Elisabeth J. Kerr

Confs: Language Documentation & Archiving 2026

Helaas pindakaas!

*anders gaat hij 😉 (you only drop -t in inversion contexts for 2SG)

I vote gazine!

Call collaborators Call for collaborators MapLE project The NWO Vici project ‘Mapping Linguistic Epistemicity’ (MapLE) invites 5 collaborators to help with data collection and analysis. Come join the MapLE team! Desc…

CALL FOR COLLABORATORS
The MapLE project is looking for 5 collaborators working on African languages, to collect and analyse data on the speaker’s and addressee’s knowledge in grammar. Will you join our project?
See the website for details:
epistemicity.net/call-collabo...

Great news!
JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month

www.jstor.org/action/showL...

bsky.app/profile/ling...

Confs: 11th International Conference on Bantu Languages

this really works!

If you happen to be working on stem size restrictions / prosodic prominence on verbs, let me know! Planning a workshop on that ☺️

For anyone working on verbs (also in non-Bantu Bantoid!), Mark Van de Velde and I are putting together a workshop proposal on the effect of maximality constraints on verb structure, i.e. the relationship between stem size restrictions, extensions, analytic morphosyntax, and stem-initial prominence

Come join us in Ghent next year for #Bantu11! The first cfp is out, with workshop proposals due October 15th (the next deadline will be December 1st for abstract submissions, which can be to a workshop or the general session)

www.bantugent.ugent.be/bantu11/

Gunu example with intonation traced and french translation "Maman m'a frappé parce que j'ai volé un beignet"

Today in linguistic example sentences:

m̀m'ǎ:bǎ:kɔ̌bá gwa:kɛ́ ḿbǐ:bé bɔkala
"Mum hit me because I stole a doughnut"

(Gunu (Bantu A62, Cameroon); Rekanga 1989:41)

Academia dot edu licensing agreement says it can use your likeness and voice and publications in any manner they want, world wide.

A framed photo of yourself, so they remember your contributions?

I first parsed #10 as a ditransitive (buy souvenirs for KU Leuven)

English countryside scene with two people walking on windy path of a green field with hedgerows, wooden fence, and thatched cottages in the distance

Home home for a couple of days

Graduate Linguistics Online Open Day The Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics will be holding an online Graduate Open Day via Microsoft Teams for all prospective graduate applicants on Thursday 25th September 2025 from 1-2pm (...

Our faculty is holding an online Graduate Open Day via Teams on 25th September, 1-2pm (British Summer Time); an opportunity to ask questions about the Linguistics graduate courses on offer at Oxford and the admissions process.
www.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/news/2025/07...

Stats for year, number of applications, number of funded projects, success rate 2021 8356 1200 14.4% 2022 7044 1230 17.5% 2023 8039 1250 15.5% 2024 10360 1700 16.4% 2025 17058 1650 9.7%

Bar chart showing number of applications Vs number of funded projects over the past 5 years

Looking at the stats reported in the MSCA news articles from the last 5 years - massive increase in number of applicants for the postdoc fellowship, with very small increase in number of funded projects. Applicants this year have much lower odds of success.

Would be nice 🥲. Ultimately though, we (as international research community) cannot absorb the impact of all the slashing of research funding going on e.g. with the NSF. It's just plain bad news for everybody

MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 receives record number of 17,058 proposals This year’s annual MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships call has attracted considerable interest from the research community with 17,058 proposals submitted.

Wow. The number of Marie-Curie postdoc fellowship applications rose from 10,360 last year to 17,058 this year (with only enough in the pot to fund 9.7% of projects). 47.8% of applicants are based in the US.

Good luck to anyone in the lottery 🥲

marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/node/1463

A pile of 9 books on Northwestern Bantu languages and Bantu Historical Linguistics

POV: you go to the library looking for 2 books

Hype!

Calls: 57th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

Come join us in Buffalo in 2026! Co-located with ACAL, to take place just before it.

View looking down at building with UNIVERSITEIT GENT written on it, street, Flemish buildings, and cyclists

#2 - Ghent University, Belgium

Extra points if you say "here is a QR code" and then immediately change the slide

Yves Saint Lauren MYSLF perfume advertisement at bus stop, with man in profile holding arm up towards face

Logogram EGO defined as 'je, moi' in Laroche (1960)'s Hieroglyphic Luwian glyph inventory

EMIRGAZI inscription from 13th century BCE, with EGO on the right hand side of line 4

In Paris with an Anatolianist, who points out that the pose in this YSL perfume advert for MYSLF is the same as the Hieroglyphic Luwian logogram EGO 'I, me', attested in inscriptions from the Hittite empire c3200 years ago onward. Plus ça change!

the title slide

the roundtable, emily bender talking

Roundtable discussion at #SLE2025 "How to do #linguistics with #AI, How to do #AI with #linguistics" with
@emilymbender.bsky.social , Claire Larsonneur, Benoît Le Blanc & Christian Ludwig

Old buildings in central Bordeaux during daytime

Bordeaux city hall at night, with French flag flying

And now in Bordeaux for #SLE58. 15 (!) parallel sessions during the day, and evening reception at the Bordeaux Hôtel de Ville