June 20, 2014

Congratulations, Richard!

Congratulations to Richard Compton (Phd 2012), who has accepted a tenure-stream position at the Université du Québec à Montréal. As of July 1st, he will be an assistant professor (in French: professeur régulier) in the Department of Linguistics (Département de linguistique).

In further good news, Richard has also been awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant. The project title is "Nominal and verbal incorporation in Inuit".

Great news, Richard!

Keren gives convocation address for University College

Keren Rice gave the convocation address for University College this week! Convocation ceremonies can be streamed on the U of T website. You can hear her part at 14:42-27:50.

http://streaminginc.com/uoft/2014_spring_convocation/2014-uoft-spring-conv-18.html

(Hat tip to Leslie Saxon (UVic))

June 19, 2014

Seminar on Speech Production and fieldwork on Sorbian in Germany

Alexei Kochetov (faculty) and Phil Howson (Ph.D.) attended the 10th International Seminar on Speech Production was held in Cologne, Germany in May 5-8.

Alexei gave a talk, "Vowel coarticulatory effects on Kannada retroflex stops" (co-authored with N. Sreedevi, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing). Phil presented a poster, "An EMA examination of Czech alveolar and post-alveolar fricatives", co-authored with Alexei.



After the conference, Phil visited the Max-Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Leipzig to collect phonetic data on Sorbian, an endangered Slavic language indigenous to the easternmost state of Saxony, Germany. He also visited the towns of Bautzen, Schleife, and Cottbus, the centres of the areas where the main dialects of Sorbian are still spoken. Phil's trip was funded by the University of Toronto Germany-Europe Fund.



CRC-Sponsored Summer Phonetics/Phonology Workshop

The CRC-Sponsored Summer Phonetics/Phonology Workshop is taking place today, June 19, in Woodsworth College (WW) 120. The program features an invited talk by Sharon Rose (UCSD) at 4:15, "Transparency and centralization in Moro vowel harmony: phonetics and phonology", and also the B. Elan Dresher Phonology Prize Talk by Avery Ozburn, "Statistical laryngeal harmony in Oromo".

Here is the full list of presentations:

Yoonjung Kang (UofT Linguistics, UT Scarborough) & Andrea Hòa Pham (U Florida)
French loanwords in Vietnamese: the role of input language phonotactics and contrast

Peter Avery (York U)
Consonant-tone interactions

Graziela Pigatto Bohn (U São Paulo)
The acquisition of pre-tonic vowels in Brazilian Portuguese

Erin Hall (UofT Linguistics)
Style and substance in the Canadian Shift: New evidence from Toronto

Maida Percival (UofT Linguistics)
Counter-bleeding opacity in Hul’q’umi’num’ vowel harmony

Kazuya Bamba (UofT Linguistics)
An OT analysis of Dagbani ATR harmony

Radu Craioveanu & Ross Godfrey (UofT Linguistics)
A nonagreement analysis of long-distance vowel-consonant assimilation in Harari

Avery Ozburn (UofT Linguistics)
Statistical laryngeal harmony in Oromo

Ranjan Sen (U Sheffield)
Pre-Classical prevarication in Latin feet: Stratal synchronic structure and discretionary
diachronic development

Holman Tse (U Pittsburgh)
Retroflexion in Somali Kizigua: Language relatedness as a facilitating factor in a
typologically rare sound change?

Daphna Heller (UofT Linguistics)
Morphological activation during spoken word recognition: beyond sound and meaning?

Ross Godfrey (UofT Linguistics)
Morphologically conditioned durational effects in English: Phonetic implementation or
lexical access?

Gillian de Boer (UofT Speech Language Pathology)
Application of linear discriminant analysis to the Long Term Averaged Spectra of
simulated resonance disorders: A pilot study

Holman Tse (U Pittsburgh) & Naomi Nagy (UofT Linguistics)
Exploring automated formant analysis for variationist study of Heritage Cantonese

Anneke Slis (UofT Speech Language Pathology)
The effect of articulatory constraints on gestural intrusion and reduction errors

Sharon Rose (UCSD)
Transparency and centralization in Moro vowel harmony: phonetics and phonology

June 17, 2014

PhD Convocation, June 2014


Newly minted PhDs Abdel-Khalig Ali and Will Oxford, at convocation 
with Elizabeth Cowper and Elan Dresher (June 9, 2014)

June 16, 2014

Congratulations, Avery!

Two years ago, our department established an annual B. Elan Dresher Phonology Prize for the best paper in the advanced phonology classes.

The recipient of this award for 2013-14 is MA student Avery Ozburn. She will be presenting her work at the CRC-Sponsored Summer Phonetics/Phonology Workshop on Thursday June 19, 11:50 am. Her paper is entitled 'Statistical laryngeal harmony in Oromo'. All are welcome to attend the talk (in Woodsworth 120).

Congratulations to Avery!

(Post courtesy of Keren Rice.)

June 12, 2014

Congratulations, Premier Wynne!

Congratulations to alumna Kathleen Wynne (MA 1980), who is now an elected Premier of Ontario! She was appointed Premier in February 2013 after the resignation of Dalton McGuinty; now, following a nail-biting three-way battle in a provincial election that even just yesterday was too close to call, Wynne has led the Liberal Party of Ontario to a surprise majority government.

June 11, 2014

Conference on Aboriginal language use at the Jackman Humanities Institute

(Post courtesy of Alana Johns.)

Thursday June 19th - Sunday June 22nd 2014
ᓃᐱᐣ (Summer)
Speech Acts and Joyous Utterances
Translating, Teaching, Learning and Living
Indigenous Tribalographies Conference

As Indigenous people in Canada struggle to revitalize and preserve our languages, we are faced with some interesting challenges. Regardless of our level of proficiency with an Aboriginal language, learners and teachers alike are carried into the necessary project of translation—translation of treaties (paper, wampum, covenant chains, medals), of earth works, or of oral archives (story, song, regalia, ceremonial objects). The “written” archives that have been left for Indigenous peoples across Canada present those of us who labor to recover our cultural legacies with unique challenges and compelling questions. Sponsored by the Jackman Humanities Institute Program for the Arts, the conference will bring together community members, scholars, speakers and students of Indigenous languages to engage with the questions and challenges that speak to the acquisition and preservation of Indigenous languages.

Keynote Address by Dr. Wendy Makoons Geniusz
Panel Presentations
Interactive Language Workshops
University of Toronto Libraries Installation

Free and open to all.

To see the full conference schedule and to register, visit aboriginalstudies.utoronto.ca.

June 10, 2014

HLVC happenings

(Post courtesy of Naomi Nagy.)

It's been a busy week and a half for the HLVC project. On behalf of his colleagues - undergrads Naomi Cui, Vina Law, and Minyi Zhu, and faculty member Naomi Nagy - visiting student Holman Tse presented our ongoing analysis of variation in Heritage Cantonese speakers' vowel production at CVC 8 in Kingston.

Simultaneously, Naomi reported on variation in pro-drop patterns in Heritage and Homeland Faetar and Italian at the Contatto Interlinguistico conference in Pescara, Italy. It was her first time presenting at a conference where there was another talk about Faetar. Here she is with fellow Faetar researcher Carmela Perta:


Then Naomi zipped off to Szeged, Hungary, for a day to help an urban
dialectology group there get up to speed with analysis in ELAN. Here she is with their team:


...and with (2012) visiting student Timea Molnár, also working on pro-drop, but in Heritage Hungarian :


With Naomi and Timi is the man who won a Nobel Prize for extracting vitamin C from paprika. (Szeged is the paprika capital of Hungary.)

And just for good measure, coffee and snacks at a highway truck-stop between Szeged and Budapest.


June 9, 2014

Undergraduate Paul Poirier wins JHI Fellowship

Paul Poirier, undergraduate linguistics student, has been awarded one of 6 Jackman Humanities Institute Undergraduate Fellowships, 2014-2015. The theme this year is humour, play, and games. Paul's project is "Playing with Words: A syntactic analysis of verse." He will be working with JHI Faculty Research Fellow Supervisor Professor Simon Dickie

Paul's project will examine word play in poetry and song and determine whether or not it conforms to the same principles as those that constrain everyday language. He will also consider other forms of word play (e.g. language games) to explore on a larger scale what role (if any) UG plays in creative language use.

Congratulations, Paul!

June 2, 2014

Congratulations, Dr. Belanger!

Hats off to Suzanne Belanger, who successfully defended her dissertation, "Regeneration in Recall and Verb Phrase Ellipsis" on May 30. This thesis was supervised by Ron Smyth. On the committee were Craig Chambers, Ana-Teresa Perez-Leroux, Rena Helms-Park, Yves Roberge and (external) Jeff Runner (University of Rochester). Congratulations, Suzanne!