Weekly Digest, 1/27/2025

Welcome to the third (already??) week of term, and to the first rain in Los Angeles in a loooong time! 🌧️🌧️🌧️ We hope everyone has been keeping dry☔ Read on below for what has been happening around the Linguistics Department.

Remember, if you have news to share, please submit your news for future issues of SCling Wrap, cause we need your help keeping up with what’s ✨fresh✨ at USC Linguistics.

Inked ✍️

• Fuchs, Z., Parshina, O., Sekerina, I. & Polinsky, M., (2025) “Processing of verbal versus adjectival agreement: Implications for syntax and psycholinguistics”, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 10(1). Link to paper.

Look Who’s Talking 🗣

• USC alumna Eunjeong Oh (PhD 2006, currently at Sangmyung University, Korea) visited campus last week! She and her collaborators Kangsan Noh and Sanghoun Song from Korea University shared some of their work with the psycholinguistics lab group, entitled “Questioning the Linguistic Abilities of Large Language Models: A Case Study of Binding in Korean” (Kangsan Noh, Sanghoun Song & Eunjeong Oh).

New faces 👋

The new term also brings a new tenure-track faculty member – Andy (technically Andrew) Murphy! Below, he introduces himself in his own words; say hello and introduce yourself if you see him around the department!

• Your name (what you’d like to go by when encountered around the department): Andy (Andrew) Murphy

• Your pronouns: he/him/his

• Your home town: Liverpool, England

• Where you’ve studied: Manchester, Berlin, Leipzig

• What your interests are in linguistics? I am mostly interested in syntax and morphology. But in general I am fascinated by complex linguistic puzzles and how they can be solved by theoretical analysis. I also try to gain deeper insights about theories by looking at understudied languages from around the world.

• What do you do for fun? I enjoy bike rides and have recently got into dancing salsa.

• A fun fact: I am a dual national of Germany and the UK.

Around the department 🏫

The USiL undergrads freshened up the department with new decorations, just in time to Spring into Ling! Thanks for making the department a brighter place to be!

Other good news 🎉

The second year cohort (and a first year that sneaked in) celebrated the new semester & Su’s birthday in Culver City!

Upcoming Events

Department Events

• Monday, January 27 at 1pm @ PhonLunch: Journal club

• Tuesday, January 28 at 9:30am @ Psycholing Lab: Jason Rothman (Lancaster U.), “Systematicity and Individual Differences in Heritage Language Bilingualism”

• Wednesday, January 29 at 2pm @ S-Side Story: Fulan Chen (MIT), “Causation and Affectedness in the Mandarin ba-Construction”

• Friday, January 31 at 10am @ MeaningLab: Yasha Sapir (USC PHIL), “Vague assertion”

USiL Events

Please check out https://www.usilusc.org/ for the latest on Undergraduate Students in Linguistics (USiL) events this semester.