LUCL Newsletter - July/August 2009

The July/August LUCL newsletter will give you a brief overview of current affairs. If you would like to include some issue in the next newsletter, please let the LUCL office know.

• Management Team
• Councils and Committees
• Grants
• PhD Defences
• Personnel
• Personal Metis
• Lectures and Conferences
• Research MA matters

Management Team

Gea Hakker will be on holiday from 15 July to 11 August. The LUCL office will have restricted opening hours (see homepage LUCL website). For urgent matters, please contact Maarten Mous.

Councils and Committees

Advisory Council
The Advisory Council had a meeting on 12 June and on 2 July, in which a number of issues were discussed: 

• LUCL will have a new Selectiecommissie (what used to be the wetenschapscommissie). The following people have agreed to be on the committee: Jenny Doetjes, Henrike Jansen, Alwin Kloekhorst, Maarten Kossmann and Martine Bruil. The committee will look at research proposals of PhD applicants, both regular and intra muros, before they are admitted to LUCL (see: http://www.hum.leiden.edu/lucl/organisation/councils-committees/phd-admission-committee.html). Once LUCL has the opportunity again to employ PhD students on paid positions, the committee will be extended as such a round of interviews is very time consuming.
  
• LUCL finances. LUCL has been cut in the 2009 budget because of Faculty deficits. The prospects for 2010 are far from encouraging for the same reasons.

Grants

Azeb Amha has been awarded a DoBeS Volkswagen grant for a Multi-media documentation of the Oyda language in cooperation with Professor Dr. Rainer Voßen, Universität Frankfurt am Main. Oyda is an endangered Omotic language from Ethiopia.

Maarten Mous has been awarded a DoBeS Volkswagen grant for a Documentation of Bakola of Cameroon in cooperation with Professor Dr. Raimund Kastenholz, Mainz University. The Bakola are hunter-gatherers in the forests of Cameroon and their language and way of life is under severe threat.

Hilke Reckman has been awarded an NWO Rubicon grant.

Roberta D'Alessandro has been invited for a VIDI interview in August.

PhD Defences

3 September: Erik Schoorlemmer
'Agreement, Dominance and Doubling: the morphosyntax of DP'
Promotores: Johan Rooryck and Lisa Cheng.

8 September: Frank Landsbergen
'Cultural evolutionary models of patterns in language change. Exercises in evolutionary linguistics' Promotor: Arie Verhagen
Co-promotor: Rob Lachlan

Personnel

In memoriam
The sad new reached us that Prof.dr. Erica Garcia passed away on 4 July. She was a professor in Latin-American linguistics at Leiden University from 1992 to 1997. A more extensive obituary will follow soon on the LUCL website.

We would like to welcome:
Björn Köhnlein- starting 1 August as UD in German linguistics. Björn is a phonologist and has nearly finished his PhD project on 'Tone and Intrasegmental Strucutre in West-Germanic Dialects' at the Meertens Institute. Bjorn's office will be 1164-105a.

Heleen Pluimgraaff  - starting on 15 August as Lecturer at the Slavic department. Heleen graduated in Slavic linguistics March 2009, so Leiden University is not new to her. Heleen will work here on Tuesday and Thursday.

Gijsbert Rutten  - starting on 1 September as Postdoc researcher on the NWO project of Marijke van der Wal (see: http://www.hum.leiden.edu/lucl/research/research-projects/letters-as-loot.html). Gijsbert is also familiar with LUCL, as he was a postdoc here in 2007-2008.

Alexander Schwager - starting on 1 September as a PhD student on the project of Michiel de Vaan, see: http://www.hum.leiden.edu/lucl/research/research-projects/dawn-of-dutch.html

We wish you all a lot of success in your new position!

'Buitenpromovendi' The following external PhD students have been admitted to the institute:
Olivier Bondeelle - promotor: Maarten Mous, co-promotor: Felix Ameka Research subject: Polysémie et dérivations sémantiques en wolof. Mel'cuk's theory will be applied to the semantics of some productive derivations in Wolof.  The thesis is in "cotutelle" with Prof. Sylvain Kahane, Université de Paris 10 ( Nanterre)

Jean Chavula - promotor: Maarten Mous Research subject: Verbal derivation in Tumbuka (a Bantu language from Malawi) using HPSG

Dawid Tilahun Jembere - promotor: Maarten Mous Research subject: A grammar of Gede'o, Ethiopia

Zaira Khalilova - promotores: Frits Kortlandt and Bernard Comrie (Max Planck Institute, Leipzig) Research subject: A grammatical description of the Khwarshi Language (a language from Dagestan)

Sima Zolfaghari - promotor: Sasha Lubotsky, co-promotor: Michiel de Vaan Research subject: A descriptive analysis of the Bakhtiyari language

Hungyuan Sun - promotor: Lisa Cheng Research subject: Time in a tenseless language: Mandarin The thesis is in "cotutelle" with Dr. Hamida Demirdache, Université de Nantes

Guest researchers on an NWO Bezoekersbeurs:
Dr. Sadovski is a guest researcher at LUCL in July and August 2009. He's a guest of Sasha Lubotsky. Dr Sadovski will be coming back again in the summer of 2010.

Prof.dr. Kaji will be spending research time at LUCL from 15 August to 15 October 2009. He's a guest of Maarten Mous.  

Personal Metis

All researchers have received an email about Personal Metis. With a view to the Visitatie in 2010 it is very important that you complete and update your details in the new Metis. Thank you!

Lectures and Conferences

27 July - 7 August: Leiden Summerschool in Languages and Linguistics
18 August: Workshop 'Sign Languages in Africa' at WOCAL 2009, Cologne
19-21 August: Symposium 'Standaardtalen in beweging'
24-26 August: CALL 2009 (Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics)
27 August: Deaf Africa Symposium
1 September: Ewoud Sanders will give the Bert van Selm-lecture on digital libraries and sources
3 September: Symposium 'Woorden Wisselen' on the occasion of Ariane van Santen's retirement.

For more info see also: http://www.hum.leiden.edu/lucl/highlights/this-month-at-lucl.html

Research MA matters

On 26 June the following ResMA students graduated:
Boris Kozlov, Fang Bao, Beata Moskal, Anna Samata, Marjoleine Sloos