Naomi Nagy, Linguistics Chair, Publishes Book about Heritage Language Variation and Change!

On June 27th, 2024, Department of Linguistics Chair, Naomi Nagy, published her book, Heritage Languages: Extending variationist approaches. [Click link to purchase :-) or get it from UofT's library]. 

In Canada, the term, "heritage language" refers to a language learned in the home by children, if that language is not one of Canada's official languages (French, English). Half the people in Toronto are heritage-language speakers!

This book seeks to dispel stigma surrounding the use of one's heritage language by investigating cross-generational variation and change in conversations with 400+ speakers, in 8 different heritage languages, in Toronto. The findings reveal many similarities between heritage and homeland varieties.

"Introduc[ing] new methodology to help readers understand and apply variationist sociolinguistic approaches to quantitatively analyze spontaneous speech," this novel approach to heritage language research showcases how change in grammar of heritage languages resembles change patterns seen hegemonic, majority languages, contradicting findings of "simplification/attrition patterns in experimental heritage language studies." [quoted from the publicity blurbs]

Comparing patterns not only across languages, but across generations, this research quotes heritage speakers to give voice and pride to the use of their languages. 

Nagy presented some of this research at BAM's Language Research Day, as her talk on Heritage Language Variation and Change (HLVC), which we covered on the blog earlier in July. Other findings are on the project's webpage.

This book promises to be a veritable toolbox for those interested in learning about or researching heritage languages, dedicated to language revitalization.

Currently, the Department Chair is in Italy conducting research also relevant to this pursuit - about the variation in Franco-Provencal language varieties over time and space, and how to connect speakers of different varieties via social media.

 

 

The author reports that this book was much more fun to write than her dissertation!

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.

                                                                 """

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.

From Canada to Guatemala: Connecting Knowledge and People through ICM

We're delighted to feature this posting by guest blogger Ilona Semchuk!

 

MORE UofT Linguistics in Paris! 🇫🇷

The Structures Formelles du Langage (The Formal Language Structures Laboratory) hosted The Workshop on Copular Sentences: Prediction, Specification, Equation! This workshop took place in Paris, France from June 14th-15th 2022. 

Susana Bejar (Faculty) and Arsalan Kahnemuyipour (Faculty) presented their work on "Failing low, succeeding high: Agreement with specificational subjects." 

After all their hard work, Bejar and Kahnemuyipour got to enjoy an amazing sunset picnic under the Eiffel Tower with their colleagues! 🧺🥖🌅🍷

Live conferences are back - Naomi presented in Lisbon

 

The first Heritage Languages around the World conference brought together practitioners and linguists from sociolinguistics, formal linguistics, psycholinguistics, and language documentation to share knowledge about heritage languages through diverse lenses.

(L-to-R) Invited speakers Peter Austin, Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer, Jason Rothman, Organizer Ana Lúcia Santos, Invited speaker Naomi Nagy (UofT), Organizers Cristina Flores and Luis Amaral. (Photo by Anabela Rato.)

Other University of Toronto presenters include Anabela Rato & Vanina Machado (Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese), and Mona El Samaty (OISE).

The Humanities Building, Universidade de Lisboa

Naomi's talk:

“Promoting linguistic and cultural diversity through Heritage Language Sociolinguistics”

Naomi gets into her talk. (Photo by Anabela Rato)

April in Paris

 Spring in the Jardin de Luxembourg

Jetlag beakfast

A  bit of Puglia in Paris

In the shadow of the Panthéon

COVID spreader

My photo of the Eiffel Tour, and that of a Faetar friend, Eva!

Naomi Nagy (faculty) couldn't get enough teaching this year. So just as soon as she finished teaching at UofT, she rushed off to Paris, where she is teaching a short course, Language contact, Language Variation and Large Corpora, for France's LabEx Program.

While in the timezone, she's also giving 2 talks at the International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE), by Zooming to Vienna, and then keynoting at Heritage Languages around the World, in Lisbon. Stay tuned for a post on that in May!

 

But, while adjusting to jetlag and waiting for everything to start, she revisited some favourite Paris spots and was so happy to see signs of SPRING! 

Hunt Gardner to work at Oxford U

Matthew Hunter Gardner (PhD Alum) has accepted a departmental lecturer position at the University of Oxford! Gardner will be joining the company of sociolinguists  Deborah Cameron, Miriam Meyerhoff and Rosalind Temple over the course of the next two years! 

Gardner was at UofT from 2010-2017 working on his PhD on variation and change in Canadian English. Gardner used methods of theoretical phonology, acoustic and articulatory phonetics, and variationist sociolinguistics to study how dialects of Eastern Canada fit into the broader Canadian English Dialect.  Gardner was also an instructor for LIN100, LIN201 and LIN256 as well as a TA for LIN228, LINA01, LINA02, LIN351, LIN204 and LIN362  

Best of luck in your new position! 

Linguist in the Olympics!

Paul Poirier (MA) is proof that we linguists can also double as superstar athletes!

Paul and his partner Piper Gilles will be representing Canada for ice dancing in the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing! 

The Department of Linguistics will be cheering on Paul and Piper as they (ice) dance for the gold! 

Update from Naomi

Naomi Nagy (faculty) has recently brought the holiday spirit into her sabbatical research activities through two talks! One was at the University of Maine on December 4: "How a linguist thinks about chocolate." The other, at the University of Duisberg-Essen on November 14, was: "Intergenerational change in Toronto's heritage languages?" It was part of a special lecture series, as follows:

Workshop on Speech and Attitude Reports in Brazilian Languages

LFollowing their organization of the workshop on Complex Structures in Brazilian Languages at ABRALIN in May, Suzi Lima (faculty), Tonjes Veenstra (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft), and Hein van der Voort (Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi) joined forces on a second workshop: Speech and Attitude Reports in Brazilian Languages.

• Suzi herself presented: "Quotatives in Yudja."
• Guillaume Thomas (faculty) presented: "The landscape of attitude reports in Mbya."
• A talk on quotatives in Ye'kwana and Taurepang included two of the undergraduate students from the U of T who took part in Suzi's REP course over the summer - Octavia Andrade-Dixon (BA) and Guilherme Akio Teruya (BA) - as well as Suzi and the local professor who helped organize the REP course, Isabella Coutinho Costa.

(Thanks to Suzi for the photos!)

Suzi and Tonjes

Most of the workshop presenters!

Elan at COLMEX

Elan Dresher (faculty) was an invited speaker at the launch of a new Spanish translation and critical edition by Esther Herrera Zendeyas and Michael Herbert Knapp of N. S. Trubetzkoy's Grundzüge der Phonologie (1939) at El Colegio de México (COLMEX) on October 15, 2019. The event was attended by 150 people! The following day, Elan gave a talk: 'Foundations of Contrastive Hierarchy Theory' for COLMEX’s Centro de Estudios Lingüísticos y Literarios (CELL). (Photos courtesy of Elan.)

Elan (second from left) among the invited speakers.

A well-attended event!

Report from SPIPS

Peter Jurgec (faculty) and Radu Craioveanu (Ph.D.) were recently in Tromsø, Norway, for the Segmental Processes in Interaction with Prosodic Structure (SPIPS) workshop held on September 19 and 20. Thanks to Peter for sharing this photo!

Radu and Peter in front of the Tromsø Cathedral after the conference dinner.

Ex-APP 2019

LeAnn Brown (Ph.D. 2015, now at Aix-Marseille Université) and Naomi Nagy (faculty) reunited in Münster, Germany at the 4th Conference on Experimental Approaches to Perception and Production of Language Variation (Ex-APP 2019), which took place from September 26 through 28.

• LeAnn and Aix-Marseille Université colleagues Aron Arnold, Maria Candea, Oriana Reid-Collins, and James German presented "'Gender: it's complex': Including non-binary gender identities in experimental linguistic research."
• Naomi, along with Michol Hoffman (York University), Ronald Beline Mendes (University of São Paulo), and James Walker (BA 1989, now at La Trobe University) presented "How do ethnolects mark ethnic identity? An experimental approach."

They also enjoyed walking and biking around beautiful Münster!

Photo by Naomi.

Photo by Nancy Niedzielski (Rice University).

 

Photo by Nancy Niedzielski (Rice University).

Julie in Guatemala

Julie Doner (Ph.D. 2019) has just returned from the Guatemala Field Station run by the University of Maryland. With the four-week K'iche' Language School and Field Research Program, Julie and a number of colleagues completed two weeks of K'iche' language classes and two weeks of research.

Julie and her host family.

Julie and several of the other students in traditional Mayan clothes.

Julie giving a talk about her work (in Spanish!).

Doing elicitation.

Report from ICPhS 2019

The International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2019) has just wrapped up in Melbourne, Australia. Thanks to Na-Young Ryu (Ph.D. 2019, now at Pennsylvania State University) for this photo of several U of T folks!

Connie Ting (MA 2018), Lisa Sullivan (Ph.D.), Yoonjung Kang (faculty), Na-Young Ryu (Ph.D. 2019, now at
Pennsylvania State University), Kiranpreet Nara (Ph.D.), Alexei Kochetov (Ph.D.), and Kiranpreet's poster!

REP course in Brazil

Octavia Andrade-Dixon (BA), Greg Antono (BA), Guilherme Teruya (BA), Rildo Dias (faculty, Universidade Estadual de Roraima), Suzi Lima (faculty), Carlos Borges (faculty, Universidade Estadual de Roraima), and Isabella Coutinho (faculty, Universidade Estadual de Roraima)

Suzi Lima (faculty) is currently leading a REP (Research Excursion Program) course, 'Brazilian Indigenous Languages: Documentation, Language Maintenance, and Revitalization', in Boa Vista, Roraima, Brazil. The enrolled undergraduate students are receiving hands-on training in language documentation (working on indigenous languages of Roraima) and collaborative research under the direction of Suzi and colleagues at the Universidade Estadual de Roraima (UERR). Check out their blog to learn more about their adventures!

Diane, Yves, alumni, and friends in Japan

Diane Massam (faculty) and Yves Roberge (faculty, Department of French) gave talks in Tokyo this week, and also had the chance to meet up with good friends: Manami Hirayama (Ph.D. 2009, now at Seikei University), Midori Hayashi (Ph.D. 2011, now at Chukyo University) and Yuko Otsuka (Sophia University). They had lots of fun talking linguistics and touring Tokyo together!

Midori, Diane, Yves, and Manami in front of Tsukiji Hongan-ji Temple.

Manami, Yuko, and Yves in front of Akasaka Palace.

Midori, Yves, and Manami discussing recursion in a Tokyo café, as part of the SSHRC grant 'Development of noun-phrase
complexity in children' (on which Yves and faculty member Ana-Teresa Pérez-Leroux are co-PIs).

The main building of Manami's university, Seikei University.

Congratulations, LeAnn!

LeAnn Brown (MA 2009, Ph.D. 2015) has recently started a two-year postdoc position with the NoBiPho project, which is associated with Aix-Marseille Université/Laboratoire Parole et Langage (in Aix-en-Provence) and with the Nouvelle-Sorbonne (in Paris). She'll collaborate primarily with Maria Candea, Mariapaola D’Imperio, Julie Abbou, Aron Arnold, Luca Greco, Oriana Reid-Collins, and James German. The NoBiPho project explores voice and discourse in terms of production and perception across the gender spectrum, with a focus on non-binary speakers of English and of French. This follows up on LeAnn's 1.5 year postdoc position with James German on the GenSpecS project, which generated the corpus being used in the NoBiPho project. LeAnn's dissertation, supervised by Naomi Nagy (faculty), was on the perception of gender based on multiple vowel and fricative cues in English, and she's inspired about the next phase of research and about continuing to live in France.

Congratulations on the well-deserved new position, LeAnn, and all the best from all of us!

Congratulations, Peter!

Peter Jurgec (faculty) has been awarded an Erasmus+ Mobility Grant, which provides considerable funding for inter-institutional exchange. We will be sending a graduate student from our department to visit Slovenia next autumn; a graduate student from Ljubljana will visit us at the same time. Two of our faculty members will be visiting Slovenia (and vice versa) for a week each sometime in the next two years. We anticipate that the grant will further strengthen our department's interests in Slavic languages from a variety of perspectives and approaches. Congratulations to Peter on the recognition and on opening up this tremendously valuable opportunity for all of us!