Maziar Toosarvandani
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Berkeley
1203 Dwinelle Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
mtoosarvandani at berkeley dot edu
| Education | |
| 2006- | Ph.D. Student, University of California, Berkeley. Degree expected spring 2010. Dissertation: Association with foci, Committee: Andrew Garrett, Line Mikkelsen (chair), Johanna Nichols, and Christopher Potts. |
| 2007 | Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, Stanford University. |
| Visiting Scholar, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, spring semester. | |
| 2006 | Master of Arts, Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2003 | Bachelor of Science with highest distinction, Linguistics and Biology, University of Virginia. Distinguished Majors Theses: Vowel length in modern Farsi and Molecular aspects of tumorigenicity in breast cancer. |
| Journal Articles | |
| To appear | Patterns of nominalization in Numic. International Journal of American Linguistics 76. [pdf] |
| With Molly Babel, Andrew Garrett, and Michael J. Houser. Descent and diffusion in language diversification: A study of Western Numic dialectology. International Journal of American Linguistics. [pdf] | |
| 2009 | Ellipsis in Farsi complex predicates. Syntax 12:60-92. [pdf] |
| 2008 | Wh-movement and the syntax of sluicing. Journal of Linguistics 44:677-722. [pdf] |
| With Gabriela Caballero, Michael J. Houser, Nicole Marcus, Teresa McFarland, Anne Pycha, and Johanna Nichols. Nonsyntactic ordering effects in noun incorporation. Linguistic Typology 12:383-421. [pdf] | |
| 2004 | Vowel length in modern Farsi. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 14:241-251. [pdf] |
| Other Publications | |
| To appear | Scalar reasoning and the semantics of let alone. In Papers from the Forty-Fourth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. [pdf] |
| The relevance of focus: The case of let alone reopened. In María Biezma, Christopher Davis, and Jesse Harris, eds. UMOP 39: Papers in pragmatics. Amherst, MA: GLSA. [pdf] | |
| 2009 | Letting negative polarity alone for let alone. In Tova Friedman and Satoshi Ito, eds. Proceedings from Semantics and Linguistic Theory XVIII, 729-746. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications. [pdf] |
| Review of Modality, aspect, and negation in Persian by Azita H. Taleghani. LinguistList 20.1932. http://linguistlist.org/issues/20/20-1932.html. | |
| 2007 | With Michael J. Houser and Line Mikkelsen. Verb Phrase Pronominalization in Danish: Deep or surface anaphora? In Erin Brainbridge and Brian Agbayani, eds. Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Western Conference on Linguistics, 183-195. Fresno, CA: Department of Linguistics, California State, Fresno. [pdf] |
| 2006 | v-Stranding VPE: Ellipsis in Farsi complex predicates. In Christopher Davis, Amy Rose Deal, and Youri Zabbal, eds. NELS 36: Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, 639-652. Amherst, MA: GLSA. [pdf] |
| Review of Timbisha (Panamint) by John E. McLaughlin. LinguistList 17.2840. http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-2840.html. | |
| 2005 | With Annahita Farudi. The loss of ergativity in Dari modal verbs. Oxford Working Papers in Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics 10:155-167. |
| With Charles Chang, Michael J. Houser, Yuni Kim, David Mortensen, and Mischa Park-Doob, eds. Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society. | |
| Conference Presentations and Posters | |
| 2010 | Two exclusives in Persian. 84th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Baltimore, MD, January 8. [abstract] |
| 2009 | Scalar additives and their interaction with focus. California Universities Semantics and Pragmatics, University of California, Los Angeles, May 23. [abstract | handout] |
| Contrastive 'but' involves gapping not in Farsi but in English. 83rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Francisco, CA, January 8. [abstract | handout] | |
| 2008 | With Annahita Farudi. Ergativity and the structure of complex predicates in Dari. Conference on Complex Predicates in Iranian Languages, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III, July 5. [abstract | handout] |
| Scalar reasoning and the semantics of let alone. 44th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, April 24. [abstract | handout] | |
| Letting negative polarity alone for let alone. Poster talk at the Conference on Semantics and Linguistic Theory XVIII, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, March 22. [abstract | poster (36 kb)] | |
| Focus fronting and sluicing in Farsi. 82nd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Chicago, IL, January 5. [abstract | handout] | |
| With Molly Babel and Michael J. Houser. A phonetic sketch of Mono Lake Northern Paiute. Poster at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Chicago, IL, January 4. [abstract | poster (480 kb)] | |
| 2007 | Obligatory movement and sluicing in a wh-in situ language. 38th Annual Meeting of the Northeast Linguistics Society, University of Ottawa, October 26. [abstract | handout] |
| Archaism and innovation in Numic nominalization. Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Anaheim, CA, January 6. [abstract | handout] | |
| With Molly Babel, Michael J. Houser, and Andrew Garrett. Descent vs. diffusion in language diversification: Mono Lake Paiute and Western Numic dialectology. Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Anaheim, CA, January 6. [abstract | handout] | |
| 2006 | With Michael J. Houser, Line Mikkelsen, and Ange Strom-Weber. Danish Verb Phrase Anaphora: Deep or surface? Poster at WECOL 2006, California State University, Fresno, October 28. [abstract | poster (40 kb)] |
| With Michael J. Houser and Reiko Kataoka. Pluractional reduplication in Northern Paiute. Friends of Uto-Aztecan Languages Conference, University of Utah, August 24. [abstract | handout] | |
| With Molly Babel, Andrew Garrett, Erin Haynes, Michael Houser, Reiko Kataoka, Fanny Liu, Nicole Marcus, Ruth Rouvier, Ronald Sprouse, and Angela Strom-Weber. A web-accessible Mono Lake Paiute dictionary and text archive. Friends of Uto-Aztecan Languages Conference, University of Utah, August 24. [abstract] | |
| With Michael J. Houser, Line Mikkelsen, and Ange Strom-Weber. Gøre-support in Danish. 21st Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop, University of California, Santa Cruz, April 1. [abstract | handout] | |
| With Michael J. Houser. A non-syntactic template for syntactic noun incorporation. 80th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Albuquerque, NM, January 7. [abstract | handout] | |
| 2005 | Leaving v behind: Ellipsis in Farsi complex predicates. 36th Annual Meeting of the Northeast Linguistics Society, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, October 28. [abstract | handout] |
| With Annahita Farudi. The loss of ergativity in Dari modal verbs. First International Conference on Aspects of Iranian Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, June 18. | |
| 2004 | With Annahita Farudi. The loss of ergativity in Dari modal verbs: Evidence for a universal category of subject. CHRONOS6. |
| Other Presentations | |
| 2009 | Invited. The distribution and interpretation of focus: Evidence from English and Persian adversatives. Harvard University, March 5. [handout] |
| 2007 | Leaving v behind. Sixth Annual S.L.Ug.S. (Society of Linguistics Undergraduate Students) Symposium, University of California, Berkeley, November 18. |
| How to sluice in a wh-in situ language. Syntax Reading Group, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, May 3. [abstract | handout] | |
| 2004 | Invited. With Annahita Farudi. Dari: Symbol of Iranian Zoroastrian solidarity. 13th North American Zoroastrian Congress, San Jose, California, December 31. |
| Teaching | |
| 2009 | Teaching Assistant, LSA 314 (Semantics), Instructor: Chris Barker, 2009 Linguistic Institute, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2008 | Graduate Student Instructor, Spring semester, Linguistics 120 (Introduction to Syntax and Semantics), Instructor: Line Mikkelsen, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2007 | Graduate Student Instructor, Fall semester, Linguistics 130 (Comparative and Historical Linguistics), Instructor: Andrew Garrett, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2006 | Graduate Student Instructor, Spring semester, Linguistics 100 (Introduction to Linguistic Science), Instructor: Line Mikkelsen, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2003-04 | Teaching Assistant, English Language, Lycée Emile Littré, Avranches, France. |
| Fellowships and Grants | |
| 2008-09 | Dean's Normative Time Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2008 | With Molly Babel and Michael J. Houser. Sven and Astrid Liljeblad Endowment, University of Nevada, Reno, Mono Lake Northern Paiute Project, $4,630. |
| With Molly Babel and Michael J. Houser. Foundation for Endangered Languages Grant, Mono Lake Northern Paiute Community Text Project, $550. | |
| 2005-08 | National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. |
| 2007 | Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute Fellowship. |
| With Molly Babel and Michael J. Houser. Jacobs Research Fund Group Grant, Mono Lake Northern Paiute Documentation Project, $4,000. | |
| 2005 | Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (Farsi), University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2004-05 | Dean of Social Sciences Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2004 | With Annahita Farudi. Iran Heritage Foundation Grant, Dari Language Project, £3,000. |
| With Annahita Farudi. Roshan Cultural Heritage Foundation Grant, Dari Language Project, $4,500. | |
| Service | |
| Reviewer for Canadian Journal of Linguistics, Syntax | |
| 2008 | Mentor, Breath of Life Workshop for California Indian Languages, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2007 | Organizing Committee, 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, April 27-29. |
| 2006 | Organizing Committee, 32nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 10-12. |
| 2005-06 | Graduate student representative to the faculty meeting, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2005 | With Ange Strom-Weber. Coorganizer, Workshop on Identity in Ellipsis, University of California, Berkeley, October 8. |
| Organizing Committee, 31st Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 13-16. | |
| Memberships | |
| 2003- | Linguistic Society of America |
| 2006- | Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas |
| Language Knowledge | |
| English, native Persian, native French, fluent German, intermediate Dari (Northwest Iranian), fieldwork Northern Paiute (Numic), fieldwork Shugni (Southeast Iranian), elicitation |
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