#lsa2019

The video from the Five Minute Linguist competition at the Linguistic Society of America annual meeting this year is now online. You can watch a bunch of great short and accessible presentations about linguistics by the following people: 

Michelle Cohn (University of California, Davis): Phonologically motivated phonetic repair strategies in Siri- and human-directed speech

Andrew Cheng (University of California, Berkeley): Style-shifting, Bilingualism, and the Koreatown Accent

Bruno Ferenc Segedin (University of California, Davis) & Georgia Zellou (University of California, Davis): Lexical frequency mediates compensation for coarticulation: Are the seeds of sound change word-specific?

Kristin Denlinger (University of Texas, Austin) & Michael Everdell (University of Texas, Austin): A Mereological Approach to Reduplicated Resultatives in O’dam

Jessi Grieser (University of Tennessee): Talking Place, Speaking Race: Topic-based style shifting in African American Language as an expression of place identity

Kate Mesh (University of Haifa): Gaze decouples from pointing as a result of grammaticalization: Evidence from Israeli Sign Language

Jennifer Schechter (University at Buffalo): What Donald Trump's 'thoughts' reveal: An acoustic analysis of 45's coffee vowel

Ai Taniguchi (Carleton University): Why we say stuff

Logically one should get married when they get their life together or are mature enough but in Pakistan getting married after the age of 20 is not uncommon. Mainly because marriages are used as a way to entertain extended family members (I can go on about how problematic desi marriages are).

But I agree, early 20s is not the right time for people to get married because a) you probably just graduated from college b) you haven’t experienced life as of yet c) you have your entire life ahead of you. I don’t think another person could be of value to you, if you’re not settled/secure within yourself.

As for Yasir and Iqra.. i feel iffy about the whole situation because I truly believe people should make their own decisions as they see fit. I hope everything works out for them, marriage is a celebratory union and they are two consenting adults who probably have talked about getting married prior to this event.

Applications for the Five Minute Linguist at the LSA in January are now open until July 31st. From the LSA’s website: 

The Five-Minute Linguist is a high-profile event which features eight LSA members giving lively and engaging presentations about their research in a manner accessible to the general public. No notes, no podium, and an actual timer. These five-minute presentations will be judged by a panel of journalists as well as the audience itself, and a winner will be chosen at the end of the event. The goal of this event is to encourage LSA members to practice presenting their work to a broad audience and to showcase outstanding examples of members who can explain their research in an accessible way.

We welcome abstracts from  LSA members in all subfields of Linguistics . And we look forward to having our attendees vote on the presentations!  Abstracts are particularly encouraged that relate to the United Nations International Year of Indigenous Languages(2019).

This event is about communicating your work broadly and it starts with the abstract!  Your abstract should NOT just be a shortened version of a scientific abstract but should itself be aimed at a broad audience.  The selection committee uses the abstracts as a guide for whether the talk will be accessible, so make the abstract a good representative of your ability to communicate broadly.

More info and to submit to the Five Minute Linguist.