thomas leverett weblog: Linguistics at SIUC retrospective II: Luncheons

Friday, May 16, 2008

Linguistics at SIUC retrospective II: Luncheons

In front of me now, thanks to Diane Korando, is an admittedly incomplete list of Linguistics Luncheon posters, going back from about 2005 to 1996; there may have been Luncheons before that, and may have been a few since, but this is what I have. The department here was in the habit of finding good linguists to bring to SIUC, and have them give informal talks, often in Faner Hall, or the Illinois Room, the Thebes Room, or the Corinth Room of the Student Center. I list a few that speak to me:

Professor Ken-Ichi, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Ryukou Univ., Kyoto, Japan- Sept. 7, 2005, Faner 1005
"A Historical Review of the Ancient Japanese Vowel System"

Dr. Stuart Davis, Dept. of Linguistics, Indiana Univ.- Oct. 22, 2004, Faner 1326
"The Controversy over the Origins of African American Vernacular English: An Untapped 19th Century Source in the Academic Writings of Francis Lieber"

Matthew J. Gordon, Assistant Professor, Univ. of Missouri-Columbia- March 19, 2004, Thebes Room
"Current Speech Patterns in Missouri with Some Glimpses into Illinois"

Klaus-Uwe Panther and Linda L. Thornburg, Hamburg University, Sept. 12, 2003
"Translating French Stative Verbs in the passe simple: What's Metonymy Got To Do With It?"

Yoichi Miyamoto, Osaka Univ., Japan and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 23, 2001, Thebes Room
"Specificity Effects in Japanese"

Melinda Reichelt, Univ. of Toledo- April 6, 2001, Thebes Room
"FL Writing in the US: What the Research Tells Us"

Geoffrey Nathan, SIUC- November 3, 2000, Thebes Room
"Why are Vowel Systems Triangular and what's that got to do with Elevators?" (draws on work of Rudi Keller)

Prof. Yu-Ling (Amanda) You, Applied Foreign Lang.'s Dep't, National Yunlin Univ. of Science & Tech., Taiwan- July 21 (2000?)m Faner 3512
"Defining Topic Continuity in Chinese Written Discourse"

Joel Hardman, SIU-Edwardsville, February 25, 2000, Thebes Room
"Language Teacher Belief Systems: Origins and Adaptations"

Abdesalam Soudi, Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco, October 18, 1999, Illinois Room
"Transitional Agraphia in Arabic: A case study of a patient with postgraphemic deficit disorder"

Suchada Rattanwanitpun, Dep't. of Curriculum & Inst., SIUC, & Burapha Univ., Thailand- Sept. 10, 1999
"The Effects of Prior Content Knowledge on Second Language REading Comprehension Evaluation"

Aisha Blackshire-Belay, Professor and Chair, Dept. of Africana Studies, Indiana State Univ., April 6 (year?), Faner 1326
"Gastarbeiterdeutsch: Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in Society"

Lise Winer, Linguistics Dept., SIUC, April 19, 1996, Corinth Room
"Creole Texts versus English Readers"

Some of the best were our own faculty, here in Linguistics or in Foreign Languages or other departments, but in this listing I included mostly people who came from abroad. Many were in this country already at the time they spoke; I remember the department drawing upon its own collective knowledge of linguists in the area to come up with a good schedule each year. A good semester would have many Luncheons; all that I remember were well-attended. I remember also two, the posters of which were not in this list. One was Walt Wolfram, famous dialectologist from North Carolina, who spoke quite recently; another was by a famous linguist from Hawaii, whose name escapes me at the moment, but who gave a very memorable talk. I would go to these if I could, but we CESL teachers were often busy, teaching at both 11 and 1; gulping down lunch as we prepared or graded our last stack. Those were the days!

Labels: linguistics, siuc