and will be offered in a hybrid format, with both in-person and Zoom attendance available.

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Computational neuroscientist Idan Blank to speak to joint LingCircle/��ý�� NLP Seminar

Laura A Michaelis-Cummings — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 07:20:43 +0000

Computational neuroscientist Idan Blank to speak to joint LingCircle/��ý�� NLP Seminar Laura A Michae… Sat, 01/17/2026 - 00:20

Wednesday, February 4 | 11:15 a.m.–1:00 p.m. | Hellems N380 & Zoom

The CU ��ý�� Linguistics community welcomes Idan A. Blank, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Linguistics at UCLA for a timely talk examining whether large language models (LLMs) truly understand the language they process.

Blank’s talk presents three studies that adapt experimental methods from human psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics to probe signatures of human-like comprehension in LLMs. First, he asks whether semantic information can influence syntactic processing in these models, as it does in humans, or whether certain stages of syntactic processing remain insulated from meaning. Second, he examines whether LLMs encode a foundational distinction in linguistic meaning—the difference between agents and patients. Third, he explores whether large vision–language models use visual context in pragmatically sensitive ways, distinguishing felicitous, under-informative, and over-informative referring expressions.

Together, these studies reveal both convergences and divergences between human and machine language processing. By decomposing “understanding” into theoretically grounded components, Blank offers a nuanced perspective on what LLMs do—and do not—share with human comprehension.

Dr. Blank leads the BlankLangLab at UCLA, where his research investigates how meaning is represented and integrated across biological and artificial systems. Combining functional neuroimaging, behavioral experiments, and computational modeling, his work explores how different information sources contribute to comprehension and how cognitive labor is distributed across systems. He earned his PhD in Cognitive Science from MIT and completed postdoctoral training at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

Zoom link: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/95487448956
All campus community members are welcome to attend, in person or remotely via Zoom.

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Giulia Rambelli to give Semiotic Syntax talk on analogy in language processing W11/19

Laura A Michaelis-Cummings — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 01:11:04 +0000

Giulia Rambelli to give Semiotic Syntax talk on analogy in language processing W11/19 Laura A Michae… Tue, 11/11/2025 - 18:11

Live from Bologna...it's Dr. Giulia Rambelli, discussing the role of analogy in language processing. Come to the watch party in person or attend via Zoom on Wedesday, November 19, 10-11:30am in the Syn-Sem Lab (LBB 151). Attend in person and enjoy refreshments and the fellowship of the Syn-Sem Lab or attend remotely via Zoom: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/4867141685?omn=92834861850. Further information about Dr. Rambelli's talk can be found below.

Analogy in Language Processing: A Constructionist and Computational Approach to Productivity

Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms that people use to go beyond their known input to produce novel, structured utterances–that is, to achieve linguistic productivity, is a crucial domain in linguistics. This talk will explore how novel meaning is constructed by relying on patterns of use rather than by fixed compositional rules. Within a constructionist framework, analogy is seen as the cognitive process that allows speakers to extend existing constructions to novel contexts, balancing creativity and conventionality. I will discuss insights from my recent work on the interpretation of novel noun–noun compounds in both humans and large language models, shedding light on the parallels and divergences in their processing strategies. The results will serve as a basis for a broader discussion of analogy as a cognitive mechanism underlying linguistic productivity, addressing two crucial challenges: 1) define specific tasks to investigate whether analogy plays a role in human comprehension, and 2) use Language Models as tools to investigate how the exposure to item-specific structures guide the interpretation of novel linguistic ones.

Bio

Dr. Giulia Rambelli holds a joint PhD in Computational Linguistics from the University of Pisa (Italy) and Aix-Marseille University (France). She has been a Postdoctoral Researcher on the European ERC project ABSTRACTIONat the University of Bologna and will join the Institute of Language, Communication and the Brain (Aix-Marseille University) in January to carry on her own project “ANALOGIZE- Modeling Analogical Generalization in Children’s Creative Compound Formation through Computational Models.” Her research sits at the intersection of theoretical linguistics, cognitive science, and computational models of language, with a focus on the mechanisms underlying sentence interpretation and linguistic productivity from a usage-based perspective. In her Cambridge Element “Constructions and Compositionality: Cognitive and Computational Explorations”, she examines the balance between compositional and direct access to meaning, exploring how the cognitive process of analogy can be modeled as a source of linguistic productivity.

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Wes Scivetti gives talk on small-scale language models M10/27

Katlyn Econom — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 16:53:41 +0000

Wes Scivetti gives talk on small-scale language models M10/27 Katlyn Econom Mon, 10/27/2025 - 10:53

The CU Linguistics Semiotic Syntax Working Group is delighted to welcome Wesley Scivetti (Linguistics, Georgetown) for a virtual talk at the intersection of Construction Grammar and Natural Language Processing, “Do Small-Scale Language Models understand the ‘Let-Alone’ Construction?” On Monday, October 27, 3:30 — 5:00 PM MDT. We will meet in the SynSem Lab (LBB 151) for a watch party or you can join by zoom at https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/94055390738

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Alycia Catt and Deborah Martushev receive 2025 David Rood Awards

Ethan McGinnis — Wed, 07 May 2025 18:49:49 +0000

Alycia Catt and Deborah Martushev receive 2025 David Rood Awards Ethan McGinnis Wed, 05/07/2025 - 12:49

The Department of Linguistics is pleased to announce this year's recipients of the David Rood Linguistics Undergraduate Scholarship: Alycia Catt and Deborah Martushev!

Awarded since 2017, the David Rood Linguistics Undergraduate Scholarship recognizes a continuing student or students for their outstanding academic achievement in our undergraduate program, as well as potential for further success in linguistics. The scholarship of $500 is named in honor of Professor David Rood, who retired in 2016 after 48 years of teaching at CU.

Alycia Catt is an undergraduate student at CU ��ý�� majoring in both Linguistics and International Affairs with a minor in Spanish. Additionally, Alycia is currently enrolled in the Bachelor's-Accelerated Master's program of the Linguistics Department. She loves to be involved in the campus community by attending events and interacting with a multitude of the university's departments. In the future, she aims to be involved in work promoting awareness of language revitalization on a global scale.

Deborah Martushev is a Linguistics major additionally pursuing a minor in Anthropology (profile picture and full bio forthcoming).

Congratulations, Alycia and Deborah!

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Dr. Jonathan Dunn - Language as a Complex System: Syntactic Variation from Individuals to Populations

reku3206 — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 15:25:44 +0000

Dr. Jonathan Dunn - Language as a Complex System: Syntactic Variation from Individuals to Populations reku3206 Fri, 02/28/2025 - 08:25

CU Linguistics is pleased to present in a lecture by UIUC professor and computational linguist, Dr. Jonathan Dunn, in partnership with the Institute of Cognitive Science.

Language as a Complex System: Syntactic Variation from Individuals to Populations

Thursday, March 14

3:30 - 5:00pm

MUEN E113

This talk presents a computational approach to syntactic variation that brings together models of (i) individual differences across speakers, (ii) dialectal differences across populations, and (iii) register differences across contexts. This work is based in Construction Grammar because its usage-based representations allow us to capture differences in productivity across multiple levels of abstraction. Rather than focus on discrete variables in isolation, we view the grammar as a complex system in which interactions between constructions can be widely distributed.

Dr. Jonathan Dunn is a computational linguist and professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research models both (i) the emergence of grammatical structure within individuals and (ii) variation in grammatical structure across populations and registers.

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Dr. Raichle Farrelly speaks at a Webinar hosted by the English Education Study Program at Universitas Pattimura in Maluku, Indonesia

Zachary Frisch — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 21:39:30 +0000

Dr. Raichle Farrelly speaks at a Webinar hosted by the English Education Study Program at Universitas Pattimura in Maluku, Indonesia Zachary Frisch Tue, 02/18/2025 - 14:39

Dr. Rai Farrelly was invited to deliver a talk to students in the English Education Study Program at Universitas Pattimura in Maluku, Indonesia. Her talk focused on how English language teachers can build learners' confidence in speaking English with a focus on the constraints of Indonesian academic culture.

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Talking Politics with Leah Sprain: Making Non-Answers Hearable

reku3206 — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 16:58:33 +0000

Talking Politics with Leah Sprain: Making Non-Answers Hearable reku3206 Fri, 01/31/2025 - 09:58

Tuesday, February 4, 2025 | 7 pm EST

A common view of politicians is that, when they are asked questions, they rarely answer them. Question evasion is deeply bothersome to publics, but experiments

show that audiences are not good at identifying dodging techniques. In this talk, Leah Sprain (��ý��) explores

what debate moderators can do to make politicians’ evasion easier to notice—in other words, how moderators can make a non-answer hearable as a non-answer. This webinar offers practical theory that can moderators can use to make candidate forums and debates

more accountable to their publics through ground rules, formats, and goals.

Now <https://engage.squarespace-mail.com/r?m=67990d4e0912934390d6ab5e&u=https%3A%2F%2Fuchicagogroup.zoom.us%2Fwebinar%2Fregister%2FWN_IiqYw1ChR6iUqzOA8-eT_Q&w=66cd1841acc5c0073cf0925e&c=b_67990ae90912934390d68a60&l=en-US&s=Ui_w6FB1xKG5I6Lm-QXd4X42BP0%3D>

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Coming to CU ��ý��: "South Asian Forum on the Acquisition and Processing of Languages (SAFAL) 2025"

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 14:57:54 +0000

Coming to CU ��ý��: "South Asian Forum on the Acquisition and Processing of Languages (SAFAL) 2025" Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 08:57

With support from the National Science Foundation, SAFAL 2025 will be co-organized by Bhuvana Narasimhan (Linguistics), Al Kim (Psychology & Neuroscience/Institute of Cognitive Science), and Sudha Arunachalam (Communicative Sciences and Disorders, NYU).

South Asia constitutes an ideal natural laboratory for psycholinguistic investigation. The region is home to over 600 languages representing the Indo-European, Dravidian, Sino-Tibetan, and Austroasiatic language families as well as isolates, small families, and several pidgins and creoles (Borin, Saxena, Comrie, & Virk, 2021). The populations speaking SA languages are typically multilingual (Annamalai, 2008) and over two dozen writing systems are represented throughout the region (Asher, 2008). The conference will bring together researchers investigating South Asian languages to exchange ideas on different domains of psycholinguistic inquiry including language acquisition, language processing, multilingualism, and literacy development.

In order to allow for the broad participation of international scholars, the meeting will be hosted on Zoom as well as in person at the ��ý�� in Fall 2025. To allow time for international scholars to obtain a visa to attend the conference, abstracts will begin to be reviewed on a rolling basis a year in advance,starting in October 2024.Further details can be found at the SAFAL conference website.

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Indigenous Peoples, Ethics, and Linguistic Data: Approaches to Decolonizing Linguistics

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 20:34:00 +0000

Indigenous Peoples, Ethics, and Linguistic Data: Approaches to Decolonizing Linguistics Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/30/2024 - 14:34

LING Circle ProSeminar

Dr. Wesley Y. Leonard

Miami Tribe of Oklahoma; Associate Professor, University of California, Riverside

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

4:00 - 6:00 pm.

ECCS 1B12

or join via Zoom: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/91206948315

Despite the increasing focus on Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) in the discipline of Linguistics, members of Native American and other Indigenous communities remain underrepresented––and often report feeling unwelcome. A recurring concern is that Linguistics is not accountable to Indigenous histories, protocols, and ways of engaging with language communities and linguistic data. A wider issue is that colonization is endemic, and academic norms have developed accordingly.

What changes when Native American and other Indigenous intellectual approaches serve as the baseline from which linguistic research and pedagogy are approached? Drawing from my professional experiences as a linguist, Miami tribal member engaged in community language efforts, and co-founder of the Natives4Linguistics project, which aims to reimagine Linguistics through Native American ways of knowing, I engage with this question and offer several interventions.

Wesley Y. Leonard is a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and an associate professor of Native American Studies in the Ethnic Studies department at the University of California, Riverside. Drawing from his PhD in Linguistics (University of California, Berkeley, 2007) and experience as an additional language learner and practitioner in myaamia and other community-based language programs, his research aims to build language reclamation capacity in Native American and other Indigenous communities by cultivating language reclamation praxis, which centers community needs, values, and definitions of language, while also changing the norms of language sciences to facilitate such work. As part of this, he co-developed the Natives4Linguistics project, which promotes Native American needs, research and ethical protocols, and intellectual tools as a basis for doing linguistics. His scholarship appears in a variety of outlets such as Gender and Language, Language Documentation and Description, Dædalus, Language, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, and Language Learning.

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Announcements

Dr. Rich Sandoval speaks about the language of calendars in Ancient Maya texts

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Computational neuroscientist Idan Blank to speak to joint LingCircle/������ý���� NLP Seminar

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Giulia Rambelli to give Semiotic Syntax talk on analogy in language processing W11/19

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Wes Scivetti gives talk on small-scale language models M10/27

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Alycia Catt and Deborah Martushev receive 2025 David Rood Awards

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Dr. Jonathan Dunn - Language as a Complex System: Syntactic Variation from Individuals to Populations

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Dr. Raichle Farrelly speaks at a Webinar hosted by the English Education Study Program at Universitas Pattimura in Maluku, Indonesia

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Talking Politics with Leah Sprain: Making Non-Answers Hearable

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Coming to CU ������ý����: "South Asian Forum on the Acquisition and Processing of Languages (SAFAL) 2025"

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Indigenous Peoples, Ethics, and Linguistic Data: Approaches to Decolonizing Linguistics

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Computational neuroscientist Idan Blank to speak to joint LingCircle/��ý�� NLP Seminar

Coming to CU ��ý��: "South Asian Forum on the Acquisition and Processing of Languages (SAFAL) 2025"