2011 Winter-Spring Talks

Kaltxì, ma oeyä eylan—

I wanted to fill you in on my Na’vi talks for the first few months of this year, both those in the recent past and those coming up.

It’s been gratifying to see that interest in Na’vi continues. The invitations to speak about the language are still coming in—not at the hectic pace of a year or so ago, of course, but still quite steadily. I haven’t solicited any of these appearances; rather, people have looked me up and contacted me about speaking at their events. When it’s been feasible, I’ve been pleased to do so.

In the recent past:

§  Iowa State University (Ames, Iowa)—Feb. 3.
My talk at ISU was at the intersection of two different programs: the Quentin Johnson Lecture Series in Linguistics and the National Affairs Lecture Series, which this year has the theme of innovation. It was my best-attended talk ever: almost 400 people in the audience—students, faculty, and interested people from outside the university! Prior to the evening presentation I talked informally with members of the linguistics faculty and graduate students in applied linguistics. It was bitter cold outside, but my reception at ISU was very warm.

§  University of Southern California (Los Angeles)—Feb. 18
This was a lecture for the undergraduate Engineering Honors Colloquium at the Viterbi School of Engineering at my graduate alma mater, USC. There were about 120 students in the auditorium and everything went quite smoothly. (For once I didn’t run over the allotted time!) Afterwards a number of interested students came up to continue the conversation, including a conlanger working on his own language, one with a very interesting pronominal system.

Coming up:

§  Boise State University (Boise, Idaho)—Mar. 3
Ngaytxoa—I should have mentioned this earlier, although I think a number of you already know about it. I’m leaving tomorrow for Boise, Idaho, where I’ll be sharing the spotlight with none other than Marc Okrand, creator of Klingon! It won’t be a lecture but rather a panel discussion titled “Linguists in Hollywood,” presented by the Boise State Linguistics Association and the English Majors Association. I’m looking forward to getting to know Marc a bit and sharing experiences and war stories, both on mike and off. I’ll let you know how things go.

§  University of Rochester Alumni Event (Los Angeles)—Mar. 12
This fundraising event for the University of Rochester, my undergraduate alma mater, will be held at Sony Studios in Culver City, a separate city that’s an “island” inside Los Angeles (like Beverly Hills). It’ll be pretty much the same presentation I gave on the UR campus back in October, when I attended my 45^th college reunion. I mentioned to the organizers that anyone who heard me back in October and is also planning to attend this event will have a strong sense of déjà vu, but they didn’t seem to think that would be a problem.

§  University of California (Los Angeles)—Apr. 9
I’ll be the keynote speaker at the second annual Southern California Undergraduate Linguistics Conference at UCLA. As you may know, UCLA is a linguistics powerhouse, so I’m expecting a lot of challenging questions.

§  California State University (Fullerton, California)—Apr. 18
I’ll be the keynote speaker at the 20th CSUF linguistics symposium. (I couldn’t find an announcement on the Internet—maybe I googled the wrong search terms.) This will be a return to the university where I taught linguistics way back in 1978-79, when I was working on my Ph.D. dissertation. I haven’t been back since, and I suspect things have changed a bit in the interim.

If anyone is in the neighborhood and would like to stop by any of these events to say hi, by all means do. To my knowledge they’re all open to the public, and, with the exception of the Rochester fundraiser, free of charge.