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Workshop on Proper Names and Morphosyntax, Berlin, Germany, November 5-6, 2015

523812728_4ec025c123_mFrom the 5th to the 6th of November 2015, a onomastic workshop on Proper Names and Morphosyntax will be held in Berlin, Germany.

In addition to providing a scientific forum for the discussion of the morphosyntactic properties of proper names, this workshop will offer an opportunity to collectively investigate complex expressions containing proper names (e.g. prepositional phrases and compounding). The central question to be explored during this gathering is the necessity of creating a specific grammar to describe the morphological and syntactic properties of proper names.

The full program for this event is available on the conference website.

Conference on Samoyedology, Moscow, Russia, September 8-10, 2016

1184951760_8f45665a85_mThe 6th International conference on Samoyedology will be held from the 8th to the 10th of September, 2016 in Moscow, Russia. Dedicated to the memory of Ariadna Kuznetsova (1932-2015), this conference will bring to together lexicographers, linguists, anthropologists, and folklorists whose research centers upon the group of Finno-Ugric languages spoken in Siberia and the Russian Arctic.

Samoyedic language researchers who are interested in presenting their work at this special event are asked to send in a scientific abstract of ca. 3,600 characters by the March 1st 2016. For more details regarding the call for papers and the conference, contact Andrey Shluinsky (samoyedology2016[@]yandex.ru).

CombiNet Conference, Rome, Italy, January 29-30, 2016

21638977192_9821353a24_mFrom the 29th to the 30 of January 2016, Roma Tre University in conjunction with the Universities of Pisa and Bologona, will be holding the CombiNet Conference. The theme of this year’s international conference is “Word Formats and Lexical Combinations: Structures, extraction methods, and lexicographic representations.” The event is scheduled to take place in Rome, Italy.

The aim of the conference is to strengthen collaborative ties between researchers interested in the analysis of the nature, structure, typology, and combination properties of words. Researchers working within the fields of lexicology, lexicography, and computational linguistics are encouraged to send in paper proposals by the December 1st 2015 deadline.

For more on the conference program and the call for papers, consult the CombiNet website.

Workshop “Hornucopia,” New Haven, CT, November 6-7 2015

5696222833_6ae4e5fddd_mFrom the 6th to the 7th of November 2015, in New Haven, Connecticut, the Yale Linguistics Department will hold a workshop entitled Hornucopia in honor of Laurence C. Horn.

This workshop is designed to bring together linguists and philosophers whose work builds upon Horn’s scholarship of in the field of natural language semantics and pragmatics. Experts in the areas of lexicography, pragmatics, semantics, and syntax are especially encouraged to attend.

Although the workshop is free, registration is required.

Name controversy hits Chandigarh International Airport

18227917006_a55104f2f3_mOn the 11th of September 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the international terminal of one the largest airports of Northern India. Although the airport is a technological triumph, it included onomastic hitch: the festivities were conducted without a final decision on the new terminal’s name.

According to an article in the Daily Mail, the Punjab government lobbied for the name Shaheed-E-Azam Sardar Bhagat Singh International Airport Mohali-Chandigarh. However, the Haryana government complained that the Punjabi suggestion was far too long and complicated. Covering over 305 acres of land, the 53,000 square meter terminal is due to open for business on or about the 19th of October 2015. In the meantime, the airport remains unnamed.

White poet used Chinese pen name to gain entry into Best American Poetry

11498642576_fa8d3cdd11_mThe 2015 edition of the prestigious anthology Best American Poetry (BAP) is now on sale. A mainstay since 1988, the American anthology is commonly accepted as one of the most important literary platforms for aspiring wordsmiths.

This year, the publication announcement includes an unforeseen onomastic controversy: Appearing alongside Chen Chen’s poem “i will do/undo what was done/undone to me” and Jane Wong’s “Thaw” is Yi-Fen Chou’s award winning poem “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve”. It looks as if three Asian-American authors made the final cut. However, the name Yi-Fen Chou is a pseudonym for Mr. Michael Derrick Hudson, who has no known Asian ancestry.

When asked why he had chosen this pen name, Hudson replied that he resorted to this tactic after his poem was repeatedly rejected under his real name.

As BAP juror and literary heavy-weight Sherman Alexie revealed in an interview with The Guardian that he only learned of Hudson’s non-Asian ancestry after the poem had been selected. According to Alexie, one of his goals when putting the 2015 anthology together was to make sure that it represented the true diversity of the United States. When he therefore learned the real identity of the author behind the name, Yi-Fen Chou, he was livid.

In an interview with TODAY.com, Dr. Timothy Yu, Director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained that one of the reasons why Hudson’s onomastic subterfuge was so injurious was that it ”fits into a long tradition of […] white Americans appropriating Asian identities and culture.” While poets and pundits will no doubt continue to argue the legitimacy of including Yi-Fen Chou/Hudson’s submission, from an onomastic point of view, this case exemplifies the power of names in forming our opinions and guiding our decision-making.

The poetry foundation offers many reactions to Yi-Fen Chou.