The Culture Vultures reading club invite everyone to the screening of some of the most controversial independent and experimental films (and film scenes), which have broken the taboos and censorship of the mainstream (film) culture, (re)addressing the questions of race, gender and the body. With an introduction and commentary by Kornelia Boczkowska. All welcome!
When? Thursday, April 15, 6:30 pm
Where? MS Teams
How? Use the code: g9h9jtl
WA Distinguished Professors’ Lectures Series features internationally renowned scholars visiting the Faculty of English to share their research and professional expertise with the faculty and students. This time we have the honour to host Prof. John Harris (University College London), who will deliver a lecture “Where does phonological knowledge stop? – Simplicity versus naturalness in the learnability of phonotactic patterns” that will take place on 26 March 2021 (Friday) at 1:15 p.m. via Zoom.
26 March 2021 (Friday) at 1:15 p.m. via Zoom
You may download and open this ICS file to add the event to your Outlook or Google calendar.
Abstract
Naturalness in phonological patterns is often observed to correlate with regularity and structural simplicity. What are the relative contributions of these different factors to speakers’ ability to internalise phonological patterns? To answer this question, we need to investigate patterns where the factors can be decoupled. We present the results of a non-word acceptability study that takes a step in this direction by investigating a phonotactic pattern that is regular and simple but not natural.
The pattern is one that restricts consonants following /aw/ in English to coronals (hence mouth, about, sound, powder, but nothing along the lines of */awb/, */awk/). The pattern (‘awT’) is phonologically regular, structurally simple, and lexically general. All of these factors are known to promote the ability of speakers to learn phonotactic patterns (see the literature review in Moreton & Pater 2012a). It has been claimed elsewhere that awT is also phonetically natural (Kubozono 2001, Nevins 2012), another factor known to enhance learnability (Moreton & Pater 2012b). We present comparative and historical evidence showing that the pattern is in fact not natural but is rather the synchronically accidental outcome of a series of largely unrelated sound changes.
The awT pattern might be known to phonologists, but is it internalised by native speakers? To investigate this question, we asked English-speaking listeners to judge the acceptability of non-words containing /aw/ followed by a range of different consonants. The results of the study indicate that, if speakers have any tacit awareness of awT at all, it is not encapsulated in anything like a phonologist’s rule or constraint. Where a coronal preference can be detected with /aw/, it is no different than what can be observed with other long vowels investigated in the study. Moreover, the preference is influenced by lexical neighbourhood factors, which suggests that participants were making on-the-fly judgements of how much the non-words resemble real words.
We conclude that awT is a case where phonologists know more about a phonotactic pattern than speakers know.
WA Friday Lunch Talks are monthly meetings with presentations of current research results or research in progress by WA faculty, staff, or PhD students. Each talk is of 45 minutes (+15 minutes for discussion). We welcome all to a POST-DOCTORAL LECTURE ONLINE (MS Teams) "Complexity in Polish phonotactics" by dr hab. Paula Orzechowska (Friday, March 19, 13:15-14:15).
OPoN (Association of Polish Teachers of Dutch), the Dutch Embassy in Warsaw and the Dutch Students Associations at UWr, UAM and KUL cordially invite you to a series of guest lectures that will take place on-line. Three of these lectures will be in English and two in Polish, which is why we have decided to extent the invitation to all the students and staff at WA.
The remaining guest lectures in English or Polish are:
Martyna Kliks – formerly UAM (PL), poniedziałek 29.03.2021 / 18:00 – 19:00
Wariat, bankrut i król selfie. Czyli o wielkich mistrzach malarstwa niderlandzkiego.
https://calendly.com/lectures/kliks
Stanisław Góźdź-Roszkowski – Uniwersytet Łódzki (EN), Friday 9.04.2021 / 14:00 – 15:00
Between Language and the Law: current trends and applications
https://calendly.com/lectures/gozdz-roszkowski
Martyna Kliks – formerly UAM (PL), czwartek 27.05.2021 / 18:00 – 19:00
Czy Vincent van Gogh kiedykolwiek był szczęśliwy?
https://calendly.com/lectures/kliks2
Hope to see you soon!
Robert de Louw,
on behalf of OPoN and the Department of Dutch and South African Studies at WA
The Celtic Studies Research Unit, together with the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media of the Government of Ireland is pleased to announce the following event on Friday 12th March 2021, between 11:30-15:30, as part of this year's celebration of Seachtain na Gaeilge (Irish-language week). Please email Prof. Michael Hornsby by 11th March for the link to this event. This is an open event, for anyone interested in Irish language matters, minority language studies and multicultural approaches to language revitalisation.
The Culture Vultures reading group invites everyone to a meeting devoted to women’s suffrage in the US: “White-Washed Suffrage – The First Wave of Feminism in the Intersectional Perspective” led by MA student Julia Fornalczyk. We will reimagine the First Wave of Feminism, incorporating the often overlooked perspective of Black women and their many contributions.
When? Thursday, March 11, 6:30 pm
Where? MS Teams
How? Use the code: g9h9jtl
WA Friday Lunch Talks are monthly meetings with presentations of current research results or research in progress by WA faculty, staff, or PhD students. Each talk is of 45 minutes (+15 minutes for discussion). We welcome all to a POST-DOCTORAL LECTURE ONLINE (MS Teams) "English verbs: What is suppletive allomorphy?" by dr hab. Bartosz Wiland (Friday, February 26, 13:15-14:15).
We are pleased to announce that dr Olha Lehka-Paul from the Department of Psycholinguistic Studies has been involved in research on COVID-19 conducted by the Faculty of Human Geography and Planning at Adam Mickiewicz University (Principal Investigator: Prof. dr hab. Paweł Churski).
More details about the project are available here (#14).
Congratulations!
The Department of Psycholinguistic Studies cordially invites you to participate in the second meeting of the PsychLing Discussion Club!
Our topic is "First and second language acquisition in childhood".
The meeting will be chaired by dr Hanna Wysocka.
Date: 29th January 2021 (Friday)
Time: 11:30 a.m.
Place: MS Teams
To join the meeting via MS Teams, please use the code: l25eflk
The Culture Vultures reading group invites everyone to a meeting moderated by dr Urszula Kizelbach devoted to artificial intelligence, inspired by a novel Machines Like Me by a contemporary British author Ian McEwan.
Charlie Friend is thirty-two. A former electronics whiz kid, he has squandered his youth on dilettantish studies in physics and anthropology, followed by a series of botched get-rich-quick schemes. Perhaps out of some desire for correction, Charlie sells his mother’s house to finance the purchase of Adam, one of twenty-five cutting-edge androids built to serve as an “intellectual sparring partner, friend and factotum.” In this “retrofuturist drama”, Alan Turing makes a few soliloquizing cameos as a commentary on the ethics of AI and human relationships (Julian Lucas, New Yorker, 2019)
When? Wednesday, January 27, 6:30 pm
Where? MS Teams
How? Use the code: g9h9jtl
