University of Washington Department of Linguistics and LSUW present
The 2008 Northwest Linguistics Conference
Saturday & Sunday, May 3 & 4, at the UW Campus in Seattle

About NWLC
The Northwest Linguistics Conference (NWLC) is an annual conference hosted on a rotating basis by the University of Washington, the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and Simon Fraser University. The conference brings together research in theoretical and applied linguistics by graduate students from around the world. The 2008 NWLC was held Saturday and Sunday, May 3-4, 2008, in Seattle at the University of Washington campus on the first floor of Thomson Hall (rooms 101, 119, 125). Thanks to all our presenters for a great conference. See the "Proceedings" page for information regarding the conference proceedings.

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Conference Information
The conference will run from 9:00am to 5:30pm on Saturday May 3 and from 9:00am to 2:30pm on Sunday May 4. Registration tables will be open each day at 8:30am. Click on "Schedule" above to see the tentative conference schedule.

Conference attendees are advised that a limited number of rooms have been volunteered by members of the UW Linguistics community, and are available to conference attendees at no cost. These rooms are available on a first-come, first served basis, with preference given to attendees who are presenting papers at the conference. Inquiries should go to uwnwlc [AT] u [DOT] washington [DOT] edu. Other housing options are listed on the Directions and Local Info page of this website.

Conference attendees needing visas to enter the United States should contact the NWLC Committee immediately regarding any letters of invitation or other documentation required for their visa. In most cases, attendees will need a B-1 visa, but in all cases you are advised to check with your local US Consulate to determine the best course of action.

Presenters are advised that laptops and projectors will be available in all conference rooms for those who wish to accompany their talk with slides. Laptops will be equipped with Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Reader. Presenters are urged to omit any unnecessary animations or graphics, as there will be little or no time for testing and troubleshooting presentations on the conference computers. Presenters whose slides contain foreign scripts or IPA transcriptions are advised to bring PDF slides rather than PowerPoint slides to avoid any possible font display problems.

Presenters wishing to distribute handouts with their talk must supply the handouts themselves. A 24-hour duplication facility is located within ten blocks of campus if needed. Presenters will be informed sometime in late April what the expected conference attendance will be and can make handouts accordingly.

Finally, all attendees (including presenters) who have not already done so are asked to pre-register through the online registration tool (click on "registration" at the top of this page. This is our only means of estimating attendance and is important for planning purposes, and it only takes a few seconds, so please register now.

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Saturday Session 1 Session 2 Session 3
8:30 - 9:00
Registration
9:00 - 9:30 Thuan Tran (UC San Diego): Wh-Quantification: A Vietnamese Perspective Jong-Bok Kim and Jeeyoung Ann (Kyung Hee University, Seoul): English Tag Questions: Corpus Findings and Theoretical Implications Han Ye (University of Florida): Do you understand or not — An examination of a comprehension check question in CSL classroom
9:30 - 10:00 Dennis Ryan Storoshenko (Simon Fraser University): The Distribution of Reflexive Pronouns in English Nyurguyana Petrova (SUNY, Buffalo): A Corpus Study of Sakha (Yakut) Coverbs Brad Larson (University of Washington): Agnostic Leftward Movement Explains Roll-up Effects in Malagasy Focused Predicates
10:00 - 10:30 Youssef A. Haddad (Florida State University): Why Movement in Control: Evidence from Telugu Andrea L. Berez and Stefan Th. Gries (UC Santa Barbara): In defense of corpus-based methods: A behavioral profile analysis of polysemous 'get' in English Hsia Ai-Wen (National Taiwan Normal University): Third Tone Sandhi in Mandarin Chinese: Ambiguous Tone Processing in Sentence Context among Non-native Speakers
10:30 - 10:45
Break
10:45 - 11:15 Shakthi Poornima and Jean-Pierre Koenig (SUNY, Buffalo): Reverse Complex Predicates in Hindi Anita Szakay (University of British Columbia): The Effect of Speech Rate on the Rhythm of English Dialects Emily Nava and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta (USC): The Modularity of Nuclear Accent: Evidence from L2 Speech
11:15 - 11:45 Galen Basse (University of Washington): Factives and Phases Pauliina Saarinen (University of Victoria): The Finnish Language in Post-utopian Sointula: The effect of frequency on consonant gradation Shu-min Huang (University of Victoria): English Onset and Coda Substitution Patterns by Native Mandarin Speakers
11:45 - 12:15 Kristi Krein (University of Washington): Prosodic Licensing of French Wh in-situ: An Agree-based Approach John Lyon (University of British Columbia): Against Categorical Consonant Deletion: Evidence from Icelandic Preterites Heather Bliss (University of British Columbia):Place Markedness and Dorsal Defaults: Snapshots of the Acquisition of Phonological Features
12:15 - 1:30
Lunch
1:30 - 2:30 Plenary Session:
Edith Adridge
2:30 - 2:45
Break
2:45 - 3:15 David Potter (Simon Fraser University): Serbo-Croation Wh-Words in Tree-Adjoining Grammar Elizabeth Rogers (University of British Columbia): Can two become one? NC sequences in Shona Hyuna B. Kim (USC): Temporal dependency in extensional contexts in Korean
3:15 - 3:45 Mario E. Chávez-Peón and Calisto Mudzingwa (University of British Columbia): Shona Auxiliaries: rí, vá, nga and tě Murray Schellenberg (University of British Columbia): Oplimalitetoque: Optimality Theory and Largonji des Loucherbems Emrah Gorgulu (Simon Fraser University): The Implications of Definiteness in Turkish for the Givenness Hierarchy
3:45 - 4:15 Thomas J. Magnuson (University of Victoria): What liquids look like in a leaky phonology: Phonetic realizations of /r/ in near-natural Kansai Japanese conversation Michael Grosvald (Dept. of Linguistics & Center for Mind and Brain, UC Davis) and David Corina (Dept. of Linguistics, Dept. of Psychology, & Center for Mind and Brain, UC Davis): Location-to-Location coarticulation: A phonetic investigation of ASL Sonja Thoma (University of British Columbia): To p or ¬p-the semantics of the Bavarian particle 'fei'
4:15 - 4:30
Break
4:30 - 5:00 Peter Glanville (University of Texas, Austin): Word order and Subject-Verb Agreement in Modern Standard Arabic Scott Moisik (University of Victoria): An interactive 3D model of the laryngeal constrictor mechanism: extracting movement data from laryngoscopic videos Suwon Yoon (University of Chicago): From Non-specificity to Polarity: a compositional account of even and NPIs
7:00
 
Conference Dinner

 
Sunday Session 1 Session 2
8:30 - 9:00 Registration
9:00 - 9:30 Greg Coppola (Simon Fraser University): Surface Structure Constraints and Wh-Questions in English WITHDRAWN
9:30 - 10:00 Jerid Francom (University of Arizona): Is Lexical Access Mediated by the Syllabic and/ or CV Structure of Words? Exploring Transposed-Letter Priming Effects Erika Troseth (CUNY Graduate Center): Argument Spreading and Lessons from Non-3rd Person Middle Voice Sentences
10:00 - 10:30 Aleksandra Zaba (University of Utah): Relation between frequency and learnability of phonological harmony directionalities WITHDRAWN
10:30 - 10:45
Break
10:45 - 11:15 Steve Moran (University of Washington) and Naomi Fox (University of Utah): Non-traditional Dissemination of Language Research: from the field to the world WITHDRAWN
11:15 - 12:15 Plenary Session:
Betsy Evans

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Registration
Attendance at the conference is free (donations to help offset room rentals and conference costs will be accepted on-site). It is not necessary to submit a paper in order to attend the conference.

Pre-registration is requested for all attendees to ensure that adequate facilities are reserved for the event.



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Conference Proceedings
Proceedings from this conference will be published in a special edition of UW Working Papers in Lingusitics. Papers must be received by 5:00pm PST, July 1, 2008. Submit a Microsoft Word and a PDF copy via email to: uwnwlc [AT] u [DOT] washington [DOT] edu. Late submissions will not be accepted.

The style sheet used for formatting your paper can be found here. We have adapted this version from the Cascadilla Proceedings Project style sheet (used with permission). We have altered portions of it for linguistic purposes. Please read our style sheet carefully and follow the formatting procedures. We have prepared a formatting template for Microsoft Word here (or click here to view a pdf of the template). Papers that do not follow the style sheet will not be published.

Please note the following about your submissions:

  • Please submit your paper in two formats: .doc and .pdf (note that this is a change from the previous email). Note that many free and open source office suites can save to .doc format and .pdf.
  • Papers are limited to 10 pages (including references and appendices). Papers longer than 10 pages will not be accepted.
  • Do not add page numbers, headers, or footers to your papers. They will be added later.
  • Any phonetic transcription must use the Unicode Doulos SIL font (see: http://scripts.sil.org/FontDownloadsDoulos). Do not use the older non-Unicode compliant SIL Doulos font.
  • Please proofread your paper carefully before submitting it. They will be published as is.

Please note that by submitting your paper for online publication in the NWLC proceedings, you agree to have it posted indefinitely online at the University of Washington Working Papers in Linguistics Website. Authors of published works retain their copyrights.

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How to Get There
By car: from I-5 northbound or southbound, take the NE 45th Street exit, and turn east on NE 45th St. The main entrance to the campus is on 45th St at 17th Ave NE (about 10 blocks east of the freeway). There is also a parking garage entrance on 15th Ave NE at NE 41st St. The UW Visitor Information website has more information available, including a printable campus vicinity map and a map of campus parking. Stop at the gatehouse on the campus entrance drive to purchase a daily parking pass ($5 for weekend days).

By train: Amtrak operates trains to and from Seattle's King Street Station. Trains from Vancouver, BC or Portland take about 4 hours, trains from Oakland take about 24 hours, trains from Chicago take about 48 hours. Long delays on passenger trains are not uncommon; please plan accordingly.

By plane: SeaTac International Airport is about 18 miles from the University of Washington. A map of airport ground transportation locations is here. Airport taxi stands are found on level 3 of the parking garage. Taxis to downtown will cost about $35, taxis to the University District slightly higher. Airport shuttle buses are also available and will likely cost around $20 to the U-District hotels. Reservations can be made online at the Shuttle Express website.

Metro bus service from SeaTac airport to downtown is available at the south end of the baggage claim level. Note that there are two adjacent bus bays; go to Bay 2 for buses to Downtown Seattle. Between 6am and 9pm route 194 is fastest, at other times take route 174. Fare varies between $1.25 and $2.00 depending on time of day. If your hotel is downtown, you will most likely want to get off at University Street, but check with your hotel to see if this is the closest stop.

If your hotel is in the U-District, get a bus transfer slip from your driver when you pay the fare and get off Downtown at University Street. Depending on the time of day, this stop may be at street level or in the underground bus tunnel. If you're in the bus tunnel, buses 71, 72, and 73 to the University District will serve the University Street stop. If you're at ground level, you'll have to walk one block north to 4th & Union to catch buses 71, 72, or 73 to the University District. You will most likely want to get off at 45th & University Way, but check with your hotel to see if there is a closer stop.

Where to Stay
Locations and contact information for several University District hotels is here. The College Inn offers the closest, and probably the cheapest (and most spartan) accommodations. If you prefer to stay downtown, a list of downtown hotels is here. Alternatively, a limited number of conference attendees may find free accommodation in private homes that have been volunteered by members of the UW Linguistics Department. Those interested should email uwnwlc [AT] u [DOT] washington [DOT] edu to arrange such shared housing.

What to Eat
Light refreshments will be provided during the event, and there are ample affordable restaurants (including vegetarian and vegan options) within a few blocks of the campus. Local students will be on hand at the conference to offer recommendations and directions.

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