Whamit!

Last Tuesday, Norvin Richards was named a MacVicar Fellow, honoring him for outstanding undergraduate teaching, mentoring and educational innovation. The provost said “Appointment as a MacVicar Fellow recognizes professors who have made exemplary and sustained contributions to the teaching and complete education of MIT undergraduates, which includes their dedication inside the classroom and beyond.” Fellows receive $10,000 a year of discretionary funds for support of educational activities, research, travel, and other scholarly expenses.

An [MIT news article](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/macvicar-awards.html) included these quotes:

> “Every conceivable virtue is evident in Norvin’s teaching,” explains one of his colleagues. “His planning is extensive and perfect. He comes to class, lays out the issues, data and analysis with clarity and beauty. Norvin is the kind of teacher who makes his audience think and ask questions because they find it fun to do so.”

> “Professor Richards is easily one of the best instructors I’ve had in my life,” one of his students told the selection committee. “His lectures are entertaining, interesting and content-packed. The care and attention he pays to his students is very evident and quite inspirational.”

Linguistics & Philosophy has had one previous recipient of this award: David Pesetsky, who received the honor in 2005.

Congratulations, Norvin!

Congratulations to Norvin Richards, whose LI Monograph, Uttering Trees, is now available from MIT press!

Advance praise for Uttering Trees:

“A brilliant book by one of the most creative minds in the field sets an example of how theory should be combined with data, vividly illustrating why syntactic research can be so exciting.” -
Elena Anagnostopoulou

“[A] stimulating and provocative illustration of linguistic inquiry at its most satisfying.” - Noam Chomsky

A [very nice article](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/three-of-a-kind.html) about [Shigeru Miyagawa](http://web.mit.edu/miyagawa/www/)’s [new book](http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12004) appeared last Friday on the MIT news site.

Shigeru Miyagawa’s new Linguistic Inquiry Monograph has just been published by MIT Press. Why Agree? Why Move? Unifying Agreement-based and Discourse Configurational Languages comes with a terrific endorsement by Mark Baker (see back cover, and also the website).

[Aardvark Jazz Orchestra](http://www.aardvarkjazz.com/): All Blues
With vocalists Jerry Edwards and Grace Hughes
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 8:00 pm, one show only
Scullers Jazz Club
Doubletree Guest Suites, 400 Soldiers Field Road, Boston, MA
Admission: $18
Reservations and information: 617-562-4111 or

The celebrated Aardvark Jazz Orchestra will open its 37th season at Scullers with a show of All Blues, from Miles and Duke to Mingus and Basie to boogie and funk originals by Aardvark founder/music director Mark Harvey. The band will salute the 50th anniversaries of two seminal albums: Kind of Blue (playing a new arrangement of the iconic Miles Davis piece All Blues) and Mingus Ah Um(performing Pork Pie Hat, the Mingus tribute to Lester Young), with other tunes including Ellington’s Tell Me It’s the Truth, the Count Basie classic Everyday I Have the Blues, and originals by Mark Harvey (Flat Earth Boogie, Blues for D.C., Scamology, and 110 Blues — celebrating Ellington’s 110th birthday).

[Thanks to Jay Keyser, who plays the trombone in Aardvark!]

[The Philosopher’s Annual](http://www.philosophersannual.org/) has listed two articles of MIT authors among the top ten best philosophy articles in 2008:

* [Kai von Fintel](http://kaivonfintel.org) (MIT) & [Anthony S. Gillies](http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~thony/) (Rutgers), [“CIA Leaks”](http://mit.edu/fintel/fintel-gillies-2008-cia-leaks.pdf)
* [Agustín Rayo](http://web.mit.edu/arayo/www/) (MIT), [“Vague Representation”](http://www.pgrim.org/philosophersannual/pa28articles/rayovague.pdf)

Norvin spent three weeks teaching introductory syntax in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the [New York-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition, and Culture (NYI)](http://www.nyi.spb.ru/genInfo/).

He also spent a weekend teaching and learning Wampanoag at the third annual
[Wôpanâak immersion camp](http://www.wlrp.org/Events.html) (at which only Wampanoag is spoken).

And he went to Budapest for the [Minimalist Approaches to Syntactic Locality (MASL)](http://ny01.nytud.hu/~suranyi/masl/) conference, where he gave a talk about Improper Movement and tough-movement

His other project over the summer was finishing his book, *Uttering Trees*,
which is scheduled to come out as an LI Monograph in 2010.

For the last three years, the route from Boston to Bellingham WA to Diné Bikéyah (Navajoland) to Boston has come to define Wayne O’Neil’s summers.

During the summer now ending, Wayne taught a three-week course on Navajo phonology at the summer workshop of the Navajo Language Academy (6-24 July). Nearly all of the twenty or so 2009 workshop participants were Navajo teachers of the language and fluent speakers of Navajo.

NLA’s summer workshops are held annually at various Diné Bikéyah venues — NLA 2009 being located at Diné College near the high desert, intersection of Indian Roads 12 and 64 (Tsaile AZ, pop. about 1000).

The course was based on Ken Hale and Lorraine Honie’s unpublished Introduction to the sound system of Navajo (no date [1972?]), as revised and expanded by Wayne during spring 2009. Since returning from his NLA work, Wayne has continued to revise and expand the Hale-Honie ms., with a view toward making it available through the NLA.

(Hale and Honie’s ms. can be found at , from which there is also a link to [NLA’s home page](http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tfernal1/nla/nla.htm). As for Lorraine Honie [Navajo], she was briefly a graduate student in this department in the early 1970s; she is now at [Rough Rock Community School, Rough Rock AZ](http://www.roughrock.bia.edu/).)

Immediately prior to working at Diné College, Wayne participated in the third annual [Western Washington University Linguistics in Education workshop (WWULiE-2009) in Bellingham WA](http://wwulie.blogspot.com/2009/03/july-1-2-2009-3rd-annual-wwulie_16.html).

Four MIT linguistics faculty members taught at the [LSA Institute in Berkeley](http://lsa2009.berkeley.edu/) this summer:

* Adam Albright taught “Morphological innovation and change”
* Kai von Fintel and Sabine Iatridou taught “Morphology, syntax, and semantics of modals”
* Donca Steriade taught “Correspondence and the phonological lexicon”

Donca also gave the Edward Sapir Lecture on “Units of representation for linguistic rhythm”.
In addition, third-year grad student Peter Graff attended the institute on a LSA Summer Institute Fellowship.

This semester, we welcome several visiting faculty. Hedde Zeijlstra joins us from the University of Amsterdam. He will be co-teaching “More Advanced Syntax” with Sabine this semester. Sigrid Beck comes from the University of Tübingen. She will be co-teaching Topics in Semantics with Irene (on comparatives), and teaching Pragmatics. In addition, Tamina Stephenson (PhD 2007) will be joining us to teach 24.910 - the “capstone” course of our undergraduate major and minor.

Norvin Richards and David Pesetsky are back from the workshop Diagnosing Syntax, held in Leiden and Utrecht, in the Netherlands. The conference was organized by Norbert Corver and alum Lisa Cheng. Also presenting at the conference were alums Hamida Demirdache, Chris Tancredi, Heidi Harley and Ora Matushansky, and a cast of thousands. Norvin and David report that it was an excellent workshop.

The 24th annual meeting of the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics (Hebrew University of Jerusalem on October 26-27) features talks by Sabine Iatridou with ivy Sichel (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) on English NegDPs and Scopal Predicates, and by Martin Hackl with Jorie Koster-Moeller and Andrea Gottstein (Pomona College) on Processing Opacity. The program culminates in an invited talk by Danny Fox: Economy and Embedded Implicatures (joint work with Benjamin Spector, CNRS).

Norvin Richards and David Pesetsky are invited speakers this week at the Second Mediterranean Syntax Meeting in Istanbul. Norvin’s talk is called “Beyond Strength and Weakness: intonation and the distribution of overt movement”, and David will be speaking on “Russian case morphology and the syntactic categories”. Afterwards, Norvin will be travelling on to Ankara, where Martina Gra?anin-Yuksek (2007 PhD) has organized a syntax workshop.

The [*Oxford Handbook of Japanese Linguistics*](http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Linguistics/TheoreticalDescriptiveLinguistic/?view=usa&ci=9780195307344) has just been published by the Oxford University Press. Edited by Shigeru Miyagawa and Saito Mamoru, contributors associated with MIT include Heidi Harley (Causatives), Masa Koizumi (Nominative objects), Norvin Richards (Wh-questions), and Akira Watanabe (The structure of the DP).

Regattabar, Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA
Tickets: $16. Reservations: 617.395.7757 or
MBTA: Red Line, Harvard Square T Stop

Hailed for “imagination, exuberance and sheer brio” (Jazz Review, UK), The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, led by founder-music director Mark Harvey, will kick off its 36th season with an exhilarating show at the Regattabar featuring 16-year-old piano prodigy Matt Savage as special guest. The show will include Duke Ellington’s classic “Solitude,” the Count Basie favorite “Sent for You Yesterday,” and originals by guest artist Matt Savage and Aardvark music director Mark Harvey. Featured pieces will include the premiere of a big band arrangement of Harvey’s “Rockport Blues” and his multi-stylistic composition “No Walls.”

With worldwide distribution of 10 CDs and wide-ranging performances in festivals, clubs, concert halls, colleges and universities,The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra has been a major force in the international jazz scene for more than 30 years. The band is known for its electrifying concerts spanning the jazz spectrum, from the music of Duke Ellington and other jazz greats to original works by founder/music director Mark Harvey. Winner of the 2000 Independent Music Awards, the band has premiered more than 100 works for jazz orchestra and has garnered consistent critical acclaim around the globe. Downbeat marveled at the band’s “awe-inspiring audience fascination,” while JazzTimes wrote, “Aardvark suggests the best and the brashest of Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, George Russell, and even Frank Zappa.” Aardvark’s latest recording, American Agonistes (Leo Records), contains some of the band’s most evocative work to date (“a stunning hour of music that is in turn beautiful, poignant and raucous” Billboard.com).

Praised by Jazziz as a “wildly inventive composer, interpreter and pianist no matter what his age,” pianist Matt Savage began his performing career at the age of 8 and developed his skill and maturity over the past 8 years, working with such jazz notables as Clark Terry, Jimmy Heath, and Bobby Watson, among others. He has performed at the Ottawa International Jazz Festival and the New Orleans Jazz Festival, as well as such famed jazz clubs as Birdland, Blue Note and Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Savage has also won ASCAP’S Young Jazz Composer Award every year since 2004. He has made numerous media appearances including “The Late Show with David Letterman,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” the “Today Show,” “20/20” and Marian McPartland’s popular “Piano Jazz” show on NPR. “This young man plays with grace, energy and originality. Jazz savant indeed!” (Marian McPartland)

Trumpeter-composer Mark Harvey is founder, music director and principal arranger for the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra. He has recorded with George Russell and Baird Hersey and performed with Gil Evans, Claudio Roditi, Howard McGhee, Sam Rivers, Herb Pomeroy and others. A composer with more than 120 works in his catalogue, Harvey teaches at MIT and lectures nationally on jazz and American music. He is a winner of awards/commissions from ASCAP, the National Endowment, Meet the Composer/Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Commissioning Program, Organization of American Kodaly Educators, the 15th Annual John Coltrane Memorial Concert, and the MIT Wind Ensemble, among others.

Aardvark personnel: Arni Cheatham, Peter Bloom, Phil Scarff, Chris Rakowski, Dan Zupan/saxes & woodwinds; K.C. Dunbar, Jeanne Snodgrass/trumpets; Bob Pilkington, **Jay Keyser**/trombones; Jeff Marsanskis, Bill Lowe/bass trombones, tuba; Richard Nelson/guitar; John Funkhouser/string bass; Harry Wellott/drums; Jerry Edwards/vocalist; Mark Harvey/trumpet, music director. Special guest: Matt Savage, piano.

Adam Albright is off to UMass this Friday, to give a colloquium talk on the topic of “An obligatorily gradient grammatical effect?”

Noam Chomsky was featured on the nationally televized series, “Proposal for the Future (Mirai-e-no Teigen)” on the Japan Television Network (NHK BS) (August 30). He was interviewed by Shigeru Miyagawa on topics ranging from education to politics to linguistics. The program also featured Shigeru’s work with OpenCourseWare at MIT and in Japan. The program will be re-broadcast on September 7, 16:10-17:00.

The May/June issue of Technology Review has an interesting feature on the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, which has the goal of reviving the use of Wampanoag, the Algonquian language once spoken on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. Our department has been involved with this project since 1996, when Jessie Littledoe Baird came here to work with Ken Hale; Norvin Richards joined
the project when he joined the faculty, and continues to work on it.

[Thanks Norvin!]

PS. If you want to know how the project is discussed in the blogosphere, check out [this post on *Languagehat*](http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003118.php).

[Karlos Arregi](http://uiuc.edu/~karlos), MIT Linguistics PhD 2002, visiting professor at MIT in Fall 2005, will be moving from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to the University of Chicago, starting next fall. Congratulations, Karlos!

*Experience Jay Keyser and [The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra](http://www.aardvarkjazz.com) in Concert!*

Big Band Panorama: Jazz from the 1920s to the 21st Century
Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Bentley College, Koumantzelis Auditorium in Lindsay Hall
175 Forest Street, Waltham, MA
Tickets: $7
Directions:

Lush sonorities and a saxophonic blend worthy of Duke’s finest reed sections (Jazz Times)

Awe-inspiring audience fascination (Downbeat)

“the soloists all play with passion and conviction … captivating … highly recommended” (Jazz Improv)

The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, nominated for best jazz artist in the 2008 Boston Phoenix/FNX Best Music Poll, continues its 35th season with a wide-ranging concert tracing the history of jazz from the 1920s to the present. The band will explore changes in style, sound and substance as the jazz big band evolved, evoking echoes of the Swing Era, Kansas City, New Orleans, and West Coast jazz, while also sampling recent works by Aardvark music director Mark Harvey. Selections will include Scratchin’ in the Gravel, a classic by Mary Lou Williams; Walkin’ Shoes, also a classic, by Gerry Mulligan (for the Stan Kenton Orchestra); Solitude and The Mooche by Duke Ellington; and Sent for You Yesterday, a staple of the Count Basie Orchestra. Mark Harvey’s pieces will include NOLA, a tribute to New Orleans, and Spanish Mood, inspired by Gil Evans’ celebrated Sketches of Spain that featured Miles Davis.

The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra is known for its exhilarating concerts spanning the jazz spectrum, from the music of Ellington and other jazz greats to original works by founder/music director Mark Harvey, to performances with film, dance, and poetry. Winner of the 2000 Independent Music Awards, the band has premiered more than 100 works for jazz orchestra and has released 9 CDs (Leo Records, 9Winds, other labels) to international critical acclaim.

Congratulations to Kai von Fintel, who has been named Associate Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. He assumes his new role immediately.

Kai will present joint work with Thony Gillies, “Must … Stay … Strong!” at a mini-workshop at the University of Michigan, this week, March 5—7. Chris Potts (UMass Amherst) and Craige Roberts (Ohio State) are the commentators.

[“CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The evolution of human speech was far more complex than is implied by some recent attempts to link it to a specific gene, says Robert Berwick, professor of computational linguistics at MIT.”](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-02/miot-mne021408.php)

The podcast team from the MIT Libraries interviewed Kai about the new journal [*Semantics & Pragmatics*](http://semprag.org). The interview is about 11 minutes long. [Take a listen!](http://news-libraries.mit.edu/blog/podcast-professor-2/863/).