What's Happening in Toronto Linguistics (WHITL)
UofT Linguistics had a wonderful time at Fall Campus Day on Saturday, Nov 18, 2023. Here are photos from the event showing our SLUGS representatives busy discussing linguistics and promoting our undergraduate program to high school students and first year students. Our trivia questions and attractive prizes of samosas, tote bags, buttons, chips and candy drew an impressive crowd!
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
A new paper on the cross-linguistic variation of word meanings has been published in the journal of Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory by Prof. Barend Beekhuizen, Maya Blumenthal (MA Alumni), Lee Jiang (PhD Student), and colleagues! The paper is entitled 'Truth be told: a corpus-based study of the cross-linguistic colexification of representational and (inter)subjective meanings'.
We've included the abstract below:
The study of crosslinguistic variation in word meaning often focuses on representational and concrete meanings. We argue other kinds of word meanings (e.g., abstract and (inter)subjective meanings) can be fruitfully studied in translation corpora, and present a quantitative procedure for doing so. We focus on the cross-linguistic patterns for lemmas pertaining to truth and reality (English true and real), as these abstract meanings been found to frequently colexify with particular (inter)subjective meanings. Applying our method to a corpus of translated subtitles of TED talks, we show that (1) the abstract-representational meanings are colexified in patterned ways, that, however, are more complex than previously observed (some languages not splitting a ‘true’-like from ‘real’-like terms; many languages displaying further splits of representational meanings); (2) some non-representational meanings strongly colexify with representational meanings of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’, while others also often colexify with other fields.
Beekhuizen, B., Blumenthal, M., Jiang, L., Pyrtchenkov, A. & Savevska, J. (2023). Truth be told: a corpus-based study of the cross-linguistic colexification of representational and (inter)subjective meanings. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2021-0058
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/cllt-2021-0058/html
Jack Chew celebrated his 100th birthday on Friday, November 18, 2023, at a steakhouse on King St. He was a founding member of the Centre for Linguistic Studies, precursor of the Linguistics department, and the first professor at the University of Toronto to teach the introductory course, LIN 100.
A member of the Linguistics section of the Anthropology Department and a proud polyglot, he taught a course on Languages of the World, among others. His Columbia Ph.D thesis, published by Mouton, on Japanese honorifics, was one of the first studies that used the term “generative.”
Thanks to J.K. (Jack) Chambers for this nice photo and report.
We are pleased to announce the winners of 4 Undergraduate Awards in Linguistics for 2022-23:
 |  |  |
| Thanks to Kelly (right), Camille, Kai and Mary for making our lounge beautiful and welcoming! | ||
Newly minted PhDs - Congrats to these Doctors!
|
 |
 | New MAs - Congratulations!
|
 Guillaume, Naomi & Derek bask in reflected glory. |  Cake and more cake |  MAs and friends |
 Jess hooded by Elizabeth |  Radu hooded by Nathan |  Pocholo hooded by Naomi |
 Pocholo hooded! |  Pocholo celebrates in front of (Con Hall and) the CN Tower |  Myrto sports a matching purse |
For a Globe & Mail article about changing language (and Gen Z trends), Asst. Prof Barend Beekhuizen weighed in with his linguistic expertise. Check out a fun story and find his quote here:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-amplify-the-practical-magic-of-the-girl-prefix/
We are proud to announce that Marshall Chasin, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Linguistics, has been featured in Giants of Audiology, a segment of hearinghealthmatters.org.
Marshall received a BA in Mathematics and Linguistics from the University of Toronto, and a Doctorate in Audiology from the Arizona School of Health Sciences. Throughout his career, he has published over 200 articles and 8 books. He is now Associate Professor at Western University and also teaches students at his alma mater (in our Department).
Navigate to the video below to learn more about Marshall's life and career.
https://hearinghealthmatters.org/thisweek/2023/giants-audiology-marshall-chasin
Also, for those interested in the intersection between music, culture, and mathematics, Marshall has appeared in another short segment detailing his work on technology. It's being exhibited at Munich airport for Oktoberfest 2023. Check out the fun acoustics in the video below!
Last weekend UofT hosted the 7th annual Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto Morphology Meeting (MoMOT). This meeting was organized by members of the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese. The two-day event welcomed some new and familiar faces as they presented their work on a range of topics in morphology in front of an audience of linguists from across Canada.
The keynote speakers this year were:
Ivana Kučerová (McMaster) who presented her work on The syntax of gender features: The morphologist’s guide to feature-bundling traps
and
James Crippen (McGill) who presented his work entitled Verb morphology in Tlingit is ordinary syntax
Other presenters included both current and former UofT students (see list of presenters below). Be sure to ask them about their work when you see them!
Martin Renard (PhD Student). Two Types of Noun Incorporation in Kanien’kéha: A Categorization Analysis
Samuel Jambrović (PhD Candidate). Capturing the third-person gap in Spanish pronoun-noun constructions
Will Oxford (Alumni). When a 1 > 2 hierarchy is actually a 2 > 1 hierarchy
Patrick Kinschular (Undergrad). Morphological Alternation in Kinyarwanda External Possession Constructions
Liam Donohue (PhD Candidate). Perfect Readings in the Absence of Perfect Morphology
Big thanks to the organizers, volunteers, presenters, and attendees for making this meeting a success!
Laura Griffin joins of UofT linguists* being recongized by the
"This is a prize for the best student presentation that treats variation in languages that have been missing from or are less frequently represented at NWAV." (NWAV51 website)
Laura won this for her HLVC talk,
"They’re j/u/st about the same!: Vowel Shift in Heritage and Homeland Seoul Korean."
U of T linguists have a strong presence at
NWAV51 (New Ways of Analyzing Variation),
North America's premier sociolinguistics conference, this year!
Beekhuizen, Woolford: Intensifiers never go out of style: quantifying style and its effects on lexical variation
Franco, Tagliamonte: Getting socialized: Variation and change in the passive in Canada
Hachimi, Small: Stylized performance of prepositions: a potential innovation in comedy talent show (withdrawn)
Kang, Gao, Yun, Ryu: An apparent-time study of Daejeon Korean stop laryngeal contrasts
Kang, Yun, Ryu: VOT merger in progress and speech rate accommodation in perception: a case study of Daejeon Korean
Sali Tagliamonte: The ‘1984’ of linguistic change: A sociolinguistic shock point in the late 20th century.
Mechelle Wu: The floating bubble: Linguistic innovations of the highly mobile Third-Culture Kids (TCKs)
And from the HLVC Project:
Griffin, L. /o/! They’re j/u/st about the same!:
Vowel Shift in Heritage and Homeland Seoul Korean
Leung, J. Setting {straight} the record {straight}: Acceptability of alternative word orders in resultatives by heritage Cantonese speakers
Nagy, N. Extending variationist approaches to more languages: Problems & Possibilities
Petrosov, Nagy. (Heritage) Russian case-marking: Variation and paths of change
Tse, H. AM/P~OM/P merger in Hong Kong vs. Toronto Cantonese: An under-documented homeland sound change in a heritage language context
Umbal, P. Stability in the face of contact: Evidence from Heritage Tagalog /u/
Prior department members:
Carrier, J.: Split ergativity and loss of rich verbal agreement
Muthukumarasamy and Narayan: Exploring variation in heritage Tamil retroflex perception and production
Neuhausen, M.: “My safe word will be[ʍ]iskey!” – An acoustic approach to the whine-wine split
Pabst, K.: Northern Maine as a transition zone: Evidence from rhoticity in Southern Aroostook County English
That's a a lot of sociolinguistics on October 13-15, 2023!
Mojgan Osmani received her PhD from Tarbiat Modares University in 2019. Her doctoral dissertation is entitled ‘The Study of Phases in the Structure of Kurdish Sentences’. Her primary areas of research interest are case and agreement systems, in particular ergativity. Dr. Osmani has just started working as a University of Toronto Mississauga Postdoctoral Fellow in Humanities under the supervision of Professor Arsalan Kahnemuyipour. She is based in the Department of Language Studies at UTM, but also spends time at the Department of Linguistics, UTSG. Her postdoctoral work is focused on the syntax of clitics in Iranian languages, especially central Kurdish (Sanandaji). Her research dataset has recently been expanded to include additional Iranian languages. The variation found in the distribution of clitics in Iranian languages, despite lots of syntactic similarities otherwise, makes them a perfect test case for a microparametric study. Dr. Osmani has also joined the Syntax of Nominal Linkers project (PI: Arsalan Kahnemuyipour).
Linguists gathered again at the Madison Avenue Pub to celebrate the start of a new school year and the end of the first week. Lots to talk about after the Campus Kick-off Research Fair.
.jpg)
La Dre Sali Tagliamonte [English version below]
La
professeure Sali Tagliamonte (PhD U. d’Ottawa, 1991; MA U.
d’Ottawa 1983; BA (Hons) U. de Toronto, 1981), directrice du département
de linguistique de l'Université de Toronto, est une spécialiste
mondialement reconnue de la sociolinguistique variationniste. Sa solide
réputation mondiale repose sur plusieurs aspects, notamment son
développement astucieux de la théorie sociolinguistique, son adoption
essentielle de la méthodologie sociolinguistique qui a changé
la discipline et l'impact de ces contributions sur la description dans
le domaine. En effet, son leadership scientifique au Canada et dans
le monde, manifesté par des contributions pionnières substantielles et
distinguées au cours des trois dernières décennies, une communication
efficace des résultats de la recherche grâce au mentorat universitaire
et à la sensibilisation du public, et des initiatives extraordinaires de
renforcement de la communauté linguistique, ont élargi les
frontières de la recherche et grandement enrichi le domaine de la
sociolinguistique variationniste.
Certaines de ses contributions
les plus importantes sont les suivantes: elle a publié des
livres universitaires innovateurs, des manuels scolaires
révolutionnaires et une chronique authentique engageante et importante
de l'émergence de ce sous-domaine linguistique du pionnier William Labov
(1927-) et de ses contemporains. Ces travaux constituent à eux seuls
une œuvre inhabituelle dans un domaine où les articles dans des revues
internationales sont la norme. En effet, Cambridge University Press, le
principal éditeur de travaux dans ce domaine, s'est engagé à recevoir
d'elle deux autres livres. La professeure Tagliamonte a également initié
et dirigé des avancées dans les méthodes statistiques et quantitatives
pour étudier la variation et le changement de la langue; elle a
dirigé plusieurs projets de collecte de données sociolinguistiques,
inégalés en taille et en portée; ses archives VSLX Lab, contenant une
profondeur temporelle inégalée de locuteurs couvrant les années de
naissance de 1879 à 2011, et plus de 16,3 millions de mots de plus de
1,400 personnes, ont adopté, numérisé et transcrit un certain nombre
d'enregistrements dialectologiques et d'histoire orale représentant les
premiers stades de l'anglais en Ontario. En tant
qu'enseignante remarquablement performante et innovante, elle a
spécifiquement conçu des pratiques pour intégrer l'apprentissage et
transmettre l'enthousiasme et l'importance de la recherche à ses
étudiants, en commençant par les étudiants de premier cycle et
en continuant jusqu'aux boursiers postdoctoraux. Enfin, grâce à
des processus concurrentiels, elle a obtenu plus de deux millions de
dollars en soutien financier fédéral pour aider à fournir ces
contributions exceptionnelles.
L'excellence en recherche de la
professeure Tagliamonte a été reconnue par ses collègues nationaux et
internationaux. En 2013, un jury composé de ses pairs l'a élue membre de
la Société royale du Canada - la plus haute distinction pouvant être
obtenue par un universitaire canadien. Cette même année, en
compétition avec des collègues de toutes les disciplines, elle a
également remporté l'une des six prestigieuses bourses nationales de
recherche Killam. En mai 2017, elle a obtenu une chaire de recherche du
Canada très convoitée, 1 sur 142 à l'échelle nationale; 1 sur 45 en
Ontario; et 1 sur 28 à l'Université de Toronto, et a été élue, encore
une fois par un jury composé de ses pairs, comme membre de la Linguistic
Association of America (fondée en 1924) en reconnaissance de
ses contributions distinguées.
L'Association canadienne de
linguistique est ravie de reconnaître la Dre Tagliamonte en
lui décernant le Prix national d'excellence 2023.
Dr. Sali Tagliamonte
Professor
Sali Tagliamonte (PhD U. of Ottawa, 1991; MA U. of Ottawa 1983; BA
(Hons) U. of Toronto, 1981), Chair of the Department of Linguistics at
the University of Toronto, is an acknowledged world-leading scholar
of variationist sociolinguistics. Her sterling global reputation rests
upon several foundations including her astute development of theory, her
pivotal embrace of discipline-changing methodology, and the impact of
these contributions on description in the field. Indeed, her scholarly
leadership in Canada and beyond, manifested through substantial and
distinguished pioneering contributions across three decades, effective
communication of research findings through academic mentoring and public
outreach, and extraordinary linguistic community-building
initiatives, have extended research boundaries and greatly enriched the
field of variationist sociolinguistics.
Some of her most
significant contributions include the following: she has
published ground-breaking academic books, field-changing text books, and
an engaging and important authentic chronicle of the emergence of this
linguistic subfield from pioneer William Labov (1927- ) and his
contemporaries onward. These alone constitute an unusual body of work in
a field where journal articles are the norm. Indeed, Cambridge
University Press, the leading publisher of work in this field, has
contracted to receive two more books from her. Professor Tagliamonte has
also initiated and led advances in statistical and quantitative methods
for studying language variation and change; she spearheaded
multiple sociolinguistic data collection projects, unmatched in size and
scope; her VSLX Lab archives, containing an unparalleled time depth of
speakers spanning birth years from 1879–2011, and over 16.3 million
words from over 1,400 individuals, have adopted, digitized and
transcribed a number of dialectological and oral history recordings
representing earlier stages of English in Ontario. As
a remarkably successful and innovative teacher, she has specifically
designed practices to embed learning and convey the excitement and
importance of research to her students, beginning with undergraduates
and continuing through to post-doctoral fellows. Finally, through
competitive processes, she secured over two million dollars in federal
funding support to help deliver these outstanding contributions.
Professor
Tagliamonte’s research excellence has been recognized by her national
and international colleagues. In 2013, a jury of her peers elected her
as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada - the highest honour
achievable by a Canadian academic. That same year, competing against
colleagues across all disciplines, she also won one of only six
prestigious national Killam Research Fellowships. In May, 2017, she
secured a coveted Canada Research Chair, 1 of 142 nationally; 1of 45
in Ontario; and 1 of 28 at the University of Toronto, and was elected,
again by a jury of her peers, as a Fellow to the Linguistic Association
of America (est. 1924) in recognition of her distinguished
contributions.
The Canadian Linguistic Association is delighted
to recognize Dr. Tagliamonte by awarding her the 2023 National
Achievement Award.
In the comfort of the Linguistics Lounge, students and faculty members reflected on their time in the department and chatted about up-and-coming plans! Between the amazing company and the delicious food, the event was a hit!!
If you said yes, you're in luck as Sanders will be giving an online talk to the Linguistics and Language Development Student Association at San José State University on this very topic! This will be taking place March 20th at 6:00pm EST. Please register to get the Zoom link.
Read over his abstract to understand why this will be such an exciting talk! 🤩
Research shows that students perform better in courses when they take part in active learning, which involves activities or discussions in class that engage them in the process of learning, rather than traditional lectures that require them to passively listen (Hake 1998, Freeman et al. 2014, Michael 2006). However, many instructors may still be reluctant to introduce active learning into their courses for various reasons (Henderson and Dancy 2007, Deslauriers et al. 2019). Educational games have long been known to be useful ways to reap the benefits of active learning, by increasing student engagement, participation, and ultimately, performance (Cruickshank and Telfer 1980, Lepper and Cordova 1992, Sugar and Takacs 1999, Massey et al. 2005, Ritzo and Robinson 2006). Furthermore, games can be easy to implement in the classroom, sometimes requiring little more than pencil and paper or minimal adaptation of existing games, alleviating some of the difficulties instructors have with introducing active learning. Phonetics and phonology are particularly well-suited for adaptation to games, especially matching games, because they involve multidimensional structures allowing for many different ways of dividing up important concepts into meaningful groups of matching elements (the IPA, phonological features, etc.). In this talk, I present a few examples of educational games I have used in my courses for phonetics and phonology content, with discussion of the design principles that underlie the games to help other instructors understand how best to design and adapt their own games.
This talk is based on some of his work done with Danielle Daidone (University of North Carolina Wilmington). Be sure to check out the full paper as well!
