The Cluster invites guest speakers from various departments to present their innovative linguistic research and provides members with the opportunity to engage in lively discussion. We also host professional development workshops, which are facilitated by faculty members, industry professionals, and graduate students.
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Schedule of Events
Events are currently being scheduled. Be sure to check back again soon for updates!
Previous speakers and workshop facilitators:
Previous speakers and workshop facilitators:
2023-2024
2023-2024
Co-chairs: Melissa Gomes (Linguistics), Sara de Blas Hernandez (Spanish and Portuguese), and Andrea Ramirez Barajas (Psychology)
In-person meetings are at Kerr Hall 273
In-person meetings are at Kerr Hall 273
Spring 2024:
Spring 2024:
April 29th (In-person, 12:15pm-1:15pm PT):
Gabe Dupre (UC Davis, philosophy Department)
"Has Distributional Semantics Rested on a Mistake"
Blog post coming soon!
May 13th (In-person, 12-1pm PT):
Cheryl Yin (Carleton College, Anthropology)
"How Not to Talk to Monks: Dysfluency in the Buddhist Monk Resgister among Cambodians"
Blog post coming soon!
Winter 2024:
Winter 2024:
January 22nd (In-person, 12-1pm PT):
Robert Bayley (UC Davis; Linguistics)
"Social Conditioning of Subject Pronoun Expression"
Click here to read a blog post about Dr. Bayley's talk!
February 5th (Zoom, 12-1pm PT):
Xiangying Jiang (Duolingo)
"From academia to industry: A learning scientist at Duolingo"
February 12th (In-person, 12-1pm PT)
Rebecca Zhu (Standford)
"Learning about, and from, language and pictures"
Click here to read a blog post about Dr. Zhu's talk!
February 26th (In-person, 1:30-2:30pm PT)
Julia Mernard-Warwick (UC Davis, Linguistics)
"Linguistic landscape of multilingual Algeria"
Fall 2023:
Fall 2023:
October 16th (In-person 12pm-1pm PT):
Trip Strawbridge (Santa Clara University)
"If they jumped of a bridge...": The influence of social networks on language learning in study abroad
Click here to read a blog post about Dr. Strawbridge's talk!
October 30th (Zoom, 12-1pm PT):
Katie Ireland (University of Georgia)
TLDR: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Social Application Contracts
Click here to read a blog post about Dr. Ireland's talk!
November 13th (In-person, 12-1pm PT):
Eleonora Beier (UC Davis; Psychology)
The role of temporal prediction in guiding attention through time during language comprehension
Click here to read an upcoming post about Dr. Beier's talk!
2022-2023
2022-2023
Co-chairs: Nicholas Aoki (Linguistics), Roxanne Elliott (Education), and Ana Ortega Pérez (Spanish and Portuguese)
Spring 2023:
Spring 2023:
April 10th (Zoom, 1:30-2:30pm PT):
Michelle Cohn (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Voice assistant- vs. human-directed? Speech style differences as a window to social cognition.
Click here to read a blog post about Dr. Cohn's talk!
April 24th (Zoom, 10-11am PT):
Aleese Block (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Cue weighting and enhancement in systems of contrast: vowel quantity in Norwegian
May 1st (Sproul 912, 1:30-2:30pm PT):
Ingrid Sub Cuc (UC Davis; Native American Studies)
'Rutzib'axik Qach'ab'äl': Piloting the Application of Heritage Language Learning Methodologies in Two Kaqchikel Speaking Communities in Guatemala
Winter 2023:
Winter 2023:
January 23rd (Sproul 912, 1:30-2:30pm PT):
Valeria Zunino Edelsberg (UC Davis; Education)
February 13th (Sproul 912, 1:30-2:30pm PT):
Margarita Jimenez-Silva, Ed.D. (UC Davis; Education)
Translanguaging to Empower and Engage Young Latinas and Parents In a Saturday Science Program
Click here for a link to Dr. Jimenez-Silva's presentation slides.
Fall 2022:
Fall 2022:
October 3rd (Zoom, 1-2pm PT):
Diana Ruggiero, PhD (University of Memphis; World Languages and Literatures)
October 17th (Zoom, 12:30-1:30pm PT):
Kristin Predeck, PhD (Knowledge Engineer at Amazon)
Linguists in tech: what roles to explore, how to interview
Click here for a recording of the talk (This recording is only accessible to individuals affiliated with UC Davis and will be automatically deleted on 1/23/23).
October 31st (Sproul 912, 12-1pm PT):
Georgia Zellou, PhD (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Clear speech in Tashlhiyt Berber: The perception of typologically uncommon word-initial contrasts by native and naive listeners
This work was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Mohamed Lahrouchi (Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and Université Paris 8) and Dr. Karim Bensoukas (Mohammed V University in Rabat).
Click here to read a blog post about Dr. Zellou's talk!
2021-2022
2021-2022
Co-chairs: Sophia Minnillo (Linguistics), Beverly Cotter (Psychology), and Ana Ruiz Alonso Bartol (Spanish & Portuguese)
Spring 2022:
Spring 2022:
April 4th: Kyle Patterson (UC Davis; French and Italian)
Meaningful Gaming Tools in the Classroom: Beyond Gamification
April 18th: Tamara Gómez Carrero (University of Valladolid; Estudios Ingleses Avanzados (Advanced English Studies))
What do eye movements reveal about Spanish grammatical gender in codeswitching?
May 22nd: Dian Yu (UC Davis; Computer Science)
Attribute Representation With Neural Language Models
May 16th: Dr. Carrie Bonilla (George Mason University; Modern and Classical Languages)
Incorporating Second Language Acquisition Research in Language Placement Test Development
June 2nd: Xinye Zhang and Professor Bob Bayley (UC Davis; Linguistics)
From Proposal to Publication: How to Form Your Idea into a Journal Article
Winter 2022:
Winter 2022:
January 26th: Kristin Predeck (UC Davis; German)
Exploring Acoustic and Perceptual Similarity of German and American English Vowels
February 2nd: Peter Torres (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Professional Development Workshop: What You Need to Know About Teaching and Diversity Statements in One Hour
February 9th: Katie Sendek (UC Davis; Psychology)
The Effects of Emotional Language on Predictive Processing in L2
February 23rd: Dr. Ethan Kutlu (University of Iowa; Psychological and Brain Sciences, Linguistics)
Perception in Context: How Multilingualism Is A Door To New Horizons But a Gatekeeper For Some
March 9th: César Hoyos (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)
Exploring emotional aspects of translanguaging in the L2 and heritage language learners of Spanish
Fall 2021:
Fall 2021:
October 5th: Eleonora Beier (UC Davis; Psychology)
Prosodic Focus in Speech Directed Towards Human vs. Voice-AI Interlocutors
October 19th: Online Teaching Group (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese, Linguistics, French and Italian)
Transitioning to Emergency Online Teaching: The Experience of Spanish Language Learners and Teachers at UC Davis
November 2nd: Dr. Dana Ferris (UC Davis; Education, Linguistics)
Language & Self-Efficacy: How First-Year University Students View Themselves as Writers
November 16th: Madison Barker (UC Davis; Psychology)
The Object, The Whole Object, And Nothing But The Object: Speakers Prioritize Whole-Object Semantics in Scene Descriptions
November 30th: Dr. Carmen González (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)
Language and Ideology: Metaphors in Political Discourse
2020-2021
2020-2021
Co-chairs: Skyler Reese (Linguistics) and Lillian Jones (Spanish & Portuguese)
Spring 2021:
Spring 2021:
April 19th: Chloe Brotherton (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Nasty Woman, Pronouns, and Labels: Connections between Feminist and LGBTQIA Language Ideologies and Policies
May 3rd: Claudia Sánchez-Gutiérrez, Kenji Sagae, Agustina Carando, Sam Davidson, Paloma Fernández Mira, and Sophia Minnillo (UC Davis; Linguistics, Computer Science, Spanish and Portuguese)
COWS-L2H: How team work brings the best out of corpus research
Winter 2021:
Winter 2021:
January 14th: Abram Jones (UC Davis; Continuing and Professional Education)
Task-Based Language Teaching: Theory and Practice
January 28th: Pablo Robles García (University of Toronto Mississauga; Language Studies)
Optimizing vocabulary learning in the L2 Spanish Classroom
February 11th: Lindsey Clouse (Black Hills State University; English)
"Bad" English on Screen: How Hollywood Depicts Stigmatized Dialects
Fall 2020:
Fall 2020:
October 22nd: Masoud Jasbi (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Critical Thinking, Science, & Language
November 5th: Margaret Merrill (UC Davis; Academic Technology Services)
"Parlez-vous instructional design?": Stories and lessons learned from an instructional designer with a PhD in Second Language Acquisition
November 19th: Maximiliano Agustin Wilson (Laval University in Quebec; Neuroscience)
The behavioral and brain changes in reading aloud during aging
December 3rd: Ciara Anderson (UC Davis; Linguistics)
"Hey Alexa, what job opportunities are available to linguists in Conversational AI?"
2019-2020
2019-2020
Co-chairs: Peter Joseph Torres (Linguistics) and Daniela Cerbino (Spanish & Portuguese)
Fall 2019:
Fall 2019:
October 11th: Georgia Zellou (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Everything you wanted to know about the academic job market (but were afraid to ask)
October 25th: Claudia Sánchez Gutiérrez (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)
Wearing (and managing) the many hats of academic life
November 8th: Cati De los Ríos (UC Berkeley; Education)
Learning from Los Músicos: Exploring the Translingual Literate Lives of Transnational Youth
November 15th: Thapelo Otlogetswe (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Developing a Setswana Monolingual Dictionary
November 22nd: Jack Hawkins (UC Davis; Linguistics)
On Bilingualism and Language Change
2018-2019
2018-2019
Co-chairs: Glen Heinrich-Wallace (Linguistics) and Cory Osburn (Spanish and Portuguese)
Spring 2019:
Spring 2019:
April 23rd: Michelle Cohn (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Exploring human-voice AI interaction: the role of acoustic expressions of emotion
May 7th: Hugo Mailhot (UC Davis, Computer Science)
Workshop: Working as a Linguist outside of Academia: "Being the Linguist in the Room"
Winter 2019:
Winter 2019:
February 4th: Cory Osburn and Glenn Wallace (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Workshop: Student-led information session on the qualifying exam (QE)
February 11th: David Corina (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Cross-modal plasticity in children with cochlear implants
March 4th: Emily Morgan (UC Davis; Linguistics)
N400 Evidence for Parallel Lexical Predictions
Fall 2018:
Fall 2018:
October 23rd: Claudia Sánchez Gutiérrez (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)
Workshop: Discuss how to suss out articles from journals you're not familiar with and best practices for finding the references you need
November 6th: Travis Bradley (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)
2017-2018
2017-2018
Co-chairs: Claire Henderson (Linguistics) and Marta Llorente Bravo (Spanish and Portuguese)
Spring 2018:
Spring 2018:
April 19th: Robert Blake (UC Davis; French and Italian)
Online Language Learning: Tools and Tricks
May 3rd: Fernanda Ferreira (UC Davis; Psychology)
Integrating Integration and Prediction in Psycholinguistics
May 17th: Georgia Zellou (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Workshop: Abstract writing
Winter 2018:
Winter 2018:
January 18th: Carlee Arnett (UC Davis; German and Russian)
Using Animations to Teach the German Passive
February 15th: Vai Ramanathan (UC Davis; Linguistics) and Claudia Sánchez Gutiérrez (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)
Workshop: Women in Academia
March 1st: Justin Spence (UC Davis; Native American Studies)
Linguistic and Narrative Perspectives on California Dene Migrations
March 8th: Julia Menard-Warwick (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Inclusionary and Exclusionary Interpretation Practices at Bilingual Parent Meetings
Fall 2017:
Fall 2017:
October 17th: Robert Bayley (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Frequency effects in syntactic variation: Evidence from subject personal pronoun variation in U.S. Spanish and Mandarin Chinese
October 31st: Eugênia Fernandes (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)
Idioms in Brazilian Portuguese: lexicalization and grammaticalization based on a continuum analysis
November 14th: Vai Ramanathan (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Workshop: Job searching and employment as a language researcher
November 28th: Claudia Sánchez-Gutiérrez (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese) and Hugo Mailhot (UC Davis; Computer Science
MorphoLex: A morphological database for English and French words
2016-2017
2016-2017
Co-chairs: Benjamin Gomes (Linguistics) and Aaron Yamada (Spanish and Portuguese)
Spring 2017:
Spring 2017:
April 19th: Luna Filipović (UC Davis; Language and Cognition)
How language affects what we say and remember: Spanish and English through a forensic linguistic lens
May 3rd: Justin Davidson (UC Berkeley, Spanish and Romance Linguistics)
"Endogenous Change, Contact-Induced Change, and the Burden of Proof: Exploring "Natural" and "Unremarkable" /s/-Voicing in the Spanish-Catalan Setting"
May 10th: Meredith Tamminga (University of Pennsylvania; Linguistics)
How much do individuals vary?
May 24th: Robert Blake (UC Davis; Linguistics)
What makes online language courses tick?
Winter 2017:
Winter 2017:
January 25th: Jordi Torras (CEO of Inbenta)
Talk on Natural Language Processing
February 22nd: Noriko Ishihara (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Agency in Language Teaching: Translingual Practice and Identity Negotiation
March 1st: Miguel Ángel Fuentes Cortés (Visiting Student from La Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)
Patrones funcionales-valorativos en informes de arbitraje de artículos de investigación (talk was in Spanish)
March 8th: Robert Bayley (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Dialectology in a Multilingual North America
March 15th: Emily Moline (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Emergent Adult L1 Literacy: Findings from a Case Study
Fall 2016:
Fall 2016:
October 11th: Kenji Sagae (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Syntactic parsing of child language and automatic assessment of grammatical development
October 25th: Travis Bradley (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)
The Evolution of Judeo-Spanish Palatals: Using Optimality Theory to Model Phonological Change and Microvariation
November 10th: Betty Leaver (Defense Language Institute in Monterey)
Task-Based Instruction
November 22nd: Agustina Carando (UC Davis; Spanish and Portuguese)
Innovative usages in the Spanish of the United States: The role of English
2015-2016
2015-2016
Co-chairs: Caitlin Tierney (Linguistics) and Melissa Vega-Valdez (Spanish & Portuguese)
Winter 2016:
Winter 2016:
February 5th: Andrew Cohen (University of Minnesota; Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA))
The Learning of Pragmatics from Nonnative Teachers
February 22nd: Scott Payne (McGraw-Hill Education (Principal Instruction Design Analyst))
The Promise and Challenge of Conducting SLA Research in Digital Gaming Environments
February 23rd: Vai Ramanathan (UC Davis; Linguistics)
Workshop: Job searching and employment
Fall 2015:
Fall 2015:
November 24th: Richard Kern (UC Berkeley; Berkeley Language Center (Director))
Technology and Second Language Acquisition
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