Maziar Toosarvandani
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
32-D808
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone: 617) 258-7411
Fax: (617) 253-5017
toosarva@mit.edu
| Education and Employment | |
| 2011- | American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
| 2010-2011 | Visiting Assistant Professor, University of California, Los Angeles. |
| 2010 | Doctor of Philosophy, Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley. 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 | Contrast and the structure of discourse. Semantics and Pragmatics. [pdf] |
| Corrective but coordinates clauses not always but sometimes. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. [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] | |
| 2012 | With Molly Babel and Michael J. Houser. Mono Lake Northern Paiute. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 42:233-243. [pdf] |
| 2011 | With Michael J. Houser and Line Mikkelsen. A defective auxiliary in Danish. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 23:245-298. [pdf] |
| 2010 | Patterns of nominalization in Numic. International Journal of American Linguistics 76:71-100. [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] |
| 2003 | With Rebecca B. Riggins, Regina M. DeBerry, and Amy H. Bouton. Src-dependent association of Cas and p85 phosphatidylinositol 3'-kinase in v-crk-transformed cells. Molecular Cancer Research 1:428-437. |
| Other Publications | |
| 2011 | The role of nominalization in Northern Paiute relative clause formation. In Meagan Louie and Alexis Black, eds. Proceedings of the 16th Workshop on the Structure and Constituency of Languages of the Americas, 151–165. Vancouver: Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia. [pdf] |
| 2010 | Scalar reasoning and the semantics of let alone. In Max Bane, Juan José, Bueno Holle, Thomas Grano, April Lynn Grotberg, and Yaron McNabb, eds. Papers from the Forty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 51–64. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. [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] |
| The relevance of focus: The case of let alone reopened. In María Biezma and Jesse Harris, eds. UMOP 39: Papers in pragmatics, 105-123. Amherst, MA: GLSA. [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. | |
| Invited Talks | |
| 2013 | TBA. 18th Workshop on the Structure and Constituency of Languages of the Americas (WSCLA), University of California, Berkeley, April. |
| 2012 | Coordination and subordination in Northern Paiute. American Indian Seminar, University of California, Los Angeles, August 27. |
| Temporal interpretation and discourse structure in Northern Paiute. Department of Linguistics colloquium, Stony Brook University, April 27. | |
| 2011 | Contrast and the structure of discourse. Brown University, November 10. |
| The role of nominalization in Northern Paiute relative clause formation. Seminar on internally headed relative clauses, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, October 26. | |
| The role of nominalization in Northern Paiute embedding. Syntax Square, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, February 14. | |
| What’s in a noun? Deverbal nominalization in Northern Paiute. Department of Linguistics colloquium, McGill University, February 4. | |
| What’s in a noun? Deverbal nominalization in Northern Paiute. Department of Linguistics colloquium, University of Ottawa, January 17. | |
| 2010 | What’s in a noun? Deverbal nominalization in Northern Paiute. Department of Linguistics colloquium, University of California, Santa Cruz, October 1. [handout] |
| Scales, scalar implicatures, and let alone. SCALE: A workshop on scales, comparison and their linguistic expression, Stanford University, April 17. [handout] | |
| Multifunctional nominalization in Northern Paiute. Department of Linguistics colloquium, Stanford University, February 19. [handout] | |
| 2009 | The distribution and interpretation of focus: Evidence from English and Persian adversatives. Department of Linguistics colloquium, Harvard University, March 5. [handout] |
| 2004 | With Annahita Farudi. Dari: Symbol of Iranian Zoroastrian solidarity. 13th North American Zoroastrian Congress, San Jose, California, December 31. |
| Conference Presentations and Posters | |
| 2013 | Coordination and subordination in Northern Paiute clause chaining. 87th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Boston, January 4. [abstract | handout] |
| 2012 | With Coppe van Urk. Directionality and intervention in nominal concord: Evidence from Zazaki ezafe. Poster at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS), City University of New York, Graduate Center, October 19. [abstract | poster | handout] |
| Temporal interpretation and discourse structure in Northern Paiute. 86th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Portland, OR, January 7. [abstract | handout] | |
| 2011 | The role of nominalization in Northern Paiute embedding. 16th Workshop on the Structure and Constituency of Languages of the Americas, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, February 12. [abstract | handout] |
| Adversative but and the proper treatment of gapping. 85th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Pittsburgh, PA, January 8. [abstract | handout] | |
| 2010 | Two (or three?) exclusives in Persian. 84th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Baltimore, MD, January 8. [abstract | handout] |
| 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. |
| Teaching | |
| Fall 2012 | 24.955: More advanced syntax (cotaught with Sabine Iatridou), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
| Spring 2012 | 24.903/24.933: Language and its structure III: Semantics and pragmatics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [syllabus] |
| 24.909: Field methods in linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [syllabus] | |
| Fall 2011 | 24.943: Topics in the syntax and semantics of Iranian, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
| Spring 2011 | Linguistics 20: Introduction to linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles. [syllabus] |
| Linguistics 120B: Syntax I, University of California, Los Angeles. [syllabus] | |
| Winter 2011 | Linguistics 120B: Syntax I, University of California, Los Angeles. [syllabus] |
| Linguistics 252: Ellipsis in crosslinguistic perspective, University of California, Los Angeles. | |
| Fall 2010 | Linguistics 200B: Syntactic theory I, University of California, Los Angeles. |
| Summer 2009 | Teaching Assistant, LSA 314 (Semantics), Instructor: Chris Barker, 2009 Linguistic Institute, University of California, Berkeley. |
| Spring 2008 | Graduate Student Instructor, Linguistics 120 (Introduction to Syntax and Semantics), Instructor: Line Mikkelsen, University of California, Berkeley. |
| Fall 2007 | Graduate Student Instructor, Linguistics 130 (Comparative and Historical Linguistics), Instructor: Andrew Garrett, University of California, Berkeley. |
| Spring 2006 | Graduate Student Instructor, Linguistics 100 (Introduction to Linguistic Science), Instructor: Line Mikkelsen, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2003-2004 | Teaching Assistant, English Language, Lycée Emile Littré, Avranches, France. |
| Fellowships and Grants | |
| 2011 | A community-based online audio dictionary for Mono Lake Northern Paiute. Sven and Astrid Liljeblad Endowment Fund Grant in Great Basin Studies, University of Nevada, Reno, $4,970. |
| Nominalization and temporal relations in Northern Paiute. Phillips Fund Grant for Native American Research, $2,000. | |
| Nominalization and temporal relations in Northern Paiute. Jacobs Research Fund Individual Grant, $2,995. | |
| 2010 | With Annahita Farudi. A community-based oral history project for Zoroastrian Dari. Endangered Language Fund, $1,850. |
| 2008-09 | Dean's Normative Time Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2008 | With Molly Babel and Michael J. Houser. Mono Lake Northern Paiute Project. Sven and Astrid Liljeblad Endowment Fund Grant in Great Basin Studies, University of Nevada, Reno, $4,630. |
| With Molly Babel and Michael J. Houser. Mono Lake Northern Paiute Community Text Project. Foundation for Endangered Languages Grant, $550. | |
| 2005-08 | National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. |
| 2007 | Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute Fellowship. |
| With Molly Babel and Michael J. Houser. Mono Lake Northern Paiute Documentation Project. Jacobs Research Fund Group Grant, $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. Dari Language Project. Iran Heritage Foundation Grant, £3,000. |
| With Annahita Farudi. Dari Language Project. Roshan Cultural Heritage Foundation Grant, $4,500. | |
| Service | |
| Reviewing | Journals: Canadian Journal of Linguistics, Journal of Linguistics, Journal of South Asian Linguistics, Lingua, Linguistic Inquiry, Linguistics and Philosophy, The Linguistic Review, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Syntax |
| Book publishers: Oxford University Press | |
| Conferences: Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) | |
| 2012 | Mentor (Mono), Breath of Life Workshop for California Indian Languages, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2010 | Mentor (Cahuilla), Breath of Life Workshop for California Indian Languages, University of California, Berkeley. |
| 2008 | Mentor (Cahuilla and Luiseño), 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 Zazaki (Northwest Iranian), elicitation |
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