LUCL Newsletter - September 2009

The September 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

The LUCL office is back to normal opening hours:
Mon: morning
Tue: morning and afternoon
Wed: morning and afternoon
Thu: morning and afternoon
Friday: morning

As of mid-September Merel van Wijk will join the office as student assistant for 0.2 fte (working hours not yet known).

Councils and Committees

Advisory Council
The Advisory Council will meet on Thursday, 17 September. Items for discussion are, amongst others, LUCL finances and the official Research Assessment (Visitatie) in November 2010.

Institute Council
The Institute Council will meet on Thursday, 24 September 2009, starting at 15.15 hrs. Invitations have been sent out separately.

Confidential student counsellor
Jos Schaeken will be the new confidential student counsellor, together with Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (for more information, see)

PhD Defences

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

8 September: Chaoju Tang
'Mutual intelligibility of Chinese dialicts: an experimental approach'
Promotor: Vincent van Heuven

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

30 September: Werner Knobl
'A surplus of meaning: the intent of irregularity in Vedic poetry'
Promotor: Sasha Lubotsky

3 November: Marius Doornenbal
'A grammar of Bantawa'
Promotor: Geert Booij / Co-promotor: Crit Cremers

10 December: Kristina Riedel
'The syntax of object marking in Sambaa: A comparative Bantu perspective'
Promotores: Lisa Cheng and Thilo Schadeberg

Personnel

We would like to welcome:
Koen Sebregts - started on 15 August as Docent at the English department.
Heleen Pluimgraaff - started on 15 August as Docent at the Slavic department.
Alexander Schwager - started on 1 September as a PhD student on the project of Michiel de Vaan
Claudio Di Felice - started on 1 September as Postdoc researcher on a Marie Curie grant. Claudio will be working with Roberta D'Alessandro in the Italian department.

Jean Chavula - external PhD student (promotor: Maarten Mous) has arrived at LUCL on 1 September and will be working on her research subject (Verbal derivation in Tumbuka (a Bantu language from Malawi) using HPSG) within LUCL.

Jessie Nixon - starting on 1 October as a PhD student on the VIDI project of Yiya Chen.
Gijsbert Rutten - starting on 1 October as a Postdoc researcher on the NWO project of Marijke van der Wal: 'Letters as Loot'. Gijsbert is also familiar with LUCL, as he was a postdoc here in 2007-2008.
Tyler Peterson - starting on 15 October as a Postdoc reseracher on the NWO project of Willem Adelaar and Johan Rooryck: 'The Nature of Evidentiality'.

The following colleagues have found a new position:
Maarten Hijzelendoorn - ICT-staff member of the Faculty's department Informatisering en Facilitaire Zaken
Jenneke van der Wal - a Postdoc position at the 'Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika' in Tervuuren, Belgium
We wish all of you a lot of success in your new position!

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'Buitenpromovendi'
The following external PhD student has been admitted to the institute:
Hamine Wane - promotor: Maarten Mous, supervisor: Felix Ameka
Research subject: Description of Cangin, a dialect of noon ethnic group in Senegal

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Guest researchers on an NWO Bezoekersbeurs:
Prof.dr. Kaji is doing research at LUCL from 15 August to 15 October 2009. He's a guest of Maarten Mous and will present his research on 2 October, 15.15 hrs.  

R&O update

A reminder has been sent out to all leidinggevenden that ROG meetings should be held once a year. LUCL endorses this viewpoint and would really encourage that all staff has had a ROG meeting by the end of the year. ROG reports should be sent to Maarten Mous for signature.

Lectures and Conferences

4 September: all day Workshop on Agreement, doubling and the DP with, among others, 13:15 David Pesetsky. 

18 September: David Bradley (La Trobe, Melbourne): Epistemics and evidentials in Lisu (Tiberto-Burman)

2 October: Shigeki Kaji (Kyoto Univ) on Transitivy in Bantu languages

For more information see also 'This month at LUCL'.

LUCL Colloquium

LUCL would like to organise a regular LUCL Colloquium - not just for a specialist group within our Institute, but for all our members. A special committee, comprising Linda Badan, Ronny Boogaart, Johanneke Caspers and Rebecca Voll, will be in charge of the organisation. More information will follow. However, in order to be successful we need your input: could you please inform one of the committee members if you know that a well-known linguist is coming to the Netherlands or even Leiden (e.g. for a defence)?

Research MA matters

Evgeniya Gutova (Russia) has been awarded the Leiden University Excellence Scholarship for the ResMA Linguistics (see: LExS)

LUCL warmly welcomes all new Research Master students.

LUCL Office
Last Modified: 23-11-2010