New book: Punske, Sanders, and Fountain (eds.) (2020)

Congratulations to Nathan Sanders (faculty) and his colleagues Jeffrey Punske (Southern Illinois University Carbondale) and Amy V. Fountain (University of Arizona) on the publication of their groundbreaking co-edited book, Language Invention in Linguistics Pedagogy, now available from Oxford University Press!

This book is the first to explore the varied ways in which invented languages can be used to teach languages and linguistics in university courses. There has long been interest in invented languages, also known as constructed languages or conlangs, both in the political arena (as with Esperanto) and in the world of literature and science fiction and fantasy media - Tolkien's Quenya and Sindarin, Dothraki in Game of Thrones, and Klingon in the Star Trek franchise, among many others. Linguists have recently served as language creators or consultants for film and television, with notable examples including Jessica Coon's work on the film Arrival, Christine Schreyer's Kryptonian for Man of Steel, David Adger's contributions to the series Beowulf, and David J. Peterson's numerous languages for Game of Thrones and other franchises. The chapters in this volume show how the use of invented languages as a teaching tool can reach a student population who might not otherwise be interested in studying linguistics, as well as helping those students to develop the fundamental core skills of linguistic analysis. Invented languages encourage problem-based and active learning; they shed light on the nature of linguistic diversity and implicational universals; and they provide insights into the complex interplay of linguistic patterns and social, environmental, and historical processes. The volume brings together renowned scholars and junior researchers who have used language invention and constructed languages to achieve a range of pedagogical objectives. It will be of interest to graduate students and teachers of linguistics and those in related areas such as anthropology and psychology.

LabPhon 17

The 17th biennial conference of the Association for Laboratory Phonology was held online from July 6 through 8, hosted by the University of British Columbia.

Two of our faculty members gave invited talks:

• Keren Rice (faculty): "Languages on the margins: Sounds and the impact of sound-based research for language (re)vitalization."
• Elizabeth Johnson (faculty): "Building a lexicon (on the margins)."

One Ph.D. student was part of a presentation:

• Angelika Kiss (Ph.D.) was part of a talk with colleagues Maxime Tulling (New York University) and Roger Yu-Hsiang Lo (University of British Columbia):"Individual variation in the prosody of Cantonese rhetorical questions."

And there were a whole lot of current departmental members and alumni to be found in the poster sessions!

• Laura Colantoni (faculty), Alexei Kochetov (faculty), and Jeffrey Steele (faculty, Department of French): "EPG insights into first-language influence on second language gestural timing."
• Phil Monahan (faculty), Rachel Soo (MA 2018, now at the University of British Columbia), Monica Shah (BSc 2017) and Abdulwahab Sidiqi (BSc 2017): "Lexical bias in second language sibilant perception: The role of language proficiency and phonotactic context."
• Madeleine Yu (BA) and Elizabeth Johnson (faculty): "Re-evaluating the Other Accent Effect in talker recognition."
• Jessamyn Schertz (faculty): "Imitation and perception of individual accented features."
• Avery Ozburn (faculty) with Gunnar Hansson (University of British Columbia) and Kevin McMullin (University of Ottawa): "Learning vowel harmony with transparency in an artificial language."
• Zoe McKenzie (Ph.D.): "The perceptual basis of length co-occurrence restrictions."
• Andrei Munteanu (Ph.D.): "Using chess metrics to measure the effect of emotion on formants."
• Phil Howson (Ph.D. 2018, now at the University of Oregon) and Melissa Redford (University of Oregon): "Context effects on schwa production in 'gotta' distinguish 'got to' from 'got a'.
• Phil Howson (Ph.D. 2018, now at the University of Oregon) and Madathodiyil Irfana (All India Institute of Speech and Hearing): "What does cross-linguistic perception tell us about phonological categories?"
• Richard Compton (Ph.D. 2012, now at l'Université du Québec à Montréal) with Emily Elfner (York University) and Anja Arnhold (University of Alberta): "Stressless languages on the margins? An acoustic study of Inuktitut."
• Rachel Soo (MA 2018, now at the University of British Columbia) and Molly Babel (University of British Columbia): "Lexical competition affects Cantonese tone mergers in word recognition."
• Gloria Mellesmoen (MA 2016, now at the University of British Columbia): "Modularity and the allophone in the Comox-Sliammon (Salish) vowel system."

New linguistics videos created by LIN101 students!

This semester, our teaching team for LIN101: Introduction to Linguistics: Sound Patterns (consisting of faculty member Peter Jurgec and fourteen TAs) had the students do small independent research projects of various types. Among the video projects, there were three standout submissions - which we are thrilled to share with the wider community!

• Music and Language
• Loanwords
• Phonology of Elvish

2019 Undergrad Tea

We held our annual Undergrad Tea on Thursday, September 26, from 4 through 6 PM. Thanks to Deem Waham (staff) for her organizational efforts and for the photos!

Alexei Kochetov (faculty) and Nathan Sanders (faculty) with the new SLUGS executives!

Nathan Sanders profiled by UofT Arts & Science News on conlangs

Nathan Sanders (faculty) has been profiled by UofT Arts & Science News on constructed languages (conlangs) and his role as a mentor for a Grade 8 student's project to create his own language. Check out the article here!

Linguistics in the community: Grade 8 school project on constructed languages

Shortly after arriving in Toronto in July, Professor Nathan Sanders began mentoring local student, Ben Kramer, for his Grade 8 project at the Halton Waldorf School in Burlington.  Every student in the grade selects a major project for the year and seeks out a mentor to help guide them.  For his project, Ben designed his own constructed language, Gəfedbemar, and wrote up a grammar, which includes an abjad orthography, rules for building words and sentences, a glossary of hundreds of words, and sample translations.  The finale to the project was a well-delivered and well-received public presentation on March 7th, in which Ben spoke in Gəfedbemar and described the process of building the language.  Signed copies of his grammar were very popular with the crowd!

Keren Rice featured in U of T News, Nick Welch featured in The Varsity

Two recent articles featuring department members!

First, U of T News has a story on Aboriginal languages where they interview Keren Rice (faculty) on her research, the state of Aboriginal languages in Canada, and the prospects for language revitalization: "Truth and reconciliation live here: At U of T, Indigenous languages speak for themselves"

Second, The Varsity has an article on the new movie Arrival that's about a linguist who tries to figure out an alien language. They interview Nick Welch (faculty), who explains some positives and negatives about the movie's portrayal of linguistics: "Linguistic armament: Deciphering the science of Arrival". This follows a recent piece where U of T News talked to Nick as well as Shayna Gardiner (Ph.D.) about the movie.

U of T linguists interviewed about Arrival!

In all the buzz about the new sci-fi film Arrival, U of T News interviewed Nicholas Welch (faculty) and Shayna Gardiner (PhD) about the linguistics in the movie! You can read their thoughts here.

Inventing a new South Slavic language

Profs. Christina Kramer and Dragana Obradović from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures have created a new South Slavic language - dubbed Lavinian - at the request of award-winning playwright Nicolas Billon. The language will be featured in Billon's play Butcher.

See more at the U of T Bulletin.