Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages 2: March 17-18 2012

Contact: fasal-2012@mit.edu

The Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is proud to host the second Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages (FASAL 2) workshop. The main aim of this workshop is to provide a platform to discuss South Asian Linguistics from the perspective of formal syntax, semantics and morphology.

Invited speakers

Rajesh Bhatt (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Veneeta Dayal (Rutgers)
Brendan Gillon (McGill)
Maria Polinsky (Harvard)

FASAL 2 Program

Program PDF, all abstracts PDF

All talks are in the MIT Stata Center room D461.

Saturday March 17th 2012

8:30-9: Registration and breakfast
9-10: Some remarks on the interaction between long distance agreement and closest conjunct agreement; Maria Polinsky (Harvard, invited speaker)
10-10:30: Long distance agreement, secondary predication, and complex predication: the evidence from Hindi; Monica Irimia (Toronto)
10:30-10:45: Coffee Break
10:45-11:15: Verb Movement and Wh in Malayalam; Rosmin Mathew (Tromsø)
11:15-11:45: Double Object Fronting in Bengali; Satarupa Das (CUNY)
11:45-12:15: Information structure and prosodic focus in Bangla: Comparing production & perception; Arunima Choudhury & Elsi Kaiser (USC)
12:15-1:30: Lunch Break
1:30-2: Copy theory in wh-in-situ languages: Sluicing in Hindi-Urdu; Emily Manetta (Vermont)
2-2:30: Wh-scope in Finite CP Clauses in Bengali; Naira Khan (Stanford)
2:30-3: Empty nominal categories in Bangla, Hindi, and Malayalam; Andrew Simpson, Arunima Choudhury, Mythili Menon (USC)
3-3:15: Coffee Break
3:15-3:45: Passives or Anti-Causatives?; Pritha Chandra (IIT)
3:45-4:15: Malayalam -kaL is Plural, English 'Plural Marking' is not; Sarah Ouwayda & Mythili Menon (USC)
4:15-4:45: Temporal Adverbials, Negation, and the Bangla perfect; Roumyana Pancheva & Priyanka Biswas (USC)
4:45-5: Coffee Break
5-6: What can South Asian Languages tell us about classifier systems?; Veneeta Dayal (Rutgers, invited speaker)
7:30-: Workshop Party

Sunday March 18th 2012

9:30-10: Breakfast
10-11: Linguistic Theory and Classical Sanskrit; Brendan Gillon (McGill, invited speaker)
11-11:30: The Double System of Coordination in Vedic; Moreno Mitrovic (Cambridge)
11:30-11:45: Coffee Break
11:45-12:15: Did Vedic Sanskrit have anaphors? The case of svá-; Laura Grestenberger (Harvard)
12:15-12:45: Binding and Deixis in Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages; Luca Ducceschi (Verona/Utrecht)
12:45-1:15: Linearity-based reference restrictions in Hindi; Stefan Keine (UMass Amherst)
1:15-2:30: Lunch Break
2:30-3: Case Copying and Case Percolation in Polymorphemic Reciprocals in Dravidian: Some Unique Phenomena; K. V. Subbarao (Emeritus) & Martin Everaert (Utrecht)
3-3:30: The Syntactic Encoding of I- and M-possessors in Bangla; Saurov Syed (USC)
3:30-4: Bangla Default Classifier Revisited; Priyanka Biswas (USC)
4-4:15: Coffee Break
4:15-5:15: Complex Predicates, Agreement, and Case Licensing; Rajesh Bhatt (UMass, invited speaker)

If you have any questions, please write to fasal-2012@mit.edu

Arrival Information

Air

From Boston Logan International Airport, the cheapest way to get to the MIT campus is a combination of bus and subway. There are several options. The most convenient on is a combination of the Silver Line (bus) to South Station and then the red line subway to Kendall/MIT station.

Fare is 2 dollars and can be paid to the driver if you have exact change. If you do not have exact change, there are tickets machines situated inside the arrivals hall of each terminal (next to the baggage claim area). These machines take cards. They are marked with a logo consisting of a white circle containing the letter T.

Detailed instructions:

Upon exiting the baggage claim area, go to the stop for the Silver Line. At most terminals, you can find the stop by going to the right after exiting the baggage claim area. The silver line stop is marked with a bus stop sign with the T-logo (white circle containing a black letter T). At most terminals, it is the last bus stop.
Take the Silver Line to South Station. The Silver Line are the silver busses that are marked “SL1 SOUTH STATION”. They run approximately every 10 minutes.
Get off at “South Station” (= the third stop underground and where all other people are also getting off)
At “South Station”, take the red line subway inbound (direction “Alewife”) (after exiting the bus, walk back over the platform and then take the stairs down to the red line platform).
Get off at Kendall/MIT (fourth stop) for the conference site and hotels near the conference site (for other stops in Cambridge, like Central Square and Harvard, stay on the red line at Kendall/MIT)

Bus/Amtrak

Most long distance busses to Boston, as well as Amtrak-trains arrive at Boston’s South Station.

At south station, you can take the subway (red line) to the MIT-campus (fare $2):

At “South Station”, take the red line inbound (direction “Alewife”) (after exiting the bus, walk back over the platform and then take the stairs down to the red line platform).
Get off at Kendall/MIT (fourth stop) for the conference site and hotels near the conference site (for other stops in Cambridge, like Central Square and Harvard, stay on the red line at Kendall/MIT)

Directions from the Kendall/MIT subway station to the conference site (4 minute walk):

The conference will be held in the Stata Center at the MIT-campus.
Upon exiting the Kendall/MIT station, take Main Street in a Northwesterly direction (away from the skyscrapers of downtown Boston and the subway bridge, along the MIT COOP, a branch of the Cambridge Trust bank and the Kendall Hotel). At the first intersection (Main Street with Ames Street), there is a walkway between two buildings on your left. This leads towards a field. Take that walkway, once you arrive at the field you will see a building straight ahead with a peculiar architecture (no straight walls, odd geometrical shapes, etc). That is the Stata Center.

Alternatively, you can follow these directions on google maps

Accommodation

Crash space

We will try to offer crash space for grad students. Unfortunately, we can only offer limited crash space, which will be distributed on a first come, first served basis. If you are a grad student and would like to make use of our crash space offer, we kindly request you to contact us asap via email at: fasal-2012@mit.edu.

Hotels at walking distance from the conferences site:

Near the Kendall/MIT subway station:

The Kendall Hotel: Price Range: prices starting at $155/night (advance purchase rate) Walking time to conference site:± 3 minutes.

Directions to the conference site: go left when exiting the lobby, then follow the general directions from the Kendall/MIT subway station to the conference site.

Directions from the Kendall/MIT subway station: go northwest (away from the skyscrapers of downtown Boston and the subway bridge) on Main street, the hotel will be on your left, after 50 yards.

Boston Marriott Cambridge Price Range: prices starting at $149/night (leisure rate) Walking time to conference site: ± 4 minutes

Directions to the conference site: exit the lobby on the side of the subway station, turn right on Main Street, and follow the general directions from the Kendall/MIT subway station to the conference site.

Directions from Kendall/MIT subway station to hotel: the hotel is right outside of the subway station.

Residence Inn Boston Cambridge Price Range: prices starting at $199/night (studio, weekend rate) Walking time to conference site: ± 6 minutes

Directions from Kendall/MIT subway station to hotel: http://g.co/maps/p7b6y

Directions from Hotel to the conference site: http://g.co/maps/uccb5

Hyatt Regency, Cambridge Price Range: prices starting at $127,20/night (advance purchase rate) Walking time to conference site: ± 20 minutes

Directions to the conference site: http://g.co/maps/z8ead

Directions from the Kendall/MIT subway-stop: http://g.co/maps/cx64u (±25 minutes walk, there also taxi’s available at the subway-stop)

Near Central Square subway station:

Le méridien Cambridge-MIT

Price range: prices starting at $153/night (prepaid rate)

Directions from the central square subway stop: http://g.co/maps/k4vk2 (7 minutes walking)

Directions from the hotel to the subway stop: http://g.co/maps/tj8k3 (11 minutes walking)

Other hotels & B&B (not within walking distance):

There are several hotels and Bed & Breakfasts in the vicinity of the Harvard Square T-stop. These hotels are not within walking distance from the conference site, but require a short subway ride to get to campus.

For a complete lists of hotels, please see: http://housing.mit.edu/off_campus/hotels_motels—cambridgeboston

For a complete list of B&Bs, please see: http://housing.mit.edu/off_campus/bbs_guesthouses_home_stays

Organizers

Sudha Arunachalam
Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine
Laura Grestenberger
Patrick Grosz
Sabine Iatridou
Pritty Patel-Grosz
Norvin Richards
Erik Schoorlemmer