News @ UofT Linguistics

Season's greetings from India

2011-12-16T10:40:00.001-05:00

Alexei Kochetov is sending his season's greetings from Mysore, India, where he is currently a visiting scholar at the All-India Institute ofSpeech and Hearing (AIISH). He recently went on a trip to Nilgiri Hills, Tamilnadu, a remote mountainous area which is home to several indigenous tribes speaking distinct Dravidian languages. These pictures are from a village of the Toda, whose language is known for a typologically unique series of consonant place contrasts (as studiedby Peter Ladefoged some 20 years ago). More pictures are available at Alexei's website.

50th anniversary of Linguistics at MIT

2011-12-13T10:36:00.001-05:00

Cristina, Yoonjung and Diane went to MIT50 (Dec 9-11 2011), the 50th anniversary of Linguistics at MIT.

2011 Convocation

2011-11-13T09:47:00.001-05:00

November 11th saw a wonderful SGS convocation, with a record number of linguistics MA and PhD graduates. Not everyone could attend but here are some photos of those who did: Elise, Holly, James, Maddie, Marisa, and Radu (MA), and Jaehee, Maria, and Marina (PhD), with faculty members Elizabeth, Alana, Ana Teresa, and Diane. Here are some of the great photos of the happy graduates.

Brittani's Bermudian research gets attention back home

2011-10-25T12:59:00.003-04:00

[photo credit: bermuda‑vacations.jpg]

Britanni Fubler wants anyone interested in how Islanders speak to attend ‘How You Hanlin’ Me? A Presentation on the Lexical, Phonological and Phonetic Properties of the Bermudian Dialect’ at Bermuda College’s North Hall Lecture Theatre on November 3 at 6.30pm.

The University of Toronto graduate is advertising the session with a flyer which asks: “Have you or your friends ever thought that the Bermudian dialect was uneducated? Sounded ignorant? Was inappropriate in public settings?

“Or are you of the persuasion that it is beautiful and unique and should be a celebrated part of our culture?” [excerpt from the linked article in The Royal Gazette Online, Oct. 25, 2011]

[Chart from Brittani Fubler's U of T manuscript, "Acoustic analysis of Bermudian English", Mar. 16, 2011]

And you can see more news and pix at Sticking to our roots | Bermuda Island Life.

Keren officially awarded the Killam prize

2011-10-12T15:58:00.000-04:00

Toronto Babel In the Star!

2011-10-11T22:23:00.000-04:00

Our very own Beth MacLeod has been organising Toronto Babel, a language exchange night at the Rivoli on Queen St., for almost two years now. Today, the Toronto Star ran a story about it: http://www.thestar.com/living/article/1067470--now-you-re-really-speaking-my-language.
See pix from our previous post.

Research up North

2011-09-29T07:58:00.000-04:00

Sali was in the Toronto Star describing some outcomes of her latest research project. Thanks to Chandan for sending this in.

Clearing the mind

2011-09-24T17:47:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, I managed to work out my plan of attack for a SSHRC grant while hiking in a beautiful park with an unlikely name: Mono Cliffs. It boasts over 400 kinds of plants and, while I didn't stop to count them, all, I believe it. Plus, great scenery. Here's me going into a tunnel of trees. I came out the other side with a 1-page summary ready to go. Then I watched reflections in this lake and more and more became clear.
It's the best place I've hiked near Toronto, and if you want to try it, I posted a map.

What did you do on the weekend?

Visiting scholar: Maria Parascandolo

2011-09-19T09:22:00.010-04:00

We have a visitor from Italy for Fall 2011. She writes:
"I'm Maria Parascandolo, a PhD student from Italy.
I graduated in 2009 in Modern Literature at University of Naples "Federico II". My thesis concerned Computational Linguistics, specifically I compared three syntactic annotation tagsets developed for the Italian language (TUT: Turin University Treebank, AN.ANA.S.: Annotazione e analisi sintattica and TreSSI: Treebank sintattico-semantica dell'italiano) and then I chose a solution to combine them into a unique approach.
Now I'm taking my PhD in Linguistics at the University of Salerno and my supervisor is prof. Miriam Voghera. My research project concerns linguistic attrition in the Italian community of Toronto. During my time in Canada I am both going to take advantage of the data in the HLVC corpus and to collect more samples aimed at studying this specific phenomenon. I am particularly interested in the loss of verbal morphology and I plan to structure my interviews in such a way that different verbal tenses can be elicited. From my experience at University of Toronto I hope to gain more insight into language attrition and also to gain experience with work "in the field" by means of interviews."

Maria has been exploring the area and learning about local inhabitants:

Methods in Dialectology Conference

2011-08-07T12:45:00.011-04:00

Many U of T linguists (Ailis, Cathleen, Joanna, Jack, Keren, Naomi, Sali & Sandrine) and alumni (Laura Baxter, Alex D'Arcy, Carrie Dyck, David Heap, Nicole Rosen, Jacqueline Peters, Jeff Tennant) presented at Methods XIV the first week of August, 2011. We dined well (Budapest in London), caught up on our reading at The Pinery, and, yes, even presented some research findings.

Thanks to Anita Szakay and Evan Hazenberg for the photos.

Bill Samarin sighting

2011-06-23T09:00:00.002-04:00

Jack C. ran into Bill Samarin at noon on the Clarke Institute walkway. He is healthy and well at 86, walking unencumbered with a stick that he says is mainly ornamental. He was returning from dim sum lunch on Dundas St. He spends some time in his office finishing an article, already accepted, on the origins of Sango (20k words) that will correct some of the claims that are out there. Last year he traveled to Bangui in Central Africa as part of a forensic mission to help with linguistic claims of the Bangis in the aftermath of a conflict. At the end of the year he will attend the Creole and Pidgin sessions at the LSA meetings in Portland, Ore.

Bill was on our faculty from 1967 until he retired in (I think [says Jack]) 1991. He is a world expert on African languages, especially Niger-Congo, and he is nonpareil on Gbeya and pidgin Sango.

CLA Presentation Prizes!

2011-06-10T10:15:00.001-04:00

This year's winners of the Canadian Linguistic Association's annual student competition were announced yesterday, and Beth Macleod of our department won the paper presentation award for her talk "Perceptual salience and cross-dialectal phonetic convergence in Spanish." Additionally, Joanne Markle LaMontagne, a PhD student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese who has taken several linguistics courses, won the poster award for her poster "Acquisition of the Spanish Present Perfect by Spanish-English Bilinguals."

(You can see their abstracts here.)

Niuean syntax and coconuts

2011-05-26T22:15:00.004-04:00

On May 26, Professor Diane Massam gave an entertaining and informative lecture, 'Small Island, Big Language: The Story of Niue,' as part of the Flaut lecture series. She described some of her research on Niuean, an Oceanic language spoken in Niue, an isolated rocky island in the South Pacific. Niue Island is both the world's smallest independent self-governed nation and the world¹s largest upraised coral atoll. She also told us about its geography, history, and culture. Niuean challenges universal claims such as All languages have nouns and verbs and All sentences have a subject and a predicate. She also showed us some beautiful photos, which I hope she'll post a sampling of here.

Alana also promises a video of an anonymous linguist illustrating proper cocounut-opening technique. As a bystander quipped, "Linguists don't just crack the code of languages. They know how to crack coconuts, too." All part of linguistic fieldwork!

Linguists in Japan and BC

2011-05-26T21:53:00.007-04:00

Naomi recently returned from an excellent 2 week linguistic adventure, making her first trips to Japan, Victoria, and Vancouver. All wonderful places. In Japan, she participated in the First International Symposium of Tokyo Academic Forum on Immigrant Languages, along with James Walker from York U, and practiced her best Japanese sentence: "Sumi-masen, watasi-wa sakana-o sifood-o tabe-masen." She really liked the "spirit" pun in this signpost on the way to the Meiji shrine: ""The Meiji period was an enlightened period during which a policy of 'Japanese spirit and Western Knowledge' was adopted..."

On her way home, she stopped off in Victoria for a week, where, conveniently enough, the 5th Change and Variation in Canada (CVC V) linguistics conference was going on. Marisa Brook gave an excellent talk: " Looks like there’s something interesting going on here."

Chomsky lecture at UTSC

2011-04-29T16:06:00.005-04:00

On April 6th, 2011 the Office of the Dean and Vice-Principal Academic University of Toronto Scarborough presented Noam Chomsky speaking on Academic Freedom and the Corporatization of Universities. To view the lecture, please click on the link above (from http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~vpdean/dean-events.php, April 29, 2011).

This photo is provided courtesy of Ken Jones, UTSC photographer and features Diane Massam, Elan Dresher, Elizabeth Cowper and Michael Szamosi greeting the speaker.

Keren wins Killam

2011-04-19T16:10:00.002-04:00

The Department of Linguistics congratulates Keren Rice on winning the 2011 Killam Prize for outstanding career achievements in Humanities!
There is a nice picture in the Globe & Mail at
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/u-of-t-prof-wins-killam-prize-for-work-on-slavey-language/article1991916/.

Spring in D.C.

2011-04-17T10:32:00.005-04:00

Last week, Naomi headed south to make sure that Spring still exists somewhere. She found it in Washington, D.C., where she met with a number of Georgetown students conducting research on heritage languages and gave a talk about the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto project. Here she is with two Ph.D. students who shared some of their research interests, and some lovely Spring blooms, with her.

TULCon 2011

2011-02-24T17:00:00.003-05:00

TULCon 2011 (the Toronto Undergraduate Linguistics Conference) is an event organized by the UofT SLUGS (Society of Linguistics Undergraduate Students). It took place Friday, March 4, 2011 to Sunday, March 6, 2011.

SLUGS looks for housing volunteers for TULCon 2011: since a number of attendees will be coming from out of town, anyone who has extra sleeping space (couch space, guest rooms, extra beds, etc.) that is willing to host one or more out-of-town attendee on the nights of March 4th or 5th (preferably both) should get in touch with the TULCon planners either by e-mail (tulcon2011 -at- gmail -dot- com) or by filling out the TULCon hosting form.

You do not have to live close to campus, but you should be TTC-accessible.

For more information on TULCon, visit the SLUGS official site.

All other inquiries should be directed at tulcon2011 -at- gmail -dot- com.

UofT Linguistics on Facebook

2011-02-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

If you have a Facebook account, be sure to follow our departmental fan page and get blog updates on your news feed right when they happen!

NWAV 39

2011-02-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

NWAV (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) 39 was held in San Antonio, Texas from November 4th to the 6th this year. UofT was well represented with presentations by the following (listed in alphabetical order of first author):

LeAnn Brown

Gender and Sociophonetics: What Performative Readings Suggest

Derek Denis

The trajectory of General Extenders from a transatlantic perspective: Innovation and innovators

Matt Hunt Gardner

The In-Crowd and the “Oat-casts”: Diphthongs and Identity in a Cape Breton High School

Naomi Nagy, Nina Aghdasi, Derek Denis, Alex Motut, Dylan Uscher

Pro-drop in Heritage Languages: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Contact-Induced Change

Sali Tagliamonte & Bridget Jankowski

The Genitive in Today’s World or the Genitive in the World of Today

Cathleen Waters & Sali Tagliamonte

Innovators Across Innovations: Exploring Co-Variables in Linguistic Change

Manami's new job

2011-02-09T09:23:00.004-05:00

Manami Hirayama sends the happy news that she will take up a position in Kyoto as tenured associate professor at Ritsumeikan University. She is wrapping up her appointment at the National Language Institute in Tokyo with some perception experiments. She says that Kyoto is a beautiful city, the cultural centre of Kansai region with the Imperial Palace and great theatres, two-and-a-half hours south of Tokyo on the fast train. Manami moves in April.

I need me an audience!

2011-01-24T22:42:00.001-05:00

Don't miss this interesting talk on Thursday evening!

Friends of Linguistics At the University of Toronto [flaut]
and
The Society of Linguistics Undergraduate Students (SLUGS)
present a lecture by

AILIS COURNANE
PHD Student, University of Toronto

I need me an audience!

Southern United States English (SUSE) has an interesting reflexive
construction which behaves quite unlike Standard English reflexive
constructions. In Standard English one can say the sentences in (1) but not
those in (2). All the sentences are grammatical in SUSE.

1) a. I wrote myself a letter
b. I bought myself a car (*for my son)
2) a. I wrote me a letter to the president
b. I bought me a car (for my son)

The bolded pronoun in (2) is called a Personal Dative (PD). In this talk
Ms. Cournane will discuss the development of the Personal Dative from
reflexive constructions in Old English. She will also show how the SUSE
reflexive constructions are similar to double object constructions found in
a wide variety of languages. Multimedia clips from football players, folk
songs, politicians, and popular culture will be used to illustrate this
interesting, and widespread, linguistic phenomenon.

PRESENTATION, INFORMAL DISCUSSION AND RECEPTION

Thursday JANUARY 27, 2011
7 9 p.m.

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
SIDNEY SMITH HALL
4th floor
LINGUISTICS LOUNGE

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY AND FRIENDS
Hope to see you there!

Jack Chambers, in his jazz hat, on the radio

2011-01-23T12:20:00.008-05:00

Jack was on CBC's Sunday Edition this morning to talk about word jazz, the child of bebop jazz and beat poetry, according to cbc.ca, on the occasion of word jazz artist Ken Nordine's 90th b-day.

Read the broadcast at: http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/shows/2011/01/23/anat-hoffman---emily-dickinson---word-ja zz/

Toronto Babel

2011-01-20T20:38:00.007-05:00

A year ago, Beth Macleod started TorontoBabel, "an international language exchange group that brings together native and non-native speakers of many different languages from various countries around the world."

Here's a link to a clip from an interview with Beth on Metro Morning. Metro Morning also provided the quote above and the photo.

Our New Cactus Collection!

2011-01-05T17:17:00.003-05:00

Hello all,

As the Chair of the Cactus Caucus, a prestigious sub-committee of the Plant and Beautification Committee, I would like to provide an important report:

The cactus collection that was housed in the lounge in September was my personal collection. After I removed it, there was quite an uproar -- with many feelings and expressions of sadness and discontent. As such, the Cactus Caucus has put together a new, *permanent* collection in the lounge for our enjoyment.

So next time you have a moment, please stop by the lounge and take a look at our new prickly friends!

Many thanks to Elaine Gold and the LGCU for funding this project.

-Michelle St-Amour
Cactus Caucus, Chair

Holiday Party

2010-12-04T21:00:00.002-05:00

United in one small department lounge (and the hallway) on December 3rd were faculty, Ph.D. students, visiting students, MA students (including all of the new ones),undergrads, alumni (Dylan, we see you!), staff, and family-members.

Christmas and Hanukkah songs were provided by the ever-reliable F-ZERO, now joined by MA student Christopher Spahr on bass guitar.

Refreshments included an inordinate number of varieties of cheese; and thanks to MA student Maddie Shellgren, we were all treated to the sight (and taste) of a twelve-inch-tall gummy-bear.

Linguistics-Psychology Welcome Party

2010-11-11T17:49:00.002-05:00

On Thursday the 11th members of the psychology and linguistics departments got together to "meet the people at the other end of the hall" in the Linguistics Lounge. Opening remarks were made and the departmental band, F-ZERO, provided entertainment.

LGCU Welcome Workshop

2010-10-29T17:43:00.001-04:00

The LGCU hosted its second annual Welcome Workshop, an informal conference that enables participating new students in particular to introduce themselves and share a bit of their research in a 15-minute talk.

Half of the new MA students opted to take part, along with Ph.D. students Ross Krekoski, Will Oxford, and LeAnn Brown. The presentations were interspersed with coffee, cheese, and pastries; and then followed by leftovers and an impressively lengthy period of standing around in the room and talking.

The End of Argument Structure? Workshop

2010-09-28T12:44:00.002-04:00

This weekend the University of Toronto is hosting "The End of Argument Structure?" Workshop. Invited speakers included Mark Baker, Heidi Harley, Lisa Travis and Grant Armstrong. The abstract booklet is available here. The workshop description is below. The workshop has been organized by María Cristina Cuervo and Yves Roberge.

This workshop, to be held on 1‐2 October, 2010, will be an opportunity to explore current issues and re‐assess generally accepted premises on the relationship between lexical meaning and the morphosyntax of sentences. A central question in the study of language concerns the mechanisms by which the participants in an event described by a sentence come to occupy their positions in the structure and acquire their interpretation. A long‐standing approach is based on the assumption that it is the lexical meaning of a verb that determines, albeit indirectly, the basic properties of sentence structure at the level of verbal meaning, including asymmetric relations, thematic roles, case, and agreement. An alternative approach claims that the syntax itself greatly restricts possible verbal meanings on the basis of the legitimate relations that can exist between syntactic heads, complements, and specifiers.

If we think that all systematic aspects of verbal meanings (licensing of external argument, number and type of ‘obligatory’ and extra arguments, agentivity, causativity, aksionsart, etc.) are dependent on configurational properties, what is left for lexical entries? Do generalizations such as the
UTAH and other prominence hierarchies need to be stated explicitly, or are they derived from more general principles of syntactic operations (and structures) and semantic compositionality? What is left unexplained by syntax‐driven approaches?

In order to promote an open exchange of ideas, we have in mind a real workshop format rather than a regular conference around themes that will be determined in consultation with the invited participants, based on their contributions. A small number of papers will be selected from open submissions.

Invited participants:
Mark Baker (Rutgers University)
Heidi Harley (University of Arizona)
Lisa Travis (McGill University)

Invited student participant:
Grant Armstrong (Georgetown University)

earthquake in NZ

2010-09-24T11:40:00.003-04:00

Diane Massam is in New Zealand now. She sent this image of how things are after the recent earthquake. Our thoughts are with all our friends in NZ, with hopes for speedy recovery.

Summer fun w/ Faetar & Cellese

2010-09-21T14:28:00.005-04:00

Sometimes friends wonder how we academic-types keep busy all summer, with all that "time off." This would be a great place to post what you did this summer. Especially if you have good photos to add.

I spent several days hanging out in Brantford (home of Wayne Gretsky!) and other parts of the Greater GTA. Turns out there are lots of speakers of Cellese, the Francoprovençal dialect "from across the valley" to Faetar, where I did fieldwork in the early '90s. These speakers came from Celle, in southern Italy, in the 1950's, mostly, and have been living in Ontario, and continuing to speak Faetar and Cellese ever since. So far, I've talked to over 30 people. Given that there are only about 600 left in Faeto and Celle, this is a pretty good sample! I went to their summer picnic (140+ people, a variety of sausages, and a great bocce tournament) and will be meeting the Rochester contingent at their Polenta Dinner (Migliazzate) next month.

Side benefits, besides getting to practice my Faetar and drink "real" Italian coffee, include tasting the fruits (and veges (?)) of their gardens, prosciutto from Faeto, and their homemade wine, as well as meeting race car drivers, artists, and shoemakers. And I keep busy during the non-interviewing days transcribing some of the highlights of these interviews. Sadly, I have no photos to post, but you can see some great pix of Faeto, taken by one of my favorite speakers, here.

Language and Cultural Expo

2010-09-21T14:24:00.002-04:00

New PhD student Matt Gardner brings this to our attention:

Omni TV is sponsoring a Language and Cultural Expo Oct. 2-3, 2010 at Exhibition Place. Looks like a variety of events, and maybe a great place to recruit speakers for various research projects...

If you go, come back and blog about it!

CLA student poster winner

2010-06-15T09:35:00.004-04:00

Our PhD student Liisa Duncan has been announced as the winner of the student poster competition at this year's CLA annual conference. Liisa's poster was titled "Consonant gradation in Finnish dialects". Congrats, Liisa!

CLA 2010

2010-05-31T22:51:00.005-04:00

This year's CLA Conference was held at Concordia University in Montreal from May 29-31, and our department had a very strong presence!

The following members of the department gave talks:

Rashid Al-Balushi: The licensing of structural case in Standard Arabic
Ailis Cournane: A cline of subject clitic doubling: Grammaticalization in small steps
Elizabeth Cowper: Where auxiliary verbs come from
Yoonjung Kang and Seung-Joon Park: Variation of consonant-final nouns in heritage Korean in Toronto
Loredana Andreea Kosa: Sibilant harmony: Investigating the connection between typology and learnability
Diane Massam: On the status of inversion in an inverse language
Alexandra Motut: A puzzle for the syntax and semantics of depictives
Kenji Oda: Dependent verbal morphology in Modern Irish: A distributed morphology approach
Will Oxford: Same, other, and different: A first look at the microsyntax of identity adjectives
Yves Roberge and Nelleke Strik: L'omission Wh: théorie et acquisition
Michelle St-Amour: On being definitely unique in Inuktitut
Nelleke Strik: French wh-questions in child L2 acquisition

And the following members of the department presented posters:

Elizabeth Cowper and Daniel Hall: Structures for possession in Upper Sorbian and Czech
Liisa Duncan: Consonant gradation in Finnish dialects
Julie Goncharov: 'Definite' adjectives in Slavic
Maria Kyriakaki: What Greek DETs do: The restrictive DP
Annick Morin: Diachrony and synchrony of /l/ gemination in Québec French
Ana Pérez-Leroux and Yadira Alvarez: How to BE in Spanish: The acquisition of copula and existential constructions by Spanish speaking children

Last but not least, Naomi Nagy was a panelist in a round-table discussion entitled "Corpora: Heritage and Preservation."

Congrats to all who participated!

(If anyone has inadvertently been omitted from this lengthy list, please contact the blog committee at utlinguistics@gmail.com to let us know.)

41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics

2010-05-24T11:30:00.015-04:00

The University of Toronto and York University recently co-hosted the 41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL2010), on May 6-8th. Plenary speakers were Prof. Sammy Beban Chumbow (Université Yaoundé I, Cameroon), Prof. Salikoko Mufwene (University of Chicago), and Prof. Sharon Rose (University of California at San Diego). These talks touched upon a number of key issues related to African language description, analysis, history, status, and preservation, tying well with the theme of the conference “African Languages in Contact”.

There were over 80 talks presented from researchers at institutions throughout the world including North America, Europe, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon, Sudan, and others. Five parallel sessions were needed at times at the conference to accommodate the great number of participants!

Talks were presented covering numerous aspects of formal linguistic theory and language studies, including sessions centered around Phonology, Tonology, Phonetics, Syntax, Semantics, Acquisition, Language Variation, Language Policy, Language Contact, and others.

University of Toronto linguistics graduate students Isaac Gould, Safieh Moghaddam, and Nicholas Rolle each presented a paper at the conference in distinct syntax sessions. Isaac presented on the absentive marker and Safieh presented on focus constructions, both in Lamnso’ [Bantoid: Cameroon], while Nicholas presented on morphosyntactic aspects of personal pronouns in Esan [Edoid: Nigeria]. All three of these talks come from continued work on these languages stemming from past Field Methods courses taught by University Professor Keren Rice.

The conference ended with a bang, held at the hall of the Eritrean Canadian Association of Toronto. There, the participants feasted on a great variety of foods from East and West Africa, sipped on Ethiopian beer, all to the tunes of a great Zimbabwean band Asaansi (sp?), whose name in Shona means “Waves”. The night was capped by lots of dancing, both by the band and by the participants. You can see more of the festivities here:

Our linguistics students Derek Denis, Nicholas Rolle, and Isaac Gould

Co-organizer Peter Avery

Wonderful African food

The great Zimbabwean band

Plenary Speaker Sharon Rose

Plenary Speaker Sammy Beban Chumbow

Co-organizer Bruce Connell

Women in traditional Nigerian garments

Profs. James Essegbey and Salikoko Mufwene

The conference was organized by Peter Avery, Parth Bhatt, Bruce Connell, Juvenal Ndayiragije, Emmanuel Nikiema, Keren Rice, and Nicholas Rolle, with the help of volunteers too numerous to mention here in full.

Lecture by Elan, May 27

2010-05-20T10:49:00.006-04:00

Everyone is invited to attend a lecture on Thursday May 27 that will be given by Prof. Dresher in the Department lounge. His topic is "Dating the Hebrew Bible: Can Linguistics Help?". Here is a short description of the talk:

Despite years of scholarship going back to the Renaissance, dating the books of the Hebrew Bible remains a controversial enterprise. Professor Dresher will discuss contemporary methods in historical linguistics and sociolinguistics that can be used to evaluate the relative age of the language in the Bible's many books.

The event runs from 7-9 pm and will include a reception and a question period. Please RSVP to William Forrest <lingdept@chass.utoronto.ca>, so that we know how much food to buy!

The event is co-sponsored by flaut (Friends of Linguistics at the University
of Toronto) and Spring Reunion 2010.

Naomi went to Hamburg

2010-05-13T08:28:00.011-04:00

Naomi recently spent a week in Hamburg, Germany, discussing research projects in the domain of urban multilingualism with the Linguistic Diversity Management research group at the University of Hamburg.

It was her first time in Germany, and she was delighted to find an abundance of chocolate, as well as common interest in systematic approaches to understanding contact-induced language change.

Spring has arrived on campus

2010-05-01T21:40:00.005-04:00

Alana has sent along this lovely photo of the cherry trees blossoming by Ed Burstynsky's memorial bench outside Robarts. (Click on the image to see it full-size.)

It's the little things in life

2010-05-01T21:26:00.009-04:00

Of all the things you'd expect to find on a linguistics blog, a faucet is pretty low on the list --

-- but regular users of our departmental lounge will understand just how heartwarming the preceding photo is!

41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics

2010-05-01T21:09:00.007-04:00

The University of Toronto and York University, Glendon Campus are hosting the 41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics 2010.

The conference will take place from Thursday, May 6 to Saturday, May 8. May 6 and 7 are in Sidney Smith Hall, University of Toronto, while May 8 is at the Glendon Campus.

Registration begins on Wednesday, May 5, at 5:00pm, in the linguistics lounge on the 4th floor of Sidney Smith Hall.

Visit the conference website for full details.

UT linguist talks at GURT

2010-04-06T16:30:00.005-04:00

Atiqa Hachimi reports that she recently returned from the Georgetown University Round Table on Arabic Language and Linguistics.

The title of her talk was:
"Arabic sociolinguistics and mobility: Exploring the social reinterpretation of old urban varieties in contemporary North Africa"

She's off to another conference at U of Texas next week. and she'll make sure to take pictures this time :-)

Georgetown Campus

Manami at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics in Tokyo

2010-04-06T16:27:00.003-04:00

Manami Hirayama writes from Tokyo to say that she landed a postdoc
appointment at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics in Tokyo. The
Institute is one of the marvels of the linguistics world, a corporation founded in 1948
and occupied continuously by teams of linguists doing pure research. It is a great place
for Manami to get started. Manami's project is phonology and her boss is Haruo Kubozono.
The Institute moved to a new glass-and-chrome building a few years ago in Tachikawa, on
the western edge of Tokyo, and the commute for Manami from her parents' house is almost 2
hours each way. She is also going to start a part-time teaching job in a few weeks.

She says, "I've been seeing my friends and people whom I hadn't seen for a long time,
which is nice as well. I miss Toronto very much, at the same time, however. People are in
my dreams!"

Maybe she'll send us some pictures to link? of the "Dialect research room"?

"Dene Soundscapes"

2010-03-09T13:20:00.002-05:00

Friends of Linguistics At the University of Toronto
presents a lecture by

KEREN RICE
University Professor, University of Toronto

Dene Soundscapes

In this talk, Keren Rice explores the sounds of language and the sounds of nature in the north Mackenzie area of the Northwest Territories. Learn about the languages, see some pictures, and hear some unusual sounds in this first flaut presentation in our department’s new location.

PRESENTATION, INFORMAL DISCUSSION AND RECEPTION
Thursday march 18, 2010
7 – 9 p.m.

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
LINGUISTICS LOUNGE
4th floor
SIDNEY SMITH HALL
100 St. George Street

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY AND FRIENDS

MinJae update

2010-03-05T10:01:00.001-05:00

Dear all,

We would like to thank all of you for kind and supporting messages about the baby.
It has really been great comfort and encouraging in this super-stressed time.

We also want to let you know that MinJae is finally discharged from the hospital and in a good condition to fly
back to Calgary! We are leaving next Tuesday.

Best wishes to all of you and thanks again!

Kyumin and Jae.

Daphna in Arizona

2010-02-24T12:20:00.004-05:00

Daphna Heller wishes to share a photo from her recent trip to Tucson, Arizona. There she gave a colloquium at the University of Arizona, and met with Adam Ussishikin to discuss their collaboration on lexical access in Modern Hebrew.

Kyumin's baby, Min Jae Park

2010-02-22T08:57:00.004-05:00

Kyumin and Jae write:
We are excited to announce our baby boy's arrival. He was born in Feb 13, at 6:29pm, which was 6 weeks earlier than expected. (so, he's born in Toronto, not in Calgary). He weighs 2.165kg. His name is Min Jae Park. He is under NICU care, as he is premature. But, he is fine, he just needs to grow up more. He will be discharged from the hospital probably in one and a half weeks later.
These pictures are of Min Jae, one day old, still in an incubator.

M.A. Students in New Zealand

2010-02-16T13:57:00.012-05:00

Over the winter break in December and January, two of our current Master's students, Isaac Gould and Nik Rolle, took a trip to New Zealand. Here are some of the pictures from their trip.

Overlooking the Waimana river valley in Te Urewera national park at dusk.

An early morning shot at one of the harbours in Auckland.

Intrepid Nik braves the volcano with his gas mask.

The greenish water is from the sulphur from the volcano.

Intrepid Nik blazes a trail through the forest.

Isaac dancing with a Puka Pukan in the Fale Pasifika at the University of Auckland.

Manami's Farewell

2010-02-10T12:34:00.003-05:00

On January 22nd we held the first party at the new department space. While enjoying good food and basking in the natural sunlight coming through the lounge windows, we also said goodbye to Manami Hirayama, who has recently completed her PhD at the department. We wish her the best of luck on her move back to Japan.

More pictures from the party can be found by following this link.

Phonetic work on Argentine and Cuban Spanish

2010-02-04T16:58:00.006-05:00

Alexei Kochetov and Laura Colantoni (Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese) have been actively involved in an extensive phonetic electropalatographic (EPG) investigation of Argentine and Cuban Spanish.

This project – the first articulatory kinematic study of these varieties – consists of a series of experiments examining variation in the articulation of coronal consonants, the processes of nasal place assimilation and s-deletion, and a change in progress in Buenos Aires Spanish resulting in the depalatalization of palatal nasals. EPG is particularly suitable for this kind of research, as it records the timing and location of the tongue constriction during speech using an artificial palate equipped with 62 electrodes. Data collection and analysis for the project (funded by Connaught) are being performed in the Linguistics Department Phonetics Lab, with the assistance of a work-study student Bojana Radovanovic.

Some of the results from the project have been presented at the 158th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of the America in San Antonio, TX in October, 2009 (poster), the 23rd conference Going Romance in Nice, France in December 2009 (slides), and will be presented soon at the 28th West Coast Conference in Formal Linguistics in Los Angeles, CA (February 2010), the 40th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages in Seattle, WA (March 2010), and at the 12th conference on Laboratory Phonology in Albuquerque, NM (July 2010).

Alexei and Laura are currently looking for more speakers of Cuban Spanish from Havana. Please contact them at al.kochetov@utoronto.ca or laura.colantoni@utoronto.ca if you happen to know suitable candidates.

Hank Rogers

2010-02-04T14:57:00.009-05:00

We are very sorry to report the death of Professor Emeritus Hank Rogers, a member of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto since 1967.

We will miss him!

To learn more about Hank, visit his website.

Further information and directions to his funeral can be found at: www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/news_events/rogers/.

You are invited to make donations in his memory to the Henry Rogers Undergraduate Scholarship in Linguistics.

Please share your thoughts about Hank by commenting on this post.

Looking for Russians & Koreans

2010-02-03T12:48:00.015-05:00

The Heritage Language Variation and Change Project is nearing the end of the interviewing and recording phase, but we still need to find a few types of speakers. So, if you know of anyone who fits these categories, please let me (Naomi) know!

We are looking for Russian speakers who are from Moscow or St. Petersburg

Female, age 38-40, lived in Moscow or St. P. until she was ~20, then moved to the GTA
Female, older than 40, parents born in the GTA, grandparents from Moscow or St. P.
Male, under age 40, born in the GTA, parents born in Moscow or St. P.
Male, under age 40, parents born in the GTA, grandparents from Moscow or St. P.

And, if you know ANY third generation Koreans who speak Korean, we'd love to talk to them! (3rd generation means their grandparents are from Seoul, but their parents and they were born in the GTA.)

Many thanks!

Marina's new baby Yana

2010-01-25T17:25:00.002-05:00

Dear all,
Our family is all excited to announce our new baby daughter's arrival! She was born 22.01.10 at 3:33 pm, weighing 3476 g, height 51 cm. Her name is Yana Maria Lieber ('Yana' rhymes with 'Hannah', her big sister's name, and the Russian nickname for 'Hannah' is 'Anya', which in Russian is spelled as the reverse of 'Yana'; 'Maria' was my grandmother's name).
Both Yana and me are happy and healthy. We attach a picture of Yana, almost one day old, with her big sister and Mommy.

Marina, Zeev and Hannah

Sali and Derek defend teenagers in Montreal Gazette

2010-01-23T14:33:00.003-05:00

Recent media buzz in the UK warned teens all over the world that their "teenspeak" is making them "unemployable". On this side of the pond, the media was a little less extreme and consulted linguists with real data, including U of T's Sali Tagliamonte and Derek Denis.

Video rapportage of the move-in

2010-01-18T09:32:00.003-05:00

Alana writes:

This video was taken on the first day in December 2009 that members of our dept. actually started using the new dept. It was mid-move and I think it shows the magical moment when the grad students transformed an empty lounge into our new living quarters.

Overheard on Campus

2010-01-07T13:59:00.002-05:00

Linguistics was featured in this weeks edition of the Varsity's "Overheard on Campus":

(Students leaving after a linguistics class)
Student 1: I'm just walking this way, but not because I'm scared of getting mugged or anything. Even if we meet a muggar, we can stand together and beat 'em like two dogs attacking a bear!
Student 2: You know, that was exactly what I was thinking!
(Some time later...)
Student 2: Well, you know, despite our skinny frames, we are mighty warriors wielding language!

(Spotted by Elan)

We've arrived!

2009-12-18T14:24:00.005-05:00

After a whirlwind week, the Department of Linguistics has now completely moved to Sid Smith. This picture sums up what life has been like here this week.

More photos taken by Bill can be found here:
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/Moving/Settling
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/Moving/images/Images/Dec_18/index.html

Progress!

2009-12-10T11:19:00.004-05:00

Bill has taken a few new photographs of our new home as of Dec. 10th. Note the progress made on the plumbing!

All the photos are available here: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/Moving/images/Images/Dec_10/index.html

Photos and videos from the End of Term/End of Robarts party

2009-12-07T08:17:00.006-05:00

On Friday Dec. 4th, the Department of Linguistics had their annual End of Term holiday party. It was well attended, the food and drinks were delicious and the music, courtesy of departmental band F-Zero, was great.

Bill took some photos of the action, all available here: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/Moving/images/Images/index.html . In this album, there are also some photos of the hard working LGCU "Book Collection" Committee packing up our books for the move.

We also have a few videos from resident videographer, Alana Johns.

Is this a photo-op?
http://sharing.theflip.com/session/ee9d6a0a522b8e9b7b5c633cf101c023/video/7769913

Do numerals incorporate in Inuktitut?
http://sharing.theflip.com/session/ee9d6a0a522b8e9b7b5c633cf101c023/video/7769954

Elan in New Orleans

2009-11-30T15:49:00.000-05:00

Elan Dresher gave an invited talk on “Methodological Issues in the Dating of Linguistic Forms: Considerations from the Perspective of Contemporary Linguistic Theory,” at the National Association of Professors of Hebrew session on Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew, part of the 2009 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, November 2009.

Naomi's trip to Italy

2009-11-29T18:36:00.003-05:00

At the beginning of November, Naomi attended a conference, Corpus Linguistics and Language Variation, or CLAVIER '09, in Modena Italy. She presented the first findings from the Heritage Language Variation & Change in Toronto project -- a comparison of Faetar lexical variation in Faeto, Italy and the GTA. Following that, she met with linguists who have worked on the Calabrese dialect, another component of the HLVC project, in Firenze, Roma, and Cosenza. This is a link to some of the sites she saw on the way. [http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?token=482055568112%3A967505449]

Day in Niagara

2009-11-29T18:29:00.008-05:00

Following an excellent lecture for the Department of Linguistics Speakers Series ("Early Null Objects: Pronominal phi-features and saving strategies in language development") , Vincenzo Moscati, a visitor from the Università di Siena, joined French Department post-doc Nelleke Strik, avid photographer Craig Diegel and assistant professor Naomi Nagy to venture to Niagara Falls, because none of them had been there (in the past few decades). Here's a taste of their day.

http://individual.utoronto.ca/ngn/Day_at_Niagara.htm

Recent Departmental Honours

2009-11-27T19:05:00.004-05:00

In the last year, three members of the department have been honoured by both the University and externally.

Mary Hsu won the 2009 Dean's Student Life Award. The award committee writes that they were very impressed with Mary's work over the years as Graduate Administrator. The award was presented at a ceremony this spring.

Keren Rice was named University Professor at the June 3, 2008 meeting of Academic Board. http://www.news.utoronto.ca/campus-news/three-honoured-as-university-professors.html

Jack Chambers was nominated as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/lead-stories/fourteen-honoured-by-royal-society-of-canada.html

Congradulations to Mary, Keren, and Jack!

Alana Johns on Canada AM talking about Dying Words

2009-11-27T19:01:00.004-05:00

Alana appeared on Canada AM recently. Below is a link to the interview:
http://watch.ctv.ca/news/top-picks/dying-words/#clip231514

The written story is at:
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/plocal/CTVNews/20091108/bc_dying_languages_091108/20091108/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

Jack Chambers in Hungary

2009-11-27T15:46:00.001-05:00

Jack Chambers is in Budapest in December 1-6.He is consulting with
researchers on the Hungarian Sociolinguistic Survey, directed by
Miklós Kontra of the Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian
Academy of Sciences. He will also present two talks while he is
there, one on "Talking Heads: Television and Your Language" and the
other on "Multilingualism and Nationalism."

Heritage Languages engage SLUGS

2009-11-26T11:10:00.004-05:00

Exploring Heritage Language Variation in Toronto

As part of the SLUGS Academic Seminar Series, I gave a talk to a room full of interested, enthusiastic students (mostly undergrad) about the research project "Heritage Language Variation and Change" that I'm undertaking along with Alexei, Yoonjung, and James Walker, and ~18 student RAs. SLUGS provided wonderful refreshments and the students provided good suggestions. Info about the project, which is examining how Cantonese, Korean, Faetar, Italian, Russian, and Korean vary and change across 3 generations of immigrants, is at:
http://individual.utoronto.ca/ngn/research/heritage_lgs.htm.

I gave a similar talk at the Corpus Linguistics and Language Variation Conference in Modena, Italy, a few weeks ago, which was also received enthusiastically and led to several possible collaborations for comparing Calabrese as it is spoken in the GTA to how it is spoken in Italy (specifically Calabria). Info on that conference, which was quite international, is at:
http://clavier09.sltt.unimore.it/on-line/Home.html.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Naomi

Sid Smith rooms

2009-11-26T11:03:00.004-05:00

Here's a glimpse of current state of our new home. Two weeks to go!
Will they be done in time?
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/Moving/images/

(Photos courtesy of Bill)

Elaine Gold on 'Fresh Air', CBC Radio

2009-11-24T15:57:00.007-05:00

Sunday morning (November 22) I got up bright and early to get down to the CBC studio on Front Street for 7:15. Mary Ito had asked me to be on her show 'Fresh Air' to discuss the words of the year. Apparently it had been announced that 'admonish' and 'unfriend (a verb)' were chosen as the words of the year. We had a friendly discussion of those words and how language changes. A number of early birds heard me - including Ron Smyth, who was baking bread at the time. It was my second time for an interview with Mary Ito - she had me on last June to discuss words borrowed into English from other languages.

Elaine

Guidelines for posting news

2009-11-23T12:02:00.004-05:00

Who can post news?
Any current or previous member of the department can post news on this blog.

What can I post?

Appropriate content might include text, links, and photos related to:

* Descriptions of events happening in the department
* Descriptions of visiting speakers
* Information on new hires
* Reports on past or future conference presentations
* Birth announcements
* Grants awarded
* Scholarship/fellowship congratulations
* Significant achievements of departmental members
* Announcements of successful thesis proposals and defenses
* Announcements pertaining to research groups
* Updates on major research projects

This list is not exhaustive.

What shouldn’t I post?

Personal requests, advertisements, etc. that are not of general departmental interest should not be posted on this blog. Keep in mind that this newsletter is for public viewing. A moderator will edit all content.

How do I post?

Send an email containing your post to utlinguistics at gmail dot com. Or contact Naomi Nagy at her departmental address.

First Post

2009-11-16T16:41:00.000-05:00

The Department launches a new blog as a way to keep everybody au courant about everybody else. You are encouraged to send news to be posted on the site. We are working on who to send it to...

August 2008 Newsletter

2009-07-17T17:15:00.000-04:00

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/news_events/Aug08Newsletter.pdf

Fall 2006 Newsletter

2009-07-16T17:18:00.004-04:00

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/news_events/Fall06Newsletter.pdf