In memoriam: Katherine Barber (1959-2021)

We are very saddened to have learned of the loss of Katherine Barber, prominent lexicographer of Canadian English and longtime friend and colleague of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto (as well as a singer alongside a proportion of us at St. Thomas's Anglican Church).

Jack Chambers (faculty), who served as Editorial Advisor for the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, has kindly shared this appreciation:

Katherine Barber, known to morning radio listeners in the 1990s as the Word Lady and to countless word-seekers as the editor of the splendid Canadian Oxford Dictionary, died on April 24 of brain cancer. She was 61.

Katherine was a frequent guest at the university. Her last visit was about ten years ago as part of an eclectic usage panel put together by Carol Percy, language maven of the English department, with journalist/cartoonist Warren Clements and others. By then, Oxford University Press had shut down its dictionary department in Canada, and Katherine was engrossed in ballet, her other great passion, as manager and guide for Tours en l’Air, taking balletomanes to performances by the leading companies around the world.

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, though only one of her accomplishments, was a phenomenon. When it was published in 1998, it was immediately adopted as the standard guidebook by the Canadian Press and most periodicals, and it sat on the Globe and Mail bestseller list for over a year. Its distinction was the result of Katherine's enacting lexicography in its purest form, by assembling readers to pore over documents and keep a record of every meaning and usage they found. That was the method established by the monumental Oxford English Dictionary, and it was laborious – 27 years for the first fascicle, 43 more years for all the rest (1884-1927). Since then, most dictionary-makers have cut corners by using existing databases (notably the OED), and adding as many original documents as practicable. Not Katherine. She trained five readers in her Don Mills office and in five years they pored over 8,000 publications – novels, newspapers, supermarket flyers, Canadian Tire catalogues, and much more. Among its 300,000 entries, they documented hundreds of Canadianisms (including "Canadianism"). Along with the expected "butter tart," "loonie," and "double double," they discovered the idiosyncratically Canadian verbs in "The caretaker will salt the steps," and "I’m going to shovel the driveway," and the homely "mitt" for fingerless woollies as well as the catcher's gear, and "scraper" applied to ice as well as mud or fish scales.

Though soft-spoken, she was the boss lady as well as the Word Lady. One morning, Katherine and I were guests on a CBC radio show called "And Sometimes Y." We were greeted at the station by Tom Howell, the "in-house word nerd" (his description) who had been trained in Katherine's atelier. "I’m surprised you have made it through seven shows," she told him, with a small grin, "before you got around to inviting me." In the company of two people who knew so well what she had accomplished, it just seemed a matter of fact.

Research Groups: Week of March 9-13

Note that this week's meeting of the Psycholinguistics Group is cancelled.

Thursday, March 12, 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM in SS 1078: Morphology Reading Group
Sahar Taghipour (Ph.D.) and Phil Monahan (faculty): "Paradigmatic gaps impact early morphological decomposition: Evidence from masked priming."

Friday, March 13, 1:15 PM - 2:45 PM in SS 560A: Fieldwork Group
Guest speaker: Bruce Connell (York University), on his work compiling a dictionary of Mambila (Mambiloid).

TULCON 13

This weekend is the 13th Toronto Undergraduate Linguistics Conference (TULCON 13), taking place primarily in SS1069, with the poster session in the fourth-floor hallway (by the department offices). The program is available here. Note that if you are interested in attending, you should register.

• Keren Rice (faculty) is giving one of the keynote speeches: "Theoretical and practical challenges of phonological variation."
• Pocholo Umbal (Ph.D.) is giving the other keynote speech: "Towards increasing equity, diversity, and inclusion in the linguistics classroom."

Talks by our undergrads are:

• Anissa Baird (BA): "I am not my body: A preliminary study of gender identity, gender expression, and their effects on sex-based and gender-based variability."
• Milena Injac (BA): "The use of the negative particle ne in Québec French news media."
• Christopher Legerme (BA): "Antimarkedness constraints in the lexicon?: Evidence from Haitian Creole."
• Ernest Leung (BA): "Derogatory terms in Hong Kong English's first dictionary and their sociocultural impacts."
• Justin Leung (BA): "The unified loss of verb particles in Medieval French: A quantitative analysis."
• Rosie Owen (BA): "Sweet songs and soft hearts: Metaphor in Cuzco Quechua."
• Jingshu Yao (BA): "Mom, talk to me in my mother tongue: SES and heritage language maintenance of East and South Asian Canadian community."

And posters:

• Ewen Lee (BA): "Fuzhou tone sandhi: Complications and implications of an OT account."
• Ryan MacDonald (BA): "Onset and coda repair in phonetic loanwords from English into Mandarin Chinese."

Suzi in BBC News

Suzi Lima (faculty) is one of several linguists interviewed in the BBC about how minority languages handle specialized scientific/technical vocabulary that originated in majority languages.

Visiting scholars: Robert Grošelj and Tamara Mikolič Južnič (University of Ljubljana)

Peter Jurgec's Erasmus+ Mobility Grant from the EU Commission has allowed for a two-year period of research and teaching exchange. In conjunction with this, we are delighted to welcome two visiting linguists: Robert Grošelj and Tamara Mikolič Južnič, both Assistant Professors in the Department of Translation at the University of Ljubljana. Between them, they will be giving eight talks, as follows. All current departmental members and friends are welcome!

1. Monday, January 20, from 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in OISE 5230: "A contrastive look at linguistic gender categories: Slovene and Italian names of public offices" (Robert Grošelj):

The contrastive lecture on the representation of linguistic gender categories – grammatical, lexical, referential and social gender – in Slovene and Italian will focus on personal nouns denoting selected public offices such as Slovene minister, ministrica ‘minister-male, minister-female’, župan, županja ‘mayor-male, mayor-female’ and the synonymous Italian il ministro, la ministra, il sindaco, la sindaca (sindachessa). Both languages have grammatically and lexically feminine and masculine personal nouns; referential gender of masculine nouns is wider, as they can refer to male, male and/or female referents, in Italian also exclusively to female referents. The agreement is controlled mainly by grammatical (and the corresponding lexical) gender, although in some cases (cf. gender exclusive categories) the agreement can be triggered also by referential gender. The selected public offices could be held by women only in the 1940s; the men are still the predominant holders of these offices (judges being the exception) which indicates their male social gender.

2. Monday, January 20, from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM in OISE 5230: "Connectors in spoken and written discourse in the multimodal corpus EPTIC" (Tamara Mikolič Južnič):

With its multimodal and multilingual design, the EPTIC corpus fosters a range of different research perspectives, involving interpreting and translation and different types of comparisons of the different combinations of subcorpora. It consists of original speeches from the European Parliament, their written verbatim reports, their Slovene interpretations and the translations of the verbatim reports. The initial research on EPTIC-SI, the Slovene component of EPTIC, has focused on interpreted discourse in contrast with the corresponding translations and the corresponding source texts. In this lecture, the aim is to expand this research paradigm, by using data from EPTIC-SI and contrasting it with a corpus of spoken Slovene (GOS) and a corpus of written Slovene (KRES), to shed light on the differences between the spoken and the written varieties of Slovene. The aim is to explore the differences in frequency in the two corpora, the differences between interpreted and freely spoken texts and the differences between translations and original texts in the target language.

3. Tuesday, January 21, from 12 PM to 1 PM in the department lounge (with pizza and pop provided): "Nominalization in Italian and Slovene: A systemic functional linguistics view" (Tamara Mikolič Južnič):

The lecture focuses on a contrastive analysis of nominalization in Italian and Slovene within the framework of systemic functional grammar as described by M.A.K. Halliday and his colleagues. Nominalization is viewed as a type of grammatical metaphor whereby processes which are congruently realized by verbs are metaphorically realized by nouns expressing the same process as those verbs. The frequency of nominalization varies greatly among languages as well as among genres within a language, and may cause problems when two languages interact, e.g. in translation, especially when one of the two languages seems less prone to use this kind of grammatical metaphor than the other. In the present study, an analysis is carried out of a 2.5 million token parallel corpus of Italian source texts and their Slovene translations, particularly with regard to the different translation equivalents that may appear in the translated texts, which is partly dependent of the type of process involved.

4. Wednesday, January 22, from 12 PM to 1 PM in the department lounge (with pizza and pop provided): "Vojvodina Rusyn language: A short presentation of a South Slavic microlanguage and its phoneme inventory" (Robert Grošelj):

The main aim of the lecture will be the presentation of Vojvodina Rusyn as a specific South Slavic (literary) microlanguage. The introductory part of the lecture will focus on the concept of Slavic (literary) microlanguage, introduced and developed by the Russian-Estonian linguist A. Duličenko; the analysis of the concept will take into account its defining characteristics, geographical classification and sociolinguistic parameters (name, vernacular base, time period of the literary tradition, script, time period of codification, functional status). The following part will be dedicated to the presentation of Vojvodina Rusyn, a South Slavic microlanguage spoken in Vojvodina (Serbia); the analysis will focus on Vojvodina Rusyn history, language system, literary production, standardisation and contemporary sociolinguistic issues. In the last part of the lecture, the Vojvodina Rusyn phoneme inventory will be briefly analysed.

5. Wednesday, January 22, 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in OISE 5230: "A corpus study of pronominal subjects in translated and non-translated texts" (Tamara Mikolič Južnič):

Pronominal subject use constitutes a potential challenge in translation because of cross-linguistic differences: while the subject must be expressed in non-null subject languages, this is not necessary in null subject languages. The aim of the lecture is twofold: first, to show that the type of source language influences the frequency of personal pronouns in translation, and second, to establish whether translations into a null subject language differ from comparable target language originals in terms of pronominal subject use. The study is based on the analysis of a 625,000-word corpus comprising original and translated popular science texts in Slovene and the corresponding source texts in English and Italian. The results confirm that pronominal subjects are more frequent in translations from English, a non-null subject language; furthermore, they are more frequent in translations than in comparable originals. Atypical cohesive patterns are identified in translations and possible reasons for their presence are explored.

6. Wednesday, January 22, 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM in OISE 5230: "Italian pronunciation in dictionaries for young learners" (Robert Grošelj):

The aim of the lecture will be the representation of Italian pronunciation features in dictionaries for Slovene young learners. The analysis will include five categories of phonetic-phonological features, important for pronunciation learning: pronunciation guides, phonetic transcription, phonemes, consonant length and accent. The representation of these features in a dictionary for young learners should be clear and coherent, in some cases (especially in dictionaries for the youngest users) accompanied by audio pronunciations. After a brief presentation of foreign language/second language pronunciation teaching and learning and the role dictionaries play in it, the Italian pronunciation in Slovene dictionaries for young learners will be analysed. The dictionaries analysed are incomplete with regard to the presentation of pronunciation features: most of them do not include audio recordings; phonological transcriptions of the entries and pronunciation guides – when a dictionary includes them – are incomplete; some dictionaries do not include any useful information about Italian pronunciation which limits the possibility of their use.

7. Thursday, January 23, 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM in room 418 of the Faculty of Social Work: "Structural gaps and how to bridge them – the case of the nominalized infinitive" (Tamara Mikolič Južnič):

The lecture will present a textual shift that was observed in a comparison between the Italian nominalized infinitive and its Slovene translations. The nominalized infinitive essentially allows a process to be worded as a nominal structure, while (at least partly) retaining its verbal nature; in the framework of systemic functional grammar, it is explained as a type of grammatical metaphor, i.e. nominalization. The absence of a parallel structure in the grammar of Slovene requires the translator to look for other means of expression. A corpus analysis, carried out with the aid of a parallel corpus which comprises both literary and non-literary Italian texts and their Slovene translations, shows that the dual (nominal and verbal) nature of the nominalized infinitive is reflected in two main types of translation equivalents and several minor ones. It is argued that the strategies displayed in the choice of these translation equivalents can be viewed as instances of obligatory explicitation, either norm-governed or strategic. Thus the main goals of the paper are to identify the textual shifts and strategies found in the parallel corpus and to see whether they can be explained as manifestations of explicitation.

8. Thursday, January 23, 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM in room 418 of the Faculty of Social Work: "The supine and the supine clause in South Slavic languages" (Robert Grošelj):

The topic of the lecture will be the evolution of the supine (a nonfinite verb form used after verbs of movement, indicating their goal) and the supine clause in South Slavic languages. The analysis of the historical and contemporary language situations shows a gradual loss of the supine from the South-East toward the North-West. The supine, still present in Old Church Slavonic, has been completely replaced by the analytic da-clause in Bulgarian and Macedonian, and by the infinitive in Štokavian (in most dialects) and Čakavian. On the other hand, the supine is still preserved in Kajkavian and Slovenian, although the situation varies diachronically and diatopically (e.g. in some dialects it has merged with the infinitive). The lecture will present, in addition, a number of clause types (the final finite clause, the infinitive clause, the za ‘for’ + infinitive construction) that replaced the supine clause or still compete with it in South Slavic languages.

Derek in JSTOR Daily

Derek Denis (faculty) is one of several linguists interviewed in an article for JSTOR Daily on the subject of how linguists are using UrbanDictionary.com.

21st Inuit Studies Conference

The 21st Inuit Studies Conference took place at the Université du Québec à Montréal from October 3 through 6, with Richard Compton (Ph.D. 2012, now at l'Université du Québec à Montréal) at the helm of the organising committee. Two current department members made presentations about Inuit linguistics:

• Alana Johns (faculty): "Inuttut kautâmat ukauset, Inuttitut everyday words: New app!"
• Julien Carrier (Ph.D.): "Century of changes."

Canadian Language Museum exhibit opening

Following a preview at this year's meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, the Canadian Language Museum, under the direction of retired faculty member Elaine Gold, is launching its latest exhibit: 'Beyond Words: Dictionaries and Indigenous Languages'. The opening is at the permanent home of the Canadian Language Museum at Glendon College, today from 7 PM through 9 PM. More details here.

Sali in the Huffington Post

Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty) is in the Huffington Post this weekend, talking about the task of getting more Canadian words/meanings into the Oxford English Dictionary.

Sali and Bridget in the Bulletin

Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty) is interviewed in this week's U of T Bulletin about her new paper with Bridget Jankowski (Ph.D. 2013; staff) on dialectical patterns in Canadian English surrounding 'goodness', 'gosh', 'jeez', 'OMG', and other present-day English exclamations originating in ways of referring, either strongly or euphemistically, to deities.

Sali in the U of T Magazine

Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty) has been interviewed for the University of Toronto Magazine about the task of adding more Canadian words to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Canadian Language Museum exhibit on lexicography in Indigenous communities

Under the continued steady direction of founder Elaine Gold (faculty), the Canadian Language Museum's new exhibit, 'Beyond Words: Dictionaries and Indigenous Languages', will be on display for the first time at the 2019 annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, being held at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver from June 1 through 3. The exhibit will be free to view for all and is located in the Level 2 Foyer of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

This exhibit highlights the complex relationship between Indigenous languages and dictionaries over several centuries, from word lists and dictionaries developed for exploration, colonization, conversion, and assimilation purposes, to online language materials being developed by Indigenous communities to transmit the elders' language knowledge to today's youth.

For more details, see the Facebook page.

Ngarinyman to English Dictionary

The Ngarinyman to English Dictionary is to be released in July 2019 by Aboriginal Studies Press. This project has been a major collaborative endeavour; it has involved Ngarinyman people from several different communities, linguists, an anthropologist, and an ethnobiologist.

Ngarinyman is an Aboriginal language of the northern Victoria River District in the Northern Territory (Australia). Many Ngarinyman people live in Yarralin, Bulla Camp, Amanbidji (Kildurk) and around Timber Creek. The Ngarinyman to English Dictionary contains Ngarinyman words with English translations, illustrations and detailed encyclopaedic information about plants, animals and cultural practices. Also included is a guide to Ngarinyman grammar and an English index. This volume is ideal for both beginners and advanced speakers of Ngarinyman, for translators and interpreters, and for anyone interested in learning more about Ngarinyman language and culture. The Ngarinyman to English Dictionary is a part of the AIATSIS Indigenous Language Preservation: Dictionaries Project. This project is a response to the alarming rates of language loss in Australia, and aims to support the publication of Indigenous languages dictionaries. A dictionary contributes to language maintenance, supporting written texts of all genres including important literacy development resources. Dictionaries are a valuable addition to the tool kit of language learners, educators, interpreters and translators. The Dictionaries Project will produce a number of much-needed, high-quality dictionaries of Indigenous languages, which will contribute to community efforts to revitalise and strengthen their languages.

Among the four compilers was our own Jessica Denniss (Ph.D.). In conjunction with the work, Jessica also recently gave the keynote lecture at TULCON: "The mutual value of linguistic work with Indigenous communities: A perspective from Ngarinyman (Australia)." Congratulations to Jessica and to everyone else involved with this milestone!

New paper: Rice (2018)

Keren Rice (faculty) has a new paper out, "Reflections on documenting the lexicon", in special publication #15 of Language Documentation & Conservation.

The lexicon presents unique challenges in language documentation. This reflection reviews some of those challenges, focusing on two major areas, what I have learned over time about what is important to document and the creation of dictionaries. Throughout I stress the value of considering the lexicon broadly, and, in the situation that linguists are involved, of working closely with speakers and community members in all stages of decision making, from what to document to how to spell, to how to represent meanings. N. Scott Momaday writes of words as medicine, and this is important to keep in mind in lexical documentation – one is engaging with worldview. The responsibility then of documenting the lexicon is large, and the stakes are high, given how words give deep insight into ways of being.

ICLDC 6

The 6th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation is taking place from February 28 to March 3 at the Hawaiʻi Imin International Conference Center in Honolulu, hosted by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Notably, Luke West (MA 2015, now at the University of California, Los Angeles), Shay Hucklebridge (MA 2016, now at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Rosa Mantla (Tlicho Community Service Agency), Lucy Lafferty (Tlicho Community Service Agency), Tammy Steinwand (Tlicho Community Service Agency) and Nick Welch (former postdoc, now at Memorial University of Newfoundland) are presenting "Creating video games for language revitalization and pedagogy," based on a project developed here, originally as part of Nick's LIN458: Revitalizing Languages class in the autumn of 2013.

Keren Rice (faculty) is part of a presentation with colleagues from the Sahtu Renewable Resources Board: Faun Rice, Walter Bezha, Deborah Simmons, Jordan Lennie, Shelby Lennie, and Michael Neyelle:
"From Dene Kedə to Dene Ts’ı̨ lı̨: Reflecting on 25 years of change in the Sahtú region, Northwest Territories, Canada."

Guillaume Thomas (faculty) and Raphael Finkel (University of Kentucky):
"Building a Mbyá treebank."

Maida Percival (Ph.D.), with Sonya Bird (University of Victoria), Sonya Charlie (Simon Fraser University), Rae Anne Claxton (Simon Fraser University), Swutthus Harvey George (Simon Fraser University), Sq'utxulenuxw George Seymour (Simon Fraser University):
"Seeing speech: Teaching and learning Hul’q’umi’num’ pronunciation with Praat."

Tyler Peterson (former faculty, now at Arizona State University) is leading a workshop with colleagues Rolando Coto-Solano (Victoria University of Wellington), Samantha Wray (New York University, Abu Dhabi), and Sally Akevai (Ake) Nicholas (Auckland University of Technology):
"Accelerating the analysis of your audio recordings with Untrained Forced Speech Alignment."

Richard Compton (Ph.D. 2012, now at l'Université du Québec à Montréal) and Emily Kudlak (Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre):
"Lessons from collaborating on an Inuinnaqtun dictionary."

Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins (MA 1984, now at the University of Victoria), with Martin Holmes (University of Victoria) and Sarah Kell (University of Victoria):
"Planning to stop before you start: Ending a digital dictionary project."

Former postdoc Betsy Ritter (now at the University of Calgary), with Heather Bliss (Simon Fraser University) and Noreen Breaker (Siksika Nation):
"A’tsotsspommootsiiyo’p Niitsitapi’powahsin."

Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins (MA 1984, now at the University of Victoria), with Marion Caldecott (University of Victoria), John Lyon (California State University, Fresno), Janet Leonard (University of Victoria), Kyra Fortier (University of Victoria), and Karsten Koch (University of Alberta) are presenting a poster:
"Towards a prosody teaching toolkit: Developing methodology for a real-time intonation visualization component."

New dictionary co-edited by Richard Compton

Congratulations to Richard Compton (Ph.D. 2012, now at l'Université du Québec à Montréal) and co-editor Emily Kudlak on the release of their Kangiryuarmiut Inuinnaqtun: Uqauhiitaa Numiktitirutait Dictionary, newly available from Nunavut Arctic College.

From the publisher's description:

This is the most comprehensive dictionary of any Western Canadian dialect of the Inuit language. It contains over 5,000 Inuinnaqtun entries and subentries with their translations, over 3,000 example sentences, and a large inventory of suffixes.

Alana Johns: National Achievement Award, Canadian Linguistic Association (2018)

Alana Johns has been announced as one of the two 2018 laureates of the National Achievement Award from the Canadian Linguistic Association. She will give a plenary talk at the CLA's Annual Meeting at the University of Regina at the end of May. Congratulations on this wonderful honour, Alana! Here is the CLA's announcement:

Dr L. Alana Johns has had a substantial impact on three areas of Canadian linguistics: theoretical morphosyntax, comparative research on Inuit dialects, and community work in language revitalization, maintenance, and documentation. Dr Johns is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto, where she also served as Director of Aboriginal Studies/the Centre of Aboriginal Initiatives. She spent the first part of her career at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. At both institutions, she inspired, trained and mentored many linguistics students, some of whom she brought to northern regions of Canada to engage in fieldwork. Today, an impressive number of her students have distinguished careers as scholars and as collaborators with Indigenous communities. The core of Dr. Johns’ theoretical contributions lies in her research on the morphosyntax of Inuktitut, specifically in her work on noun incorporation and on syntactic properties that underlie ergativity. Originating in her PhD dissertation and expanded throughout her career, this influential research has redefined our understanding of cross-linguistic variation in the domain of argument structure, agreement, tense, and case assignment. Furthermore, it has contributed to our knowledge of dialectal variation within the Inuit languages. Dr Johns has also collaborated with other scholars on issues such as phonological change, sentence prosody, and receptive bilingualism in Labrador Inuttitut heritage speakers. A strong advocate of participatory research between linguists and Indigenous communities, Dr Johns has contributed tremendously to creating a space for fruitful collaborations based on mutual trust and on the needs of the communities. In doing so, she has also contributed to redefining attitudes toward Indigenous people. In her work, she has trained and mentored community members to become Inuit language specialists. Her involvement in collecting and transcribing Inuktitut stories has contributed to preserving and enhancing the collective memory of the Inuit. Her language maintenance projects have produced grammars and teaching manuals on Inuktitut and Inuttitut as well as research documents such as the Dictionary of Utkuhiksalingmiut Inuktitut Postbase Suffixes (co-authored with Jean Briggs and Conor Cook), which is foundational to future revitalization efforts. In sum, Dr Johns has been a driving force in the study and promotion of the Inuit dialects of Canada. Her ongoing efforts to support language documentation and revitalization have enhanced the status of Indigenous languages and have served the field of linguistics. We are very pleased to recognize her advocacy and inspirational work by awarding her the National Achievement Award of the Canadian Linguistic Association for 2018.

Alana Johns' retirement: messages from some colleagues and former students

On July 1st, 2017, Alana Johns is retiring from the Department of Linguistics. A professor here since 1996, Alana works on morphosyntax, with a focus on Inuktitut. But instead of me telling you about the importance of her contributions to the field and to the people she's worked with, you should hear it from some of her Inuktitut colleagues and former students.

Michelle Yuan (BA 2012, MA 2013, now at MIT) - website

I met Alana in Fall 2009 after enrolling in ABS230—Introduction to Inuktitut, which she co-taught that year with the late Saila Michael. I was in my second year of undergrad and had no idea who Alana was or that I'd end up a linguist in part because of her. Alana has been an amazing advisor and teacher these past eight years, and it has been an honour learning from her. She's also one of the funniest people I've ever met. I'm extremely grateful to have met her, and I think the field of linguistics has been greatly enriched by her work. Happy retirement, Alana!

Michelle and Alana at MA convocation

Joan Dicker (Labrador School Board) - website

Dear Alana
Congratulations on your retirement
Thankyou for all that you did with our Inuktitut language
Thankyou for being my professor in the Linguistics MUN courses that I took
Thank you for giving me good marks hahaa
Thankyou for giving me the opportunity to attend a language conference with you way out to Flaggstaff Arizona even though the first night we shared a room, you kept me up aaaall night with your snoring lol hahaa
Thankyou for bringing me here to Toronto to take part in this very worthwhile Inuktitut language and linguistics workshop and to join you in your retirement party
Nakummesuak Alana Ai..SilakKijaKattanialikKutit uvlu tamât
Ilitagijait Joan Dicker

Alana and the group from Nunatsiavut at the airport for the Inuktitut Language and Linguistics Workshop

Joan and Alana at a Canadian Language Museum exhibit

Richard Compton (MA 2004, PhD 2012, now at l'Université de Québec à Montréal) - website

I’m very lucky to have had Alana as a supervisor. It was her work with Inuktitut speakers that originally got me interested in the language and her bringing me up north at the end of my MA that set me on the course to where I am today. Throughout my MA and my PhD, she was both patient and supportive, always having interesting and insightful questions and comments on my work. I also have fond memories of fieldwork trips with her and other students to both Iqaluit and Baker Lake, as well as a trip to Ulukhaktok that has led to a very fruitful collaboration with an Inuinnaqtun speaker on a dictionary project. From writing letters and reading drafts, to sharing ideas and encouraging me, she was always there for me and her other students.

One particular set of memories that stand out begin with a rainy day in Baker Lake with Alana, Midori, and Conor, when we were invited out ice fishing with a local family. Alana and I had decided to stay in town and work, but we walked down to the shore with Midori and Conor and watched them take a little dingy out to the ice. It was July so the ice was receding and locals were riding their snow machines at full speed to skip over the water between the ice and the shore. As Midori and Conor set off in the cold rain, I distinctly remember a bit of glee on our part that we could go back inside where it was warm and get some more sleep and a hot drink. However, their successful return that night, with two Arctic char in hand, convinced us to join them the next day. We rode by snowmobile over the still mostly frozen lake to a tiny cabin up a hill from the shore. There on the ice, in view of the cabin, but quite a distance away, we fished in pre-drilled holes with fishing jigs made of caribou bone. As Alana rode up the hill to the cabin, leaving Conor and me to fish, I’ll never forget her reminder that arctic wolves would be white and thus blend into the surroundings, so we’d probably never see them coming… Despite her warning, all survived—except a goose the children shot out of the sky, and then proceeded to make honk with chest compressions.

Richard ice-fishing

Alana ice-fishing

Taking a picture of Alana taking a picture

Alana and colleagues at the Inuktitut Language and Linguistics Workshop (May 30-31, 2017)

Catharyn Anderson (Special Advisor to the President on Aboriginal Affairs, Memorial University of Newfoundland)

I first knew of Alana before I ever met her in person.  When I did my first Linguistics courses at Memorial in 1996/97, I had heard her name as someone great who did work on Inuktitut.  As a young Inuk undergraduate student, I was disappointed to learn that she had left Memorial for UofT.  However, after I graduated with my BA, I went back home to Nunatsiavut to work with the Cultural Centre in the area of language revitalization, and I would eventually meet and work with Alana.  She invited me to collaborate with her on a paper for a conference in Quebec City, which was a great learning experience and opportunity for me.  This was the first of many times that we worked together.  I know that Alana developed many strong relationships and friendships with people in Nunatsiavut, and I am happy to include myself amongst those.  Alana, thank you for the work you did on Inuttitut, for your support of community language projects, and your support of the people doing them.  I wish you a very happy retirement, and all the best for the years ahead!  Nakummemagialuk, Catharyn

Julien Carrier (current PhD student)

Congratulations on your retirement and thank you for everything you’ve taught me! You are one of the reasons why I moved to Toronto to do a PhD in linguistics, and your guidance and all your support have been really helpful. May all the years ahead bring you joy and relaxation… and maybe even more time for doing research on Inuktitut! Wishing you all the best! Julien

Bettina Spreng (PhD 2012, now at the University of Saskatchewan) - website

What I appreciate about Alana is how approachable she is. I came to Toronto having read her thesis for my MA in Germany while not having much background in Generative Grammar. I was quite intimidated since I had understood maybe half of it.

She made me feel welcome and one minute into our first meeting, she had made me feel completely comfortable. She is incredibly supportive of her students and that is something that I try to be with my students. Her enthusiasm for her work and her trust in her students is something I admire very much. I will always remember what she said after I came back after taking a break from the program to ask her if she would support me finishing after all. She said "I always knew it!" I don't think I ever told her how much that trust meant to me. So, here it is. Thank you, Alana.

Alana Johns and colleagues in the Star

Today's edition of the Toronto Star has an article on the publication of the Dictionary of Utkuhiksalingmiut Inuktitut Postbase Suffixes, featuring faculty member Alana Johns and the rest of the team that put the dictionary together. Congratulations to all!

(Thanks to Keren Rice for pointing this out.)

Alana Johns in Arts & Science News and the Bulletin

Faculty member Alana Johns has been interviewed for the news page of the U of T Faculty of Arts & Science about the Dictionary of Utkuhiksalingmiut Inuktitut Postbase Suffixes.

Note that the Dictionary itself, completed this past summer, can be purchased via Amazon.ca.

Update: The article has also appeared in U of T News more generally. Thanks to Jack Chambers for noticing this!