Arcadian Greek vs. Standard Greek: Dr. Photini Coutsougera Publishes A Dictionary with the Answers

From Dr. Coutsougera: 

"""

Dr. Photini Coutsougera of Mississauga Campus' Language Studies Department has recently published a new book, A Dictionary of Northeastern Arcadian Greek [in Greek] with Patakis Publications, Athens, Greece (2024)/ 320 pages. 

A Look Inside: Letter Αα, p. 66

The Dictionary of Northeastern Arcadian Greek comprises 4.200 entries and 5.120 senses. These entries were primarily collected during field work, over a period of approximately thirteen years, and from existing written sources. 

Subsequently, they were verified one by one  by a group of native speakers of the dialect, aged 80 and over. Each entry contains semantic, phonological, morphological, syntactic and stylistic information. It also contains a plethora of authentic examples in use, synonyms, antonyms, idioms and idiomatic phrases, proverbs, sayings, and verses from local folk poetry. Finally, a 28-page Prologue includes a compact grammar of the dialect, lays out the research methodology employed in the data collection, and defines Arcadian Greek on the basis of linguistic criteria which systematically differentiate it from Standard Greek. 

This book aspires to bring the Peloponnesian varieties of Greek to the fore as they have been conspicuously absent from the literature.

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Tahohtharátye Joe Brant Completes Dissertation at the University of Victoria

Congratulations Tahohtharátye Joe Brant!

He has earned a PhD from the University of Victoria, completing his dissertation, Tó: nya'teká:yen tsi Entewà:ronke', in Language Revitalization and Change, available at the University of Victoria website. 

Tahohtharátye is cross-appointed in the Centre for Indigenous Studies, and we are proud to have him on our faculty.

Learn more about him here, and read about his work at WSCLAon the WHITL blog.

Congratulations once more!

UTM Faculty Dr. Samantha Jackson and Derek Denis Publish their Research into Accent-Based Biases in the GTA

Postdoctoral Fellow of Language Studies at UTM, Dr. Samantha Jackson, and Associate Professor of Linguistics, Derek Denis, have recently published their work titled What I say, or how I say it? Ethnic accents and hiring evaluations in the Greater Toronto Area.

Jackson’s work, focusing on sociolinguistics, investigates how immigrants to Canada speaking with an identifiably non-Canadian accent are perceived by prospective employers. She investigates strategies to reduce such workplace discrimination and target other societal problems. 

Denis' interests follow variationist sociolinguistics (language change), and how human language faculty allows for variation both within the individual’s grammar and the larger context of the society in which it exists.

During their study, they recorded 12 women giving scripted 6 answers to interview questions, (3 good, 3 bad) and asked Human Resources students at universities and colleges in the GTA to rank the content of responses, as well as the employability of each voice. They were also asked to determine for which, if any, job interview to recommend these individuals. 

Jackson and Denis analyzed the results using conditional inference tree modeling and random forest analysis.

They found that the accent heard by participants affected their ratings of all these scripted responses, viewing Canadian accents as superior to those of non-Canadians – specifically, the most disadvantaged being Chinese, Nigerian, and German accents. These were least likely to be recommended for customer-facing and, importantly, higher-ranking jobs. 

Presented at online conferences in 2021 and 2022, in Germany and in Vancouver, a full thematic analysis of comments from the full study’s sample will be presented in June at the CLA (Canadian Linguistics Association) Conference, held in Ottawa. Watch out for WHITL’s coverage of that event, coming soon. 

As for this publication, major recommendations from the report include (1) adding language to the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s grounds for discrimination, among others, which can be found in their full published work. It will also be available in the June issue of Language. 

Though linguistic protection is an idea covered in sections 15 (Equality Rights), and 23 (Minority language and educational rights) of the Canadian Charter, Jackson and Denis’ work puts a spotlight on the need for specific and targeted legislation to protect Canadians with non-Canadian accents in the workplace.

Real change in public policy and legislation which emerges from projects like these are some of the most exciting moments we get to watch as they evolve. Looking forward to seeing this work at the CLA Conference in June.

An important p.s.: Dr. Jackson will join the UofT Department of Linguistics in January 2025. We can't wait!

Elaine Gold Receives the Governor General's Meritorious Service Award

Director Elaine Gold at Glendon Hall

Elaine Gold, retired from the Linguistics Department, and head of the Canadian Language Museum (CLM) has been awarded the Governor-General's Meritorious Service Award. Congratulations!!

The co-Chair of the International Network of Language Museums has seen her museum's exhibits touring across the world, including and especially those pertaining to Indigenous languages. 

Director Gold's star-studded career since retirement from our Department includes speaking about Canadian Indigenous Language policies at the Austronesian Languages Revitalization Forum in Taipei, September 2023.

She and the CLM are now collaborating with the Indigenous Languages Research Foundation to translate their booklet, Indigenous Languages in Canada, into Mandarin. 

The CLM also hosted the art exhibit Anthem: Expressions of Canadian Identity during the fall, which will be presented from May to September at the Canadian Embassy's Prince Takamado Gallery in Tokyo. On June 20th, she, her team, and four artists, will attend the exhibition's reception. 

Director Gold giving her presentation in Taipei, September 2023.

Currently on display in the CLM is "Toronto Voices," an exhibit created as part of community outreach, exploring and detailing the identity of young Torontonians through their vocabulary in collaboration with The Spot, a drop-in center in the Jane-Finch area. 

This recognition of Gold's tireless devotion to languages of Canada, and especially of Toronto, is a fantastic credit to her work in both national and international linguistic communities.

We are so inspired by Gold's impact on reconciliation and language revitalization, especially in the field of Indigenous languages and cultures.

Professor Reynolds and the Controversy of More/Less: Paper Accepted at Journal of Linguistics

In May 2024, Adjunct Professor Brett Reynolds published his paper "Why more and less are never adverbs" in the Journal of Linguistics, arguing that the analysis of semantic information is useful for making categorical decisions about words and their meanings. 

This interesting work is somewhat of a discovery in the field of categorization. If we had all been agreed that timber wolves and grey wolves were distinct species, for example, Reynolds in his own words has come out with data which suggests that these are actually the same type of wolf living in different territories!

To read Reynolds' succinct twitter thread explaining the phenomenon, check out his Twitter: @brettrey3.

Figure 5of Reynolds' publication,
a k-means grouping between adjectives
and determinatives (pg. 26)

To summarize, words function differently according to context: the words "more" and "less" are categorized in most dictionaries as adverbs, as they can modify adjectives or adverbs, such as in the phrase "more/less quickly." However, they can also determine nouns, and in sentences such as "more/less food" are called determinatives.

Determinatives, (Ds) thus, don't just determine nouns, but they can also modify Advs. 

So why are "more" and "less" special? 

The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, (CGEL) refers to these two words as adverbs because they perform the same linguistic function as the comparative -er and superlative -est in ways that "much" and "little" don't. 

Reynolds disputes this distinction - you can't have "much massive," but you can have "much [and more] different." 

He suggests that you get overlaps that don't follow rigid rules because of semantic scales, and not because "much" and "more" are categorically different. 

Adjectives "prefer" different modifiers according to semantic rules such as size, similarity, and improvement.

Analyzing different adjectives and their modifiers in a corpus, Reynolds noticed an "almost perfect" split between more-adjectives (blue), much-adjectives (red), and adjectives that are more ambivalent (green).

Thus, Reynolds says that the "most thorough and consistent grammar of English," the CGEL, is only "mostly right" in their categorization of Adjs. and Ds. 

Determinatives shouldn't be listed twice, once with adverbs, and again with other Ds: rather, words like "more" and "less" are never adverbs. 

Stay tuned to see what changes come out of this publication, and weigh in with your own two cents!

Emilia Melara Successfully Defends their PhD Thesis! Congratulations, Doctor!

On May 27th, PhD Candidate Emilia Melara became the Linguistic Department's newest PhD! 

Completing their Final Oral Examination in linguistics, this moment followed years of an extensive research project on syntactic properties of Mauritian Creole. 

Their supervisor Elizabeth Cowper, along with the rest of the committee (Susana Bejar, Diane Massam, Keir Moulton), are so proud of Melara's work and excited to see what they do next. 

We didn't find a new picture, but check out the last time Emilia earned a linguistics degree!

Congratulations, Emilia!

New book about heritage languages

Cambridge University Press has just produced a fantastic collection of chapters about phonetics and phonology in a wide range of heritage languages. U of T is well-represented:

 

1 - Front Rounded Vowels of Heritage Korean in Northern China

By Yoonjung Kang, Na-Young Ryu, Jessamyn Schertz (and their co-authors  Sungwoo Han, Suyeon Yun) 

16 - Perception and Production of English and Portuguese Voiceless Stops by Heritage Learners

By Anabela Rato, Vanina Machado. (Dept. of Spanish & Portuguese)

as well as this output from the HLVC Project:

• 
  13 - Functional Load and Vowel Merger in Toronto Heritage Cantonese

  pp 280-301

• • By Holman Tse

Select 14 - Have Cantonese Tones Merged in Spontaneous Speech?

• 14 - Have Cantonese Tones Merged in Spontaneous Speech?

  pp 302-320

• • By Naomi Nagy, Holman Tse, James N. Stanford

Select 15 - Phonetics of Stop Voicing in Heritage and Homeland Polish

• 15 - Phonetics of Stop Voicing in Heritage and Homeland Polish

  pp 321-342

• • By Naomi Nagy, Paulina Łyskawa, Emily Moran, Mateusz Urban

Check out The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages on the CUP website. 

Huge thanks to Rajiv Rao for his amazing work editing this volume!