The LSO hosts many activties throughout the year. From selling muliti-culturally baked goods to inviting famous linguists to campus, to organizing potlucks, the LSO makes an effort to keep the linguistics community strong at the University of Illinois.

MARCH 11-13 (Tuesday-Thursday) - David Lightfoot
LSO is bringing famous linguist David Lightfoot to campus. Assistant Director of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation and formerly a professor in Georgetown University's Department of Linguistics, Lightfoot has authored 10 books and several dozen scholarly papers on the origin, acquisition, development and historical evolution of language.

He will give two talks on Wednesday, March 12th:

12-1 pm, 2090B FLB: Parameters as cues (for linguists & linguistics students)
A common view of language acquisition, standard from Syntactic Structures onwards, is that children select grammars by testing them against sets of data. I will argue that this view is unfeasible and untenable. Instead, children identify pre-defined 'cues,' that are 'expressed' in what they hear from external language (E-language). This enables us to understand how a child develops an internal language (I-language) or a 'grammar' and acquires the immense complexity of language by learning simple things that interact in specified ways. This cue-based approach to language acquisition, escaping the feasibility problems of other approaches, enables us to understand the interplay of E-language and I-language and how I-languages change in sudden ways.

5-6 pm, Noyes 217: The birth and death of languages (general audience talk)
Reception in 4080A FLB to follow.
Languages are dying at what appears to be an unprecedented rate. We will look at the numbers, relate them to previous waves of extinction, and consider what can be done to document endangered languages. We will also consider how new languages emerge through an interplay of internal, genetic factors and external experiences that shift over time and trigger 'tipping points,' whereby languages undergo major structural shifts that take place from time to time in a kind of 'punctuated equilibrium,' hence new languages.

More information on Lightfoot:
Faculty website at Georgetown University- includes an extensive Publications section with links
Lightfoot becomes an assistant director at NSF

APRIL 9-10 (Wednesday-Thursday) - Salikoko Mufwene
Salikoko Mufwene will give two talks:

Globalization and Language Endangerment: Africa vs. The Americas
Wednesday, 4:00pm
Third Floor, Levis Faculty Center
919 West Illinois Street, Urbana

Although English is indeed now spreading rapidly all over the world, it is not necessarily endangering the indigenous vernaculars of the populations that have been embracing it as an international lingua franca. Much of this has to do with the fact that globalization is far from being a uniform phenomenon and has in fact created more socio-economic inequities around the world. In this lecture, Mufwene focuses on Africa and the Americas to paint a global picture from a long, differential historical perspective connecting globalization and colonization.

Also, WILL public radio will feature a Focus 580 interview with Professor Mufwene on Wednesday from 11 am to 11:50 am.

Thursday, 4:00pm
Talk in Siebel Center- abstract to be added