Derek at TEDxUofT

Derek Denis (faculty) is giving a talk for TEDxUofT on Friday, January 29: "On the meaning and function of slang in our linguistically diverse city." The event, featuring several speakers, will run from 1:30 PM to 4 PM. Note that registration is free but that you will need a ticket in order to attend: see the bottom of the page.

New paper: Konnelly (2020)

Lex Konnelly (Ph.D.) has a new paper in Language and Communication, 75: "Brutoglossia: Democracy, authenticity, and the enregisterment of connoisseurship in 'craft beer talk'."

Building on Silverstein's (2003, 2016) oinoglossia (wine talk), this paper argues for a closely related genre: brutoglossia, (craft) beer talk. Drawing on a corpus of craft beer and brewery descriptions from Toronto, Canada, I argue that the appropriation of wine terminology and tasting practices (re)configures beer brewers and drinkers as ‘elite’ and ‘classy.’ The ‘specialist’ lexical and morphosyntactic components of wine discourse provide the higher order of indexicality through which the emergent technical beer terminology is to be interpreted. Together, the descriptions can be read as fields of indexicalities, mapping linguistic and semiotic variables associated with a particular social object: beer. 

Report from LSA 2020 and so on

The 94th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from January 2 through 5, and alongside them the annual meetings of seven 'sister societies' as usual. More than two dozen current U of T linguists and alumni were involved, including all of these folks!

Volunteers: Samuel Jambrović (Ph.D., Department of Spanish and Portuguese), Greg Antono (MA), and Rosie Owen (BA). (Photo courtesy of Greg.)

Presenters: Tim Gadanidis (Ph.D.), Karlien Franco (postdoc), Lauren Bigelow (Ph.D.), and Dan Milway (Ph.D. 2019). (Photo by Kenji Oda.)

 Alumni: Ailís Cournane (Ph.D. 2015, now at New York University), Derek Denis (faculty, and also Ph.D. 2015),
Dan Milway (Ph.D. 2019), and Kenji Oda (Ph.D. 2012, now at Syracuse University).

Happy many birthdays!

Around the table, left to right: Ph.D. students Radu Craioveanu, Fiona Wilson,
Jessica Yeung, Lex Konnelly, and Robert Prazeres (photo by Marisa Brook).

Our department has a statistically improbable number of people born in October. On Friday, October 18, in order to celebrate, ardent baker Emily Blamire (Ph.D.) brought along a vegan pumpkin cake and we had a birthday party for a whole bunch of us.

Freaky Friday

Did someone tell Marisa Brook (faculty) and Sadaf Kalami (MA) to try to dress as similarly as possible on Friday the 4th? Nope, but Gabrielle Dumais (MA) pointed out that it sure looked like it!

Congratulations, Dan!

Dan Milway successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, "Explaining the resultative parameter," on Wednesday, April 24, 2019. On the committee were Elizabeth Cowper (supervisor), Michela Ippolito, Diane Massam, Susana Béjar, Nick LaCara, and external examiner Norbert Hornstein (University of Maryland). Congratulations, Dr. Milway!

Susana, Nick, Michela, Elizabeth, Dan, Diane, and Norbert. (Photo by Jennifer McCallum.)

Lunch for graduating seniors

On Wednesday, April 3, we held a catered lunch in the lounge to celebrate our undergraduate students completing either a specialist or a major in our department. This semester, we are about to proudly launch 114 new alumni out into the world: 15 specializing, 65 majoring, and 34 minoring in linguistics. (Photos by Naomi Nagy and Deem Waham.) Thanks to Deem, to the faculty who helped celebrate, and to everyone who joined us!

Undergraduate Coordinator Naomi Nagy (faculty) congratulates the attendees.

Cake(s)!

Faculty, very ready to celebrate the students!

 

Intense discussion with the Department Chair.

Linguistics is funny!

One of the cakes even came with a tiny diploma...just for you.

All our best to all our graduates!

Canadian Linguistics Annual Undergraduate Symposium 2019

Two of our undergraduate students presented at this year's Canadian Linguistics Annual Undergraduate Symposium (CLAUSE̥), which took place on Saturday, March 16, in Montréal, cohosted by McGill University and Concordia University. Dania A. (BA) presented joint work with Ibrahim El-Rayes (BA) and Silvia Nguyen (BA): "Sorry not sorry: Politeness discourse markers sorry, thank you, and please in Canadian and British English". Gregory Antono (BA) presented "Más allá del supermercado: Language attitudes of Chinese-Argentine youth." (Thanks to Dania for the photos!)

Dania and Greg.

Dania's talk.

Faculty/staff holiday lunch

Our faculty and staff enjoyed a holiday lunch at Her Father's Cider Bar and Kitchen on Friday, December 14. Thanks to the restaurant and its employees for their hospitality (and for taking the photo!).

Clockwise around the table from left: Sali A. Tagliamonte, Jack Chambers, Yoonjung Kang, Naomi Nagy, Phil Monahan, Barend Beekhuizen, Jessamyn Schertz, Cristina Cuervo, Susana Béjar, Aleksei Nazarov, Marisa Brook, Elaine Gold, Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, Nathan Sanders, Jennifer McCallum, Diane Massam, and Derek Denis.

Beginning-of-semester party

We kicked off the new academic year on Friday, September 14, with a lively party! Our chair, Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty), said some introductory words and led the mini-reception for our newest Ph.D. recipient, Jim Smith, who had just successfully defended his dissertation. Yoonjung Kang (faculty) welcomed the new graduate students, postdocs, visiting scholars, and faculty. She also congratulated the 14 students who have recently completed graduate degrees in our department (3 Ph.D. students and 11 MAs over the last few months). Jack Chambers (faculty) gave a toast. Kinza Mahoon (Ph.D.) on behalf of the Linguistics Graduate Course Union, presented the awards for Excellence in TA Supervision for 2017-18: the award went to Nathan Sanders (faculty), with an honorable mention to Derek Denis (faculty).

Thanks to everyone who assisted with the logistics. Here's to a wonderful 2018-19 for all!

Yoonjung makes introductions and re-introductions.

Celebrating Nathan (and Derek).

Celebrating Jim.

Congratulations, Jim!

Jim Smith successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, "Sociophonetic variation and change of Northern Ontario English vowels", on Friday, September 14, 2018. The committee consisted of Sali A. Tagliamonte (supervisor), Alexei Kochetov, Aaron Dinkin (now at San Diego State University), Jack Chambers, Derek Denis, and external examiner Charles Boberg (McGill University). Congratulations, Dr. Smith! Enjoy your ongoing retirement on the West Coast, and keep in touch!

Derek, Jim, Sali, Charles, and Jack. (Photo by Marisa Brook.)

Congratulations, Clarissa!

Clarissa Forbes successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, "Persistent ergativity: Agreement and splits in Tsimshianic", on Tuesday, September 4, 2018. On the committee were Susana Béjar (supervisor), Alana Johns, Diane Massam, Elizabeth Cowper, Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, and external examiner Jessica Coon (McGill University). Congratulations, Dr. Forbes!

Clarissa is moving on to the University of Arizona, having been awarded a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship to be taken up under the supervision of faculty syntactician Heidi Harley. Best of luck, Dr. Forbes; we're so proud!

(Photos by Emily Clare.)

Alana, Diane, Clarissa, Susana, and Elizabeth.

Good times with cohortmates (Dan Milway, Emily Blamire, and Tomohiro Yokoyama).

Celebrating Dr. Forbes!

Prevailing sentiments.

Linguistics Garden Party 2018

Sali and Naomi recently hosted a mid-summer garden party to celebrate the department's successes over the past year, with special attention on Keren's contributions to the department as she steps down as department chair.

Lunch hosted by Keren

Keren Rice, our outgoing department chair, recently held a lunch in the lounge to thank everyone who's helped make the department work during her term. Of course, she very much deserves our thanks too!

Report from LabPhon 16

The 16th Conference of the Association for Laboratory Phonology was recently held (June 19-22, 2018) at the University of Lisbon in Portugal. A list of the presentations from our department is below. Scroll down for lots of pictures from the conference and city! (The pictures are clickable for higher resolution.)

Yoonjung Kang (faculty), Suyeon Yun (Ehwa Womans University): Acquisition of Second Dialect Features by North Koreans in Seoul

Rachel Soo (MA), Philip Monahan (faculty): Lexical-phonological representations of tone in Cantonese heritage and native speakers

Jessamyn Schertz (faculty), Kara Hawthorne (Mississippi): Sentential Context Effects on Phonetic Categorization in Talkers with Non-Native and Regional Accents

Yoonjung Kang (faculty), Suyeon Yun (Ehwa Womans University): Dialectal variation and sound change in Korean nasals

Patrick Murphy (PhD), Philip Monahan (faculty): Partial Contrast, Dialect Exposure, and the Perception of Canadian Raising

Alexei Kochetov (faculty), Katherine Sung (BA): Flapping and Linguopalatal Contact Differences in Canadian English /t/ and /d/

Núria Gavaldà (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Juli Cebrian (PhD 2002, now at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Angelica Carlet (Universitat Internacional de Catalunya), Celia Gorba (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona): Evaluating the effects of L2 vowel perceptual training: Retention of learning and generalization to production

Juli Cebrian (PhD 2002, now at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Joan Carles Mora (Universitat de Barcelona): Measuring cross-linguistic perceptual similarity by means of online tasks

Jessamyn and Kara by their poster

Yoonjung presenting her poster

Patrick presenting his poster

Rachel presenting her poster

Alexei presenting his poster

UofT team! (LtoR) Yoonjung, Juli, Patrick, Alexei, Jessamyn, Rachel

Conference dinner

Nossa Senhora do Monte belvedere

Campo Grande, near the university

Belem Tower

Discourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change 2018

Discourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change, an international biennial meeting of variationist sociolinguists who are working on discourse and pragmatic variables, recently took place at the University of Helsinki in Finland. UofT had a strong presence with three presentations:

Derek Denis (faculty) and Timothy Gadanidis (MA), "Before the rise of um"

Timothy Gadanidis, "Um, about that, uh, variable: uh and um in teen instant messaging"

Sali Tagliamonte (faculty) and Katharina Pabst (PhD), "Cool system, lovely patterns, awesome results: A cross-variety comparison of adjectives of positive evaluation"

 Tim presenting his Master's forum paper research

 Katharina presenting on behalf of her and Sali

Katharina and Derek enjoying post-conference sunshine and drinks near Kauppatori (Helsinki's Market Square)

Derek enjoying the Helsinki craft beer scene with Newcastle University graduate students Kaleigh Woolford (a former undergraduate student of Derek's at University of Victoria) and Joaquín Bueno-Amaro. (Photo taken around 10:30pm, no flash!)

Grading and lasagne

Naomi, Lex and Julien celebrated the end of a long grading day with a lasagne feast.

Linguistic Perspectives on Variation: Toronto-Buffalo Workshop (2018)

On Friday, April 6th, 2018, the first annual Buffalo-Toronto Workshop on Linguistic Perspectives on Variation was held at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Presentations from our department:

Variation and change in reduplication and repetition in Ontario dialects — Sali Tagliamonte (faculty) & Katharina Pabst (PhD)

A socio-indexical feature in Heritage Italian: VOT in Toronto — Naomi Nagy (faculty), Rosalba Nodari (Scuola Normale Superiore) & Chiara Celata (Scuola Normale Superiore)

Height or hide? Partial contrast, dialect exposure, and the perception of Canadian Raising  — Patrick Murphy (PhD) & Philip Monahan (faculty)

Evidence of intradialect variation in Scottish English  — Fiona Wilson (PhD)

Accented stops? L1-based variation in L2 English stop production  — Jessamyn Schertz (faculty)

Group Photo (LtoR): Derry Moore (Buffalo), Patrick Murphy (Toronto), Randi Moore (Buffalo), Katharina Pabst (Toronto), Sali Tagliamonte (Toronto), Christian DiCanio (Buffalo), Jessamyn Schertz (Toronto), Thomas St. Pierre (Buffalo), Naomi Nagy (Toronto), Jeff Good (Buffalo), Fiona Wilson (Buffalo), David Fertig (Buffalo)

Katharina Pabst and Sali Tagliamonte

Naomi Nagy

Fiona Wilson

Jessamyn Schertz