On Thursday the 11th members of the psychology and linguistics departments got together to "meet the people at the other end of the hall" in the Linguistics Lounge. Opening remarks were made and the departmental band, F-ZERO, provided entertainment.
University of Toronto Department of Linguistics Blog
November 11, 2010
Linguistics-Psychology Welcome Party
On Thursday the 11th members of the psychology and linguistics departments got together to "meet the people at the other end of the hall" in the Linguistics Lounge. Opening remarks were made and the departmental band, F-ZERO, provided entertainment.
October 29, 2010
LGCU Welcome Workshop
The LGCU hosted its second annual Welcome Workshop, an informal conference that enables participating new students in particular to introduce themselves and share a bit of their research in a 15-minute talk.
Half of the new MA students opted to take part, along with Ph.D. students Ross Krekoski, Will Oxford, and LeAnn Brown. The presentations were interspersed with coffee, cheese, and pastries; and then followed by leftovers and an impressively lengthy period of standing around in the room and talking.
Half of the new MA students opted to take part, along with Ph.D. students Ross Krekoski, Will Oxford, and LeAnn Brown. The presentations were interspersed with coffee, cheese, and pastries; and then followed by leftovers and an impressively lengthy period of standing around in the room and talking.
October 22, 2010
Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change
This is a photo taken Oct. 21, 2010 after a private screening of the new movie "Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change" at U of T before its official premiere Sat. Oct. 23. The movie screening was sponsored by the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation as part of a new series of events on the topic of northern security .
The photo shows the ABS 231 Inuktitut class which is being taught by Alana Johns and Saila Michael standing with the famous Inuit director Zacharias Kunuk (who co-directed this movie with Ian Mauro) in the middle. At least two of these students are undergraduate linguistics students: Michelle Yuan and Paul King.
October 4, 2010
Diane's visit to New Zealand
September 28, 2010
The End of Argument Structure? Workshop
This weekend the University of Toronto is hosting "The End of Argument Structure?" Workshop. Invited speakers included Mark Baker, Heidi Harley, Lisa Travis and Grant Armstrong. The abstract booklet is available here. The workshop description is below. The workshop has been organized by MarÃa Cristina Cuervo and Yves Roberge.
This workshop, to be held on 1‐2 October, 2010, will be an opportunity to explore current issues and re‐assess generally accepted premises on the relationship between lexical meaning and the morphosyntax of sentences. A central question in the study of language concerns the mechanisms by which the participants in an event described by a sentence come to occupy their positions in the structure and acquire their interpretation. A long‐standing approach is based on the assumption that it is the lexical meaning of a verb that determines, albeit indirectly, the basic properties of sentence structure at the level of verbal meaning, including asymmetric relations, thematic roles, case, and agreement. An alternative approach claims that the syntax itself greatly restricts possible verbal meanings on the basis of the legitimate relations that can exist between syntactic heads, complements, and specifiers.
If we think that all systematic aspects of verbal meanings (licensing of external argument, number and type of ‘obligatory’ and extra arguments, agentivity, causativity, aksionsart, etc.) are dependent on configurational properties, what is left for lexical entries? Do generalizations such as the
UTAH and other prominence hierarchies need to be stated explicitly, or are they derived from more general principles of syntactic operations (and structures) and semantic compositionality? What is left unexplained by syntax‐driven approaches?
In order to promote an open exchange of ideas, we have in mind a real workshop format rather than a regular conference around themes that will be determined in consultation with the invited participants, based on their contributions. A small number of papers will be selected from open submissions.
Invited participants:
Mark Baker (Rutgers University)
Heidi Harley (University of Arizona)
Lisa Travis (McGill University)
Invited student participant:
Grant Armstrong (Georgetown University)
This workshop, to be held on 1‐2 October, 2010, will be an opportunity to explore current issues and re‐assess generally accepted premises on the relationship between lexical meaning and the morphosyntax of sentences. A central question in the study of language concerns the mechanisms by which the participants in an event described by a sentence come to occupy their positions in the structure and acquire their interpretation. A long‐standing approach is based on the assumption that it is the lexical meaning of a verb that determines, albeit indirectly, the basic properties of sentence structure at the level of verbal meaning, including asymmetric relations, thematic roles, case, and agreement. An alternative approach claims that the syntax itself greatly restricts possible verbal meanings on the basis of the legitimate relations that can exist between syntactic heads, complements, and specifiers.
If we think that all systematic aspects of verbal meanings (licensing of external argument, number and type of ‘obligatory’ and extra arguments, agentivity, causativity, aksionsart, etc.) are dependent on configurational properties, what is left for lexical entries? Do generalizations such as the
UTAH and other prominence hierarchies need to be stated explicitly, or are they derived from more general principles of syntactic operations (and structures) and semantic compositionality? What is left unexplained by syntax‐driven approaches?
In order to promote an open exchange of ideas, we have in mind a real workshop format rather than a regular conference around themes that will be determined in consultation with the invited participants, based on their contributions. A small number of papers will be selected from open submissions.
Invited participants:
Mark Baker (Rutgers University)
Heidi Harley (University of Arizona)
Lisa Travis (McGill University)
Invited student participant:
Grant Armstrong (Georgetown University)
September 24, 2010
Earthquake in NZ
Diane Massam is in New Zealand now. She sent this image of how things are after the recent earthquake. Our thoughts are with all our friends in NZ, with hopes for speedy recovery.
September 21, 2010
Summer fun w/ Faetar & Cellese
Sometimes friends wonder how we academic-types keep busy all summer, with all that "time off." This would be a great place to post what you did this summer. Especially if you have good photos to add.
I spent several days hanging out in Brantford (home of Wayne Gretsky!) and other parts of the Greater GTA. Turns out there are lots of speakers of Cellese, the Francoprovençal dialect "from across the valley" to Faetar, where I did fieldwork in the early '90s. These speakers came from Celle, in southern Italy, in the 1950's, mostly, and have been living in Ontario, and continuing to speak Faetar and Cellese ever since. So far, I've talked to over 30 people. Given that there are only about 600 left in Faeto and Celle, this is a pretty good sample! I went to their summer picnic (140+ people, a variety of sausages, and a great bocce tournament) and will be meeting the Rochester contingent at their Polenta Dinner (Migliazzate) next month.
Side benefits, besides getting to practice my Faetar and drink "real" Italian coffee, include tasting the fruits (and veges (?)) of their gardens, prosciutto from Faeto, and their homemade wine, as well as meeting race car drivers, artists, and shoemakers. And I keep busy during the non-interviewing days transcribing some of the highlights of these interviews. Sadly, I have no photos to post, but you can see some great pix of Faeto, taken by one of my favorite speakers, here.
I spent several days hanging out in Brantford (home of Wayne Gretsky!) and other parts of the Greater GTA. Turns out there are lots of speakers of Cellese, the Francoprovençal dialect "from across the valley" to Faetar, where I did fieldwork in the early '90s. These speakers came from Celle, in southern Italy, in the 1950's, mostly, and have been living in Ontario, and continuing to speak Faetar and Cellese ever since. So far, I've talked to over 30 people. Given that there are only about 600 left in Faeto and Celle, this is a pretty good sample! I went to their summer picnic (140+ people, a variety of sausages, and a great bocce tournament) and will be meeting the Rochester contingent at their Polenta Dinner (Migliazzate) next month.
Side benefits, besides getting to practice my Faetar and drink "real" Italian coffee, include tasting the fruits (and veges (?)) of their gardens, prosciutto from Faeto, and their homemade wine, as well as meeting race car drivers, artists, and shoemakers. And I keep busy during the non-interviewing days transcribing some of the highlights of these interviews. Sadly, I have no photos to post, but you can see some great pix of Faeto, taken by one of my favorite speakers, here.
Language and Cultural Expo
New PhD student Matt Gardner brings this to our attention:
Omni TV is sponsoring a Language and Cultural Expo Oct. 2-3, 2010 at Exhibition Place. Looks like a variety of events, and maybe a great place to recruit speakers for various research projects...
If you go, come back and blog about it!
Omni TV is sponsoring a Language and Cultural Expo Oct. 2-3, 2010 at Exhibition Place. Looks like a variety of events, and maybe a great place to recruit speakers for various research projects...
If you go, come back and blog about it!
June 15, 2010
CLA student poster winner
Our PhD student Liisa Duncan has been announced as the winner of the student poster competition at this year's CLA annual conference. Liisa's poster was titled "Consonant gradation in Finnish dialects". Congrats, Liisa!
May 31, 2010
CLA 2010
This year's CLA Conference was held at Concordia University in Montreal from May 29-31, and our department had a very strong presence!
The following members of the department gave talks:
And the following members of the department presented posters:
Last but not least, Naomi Nagy was a panelist in a round-table discussion entitled "Corpora: Heritage and Preservation."
Congrats to all who participated!
(If anyone has inadvertently been omitted from this lengthy list, please contact the blog committee at utlinguistics@gmail.com to let us know.)
The following members of the department gave talks:
- Rashid Al-Balushi
- The licensing of structural case in Standard Arabic
- Ailis Cournane
- A cline of subject clitic doubling: Grammaticalization in small steps
- Elizabeth Cowper
- Where auxiliary verbs come from
- Yoonjung Kang and Seung-Joon Park
- Variation of consonant-final nouns in heritage Korean in Toronto
- Loredana Andreea Kosa
- Sibilant harmony: Investigating the connection between typology and learnability
- Diane Massam
- On the status of inversion in an inverse language
- Alexandra Motut
- A puzzle for the syntax and semantics of depictives
- Kenji Oda
- Dependent verbal morphology in Modern Irish: A distributed morphology approach
- Will Oxford
- Same, other, and different: A first look at the microsyntax of identity adjectives
- Yves Roberge and Nelleke Strik
- L'omission Wh: théorie et acquisition
- Michelle St-Amour
- On being definitely unique in Inuktitut
- Nelleke Strik
- French wh-questions in child L2 acquisition
And the following members of the department presented posters:
- Elizabeth Cowper and Daniel Hall
- Structures for possession in Upper Sorbian and Czech
- Liisa Duncan
- Consonant gradation in Finnish dialects
- Julie Goncharov
- 'Definite' adjectives in Slavic
- Maria Kyriakaki
- What Greek DETs do: The restrictive DP
- Annick Morin
- Diachrony and synchrony of /l/ gemination in Québec French
- Ana Pérez-Leroux and Yadira Alvarez
- How to BE in Spanish: The acquisition of copula and existential constructions by Spanish speaking children
Last but not least, Naomi Nagy was a panelist in a round-table discussion entitled "Corpora: Heritage and Preservation."
Congrats to all who participated!
(If anyone has inadvertently been omitted from this lengthy list, please contact the blog committee at utlinguistics@gmail.com to let us know.)
May 24, 2010
41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics
The University of Toronto and York University recently co-hosted the 41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL2010), on May 6-8th. Plenary speakers were Prof. Sammy Beban Chumbow (Université Yaoundé I, Cameroon), Prof. Salikoko Mufwene (University of Chicago), and Prof. Sharon Rose (University of California at San Diego). These talks touched upon a number of key issues related to African language description, analysis, history, status, and preservation, tying well with the theme of the conference “African Languages in Contact”.
There were over 80 talks presented from researchers at institutions throughout the world including North America, Europe, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon, Sudan, and others. Five parallel sessions were needed at times at the conference to accommodate the great number of participants!
Talks were presented covering numerous aspects of formal linguistic theory and language studies, including sessions centered around Phonology, Tonology, Phonetics, Syntax, Semantics, Acquisition, Language Variation, Language Policy, Language Contact, and others.
University of Toronto linguistics graduate students Isaac Gould, Safieh Moghaddam, and Nicholas Rolle each presented a paper at the conference in distinct syntax sessions. Isaac presented on the absentive marker and Safieh presented on focus constructions, both in Lamnso’ [Bantoid: Cameroon], while Nicholas presented on morphosyntactic aspects of personal pronouns in Esan [Edoid: Nigeria]. All three of these talks come from continued work on these languages stemming from past Field Methods courses taught by University Professor Keren Rice.
The conference ended with a bang, held at the hall of the Eritrean Canadian Association of Toronto. There, the participants feasted on a great variety of foods from East and West Africa, sipped on Ethiopian beer, all to the tunes of a great Zimbabwean band Asaansi (sp?), whose name in Shona means “Waves”. The night was capped by lots of dancing, both by the band and by the participants. You can see more of the festivities here:
Our linguistics students Derek Denis, Nicholas Rolle, and Isaac Gould
Co-organizer Peter Avery
Wonderful African food
The great Zimbabwean band
Plenary Speaker Sharon Rose
Plenary Speaker Sammy Beban Chumbow
Co-organizer Bruce Connell
Women in traditional Nigerian garments
Profs. James Essegbey and Salikoko Mufwene
The conference was organized by Peter Avery, Parth Bhatt, Bruce Connell, Juvenal Ndayiragije, Emmanuel Nikiema, Keren Rice, and Nicholas Rolle, with the help of volunteers too numerous to mention here in full.
There were over 80 talks presented from researchers at institutions throughout the world including North America, Europe, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon, Sudan, and others. Five parallel sessions were needed at times at the conference to accommodate the great number of participants!
Talks were presented covering numerous aspects of formal linguistic theory and language studies, including sessions centered around Phonology, Tonology, Phonetics, Syntax, Semantics, Acquisition, Language Variation, Language Policy, Language Contact, and others.
University of Toronto linguistics graduate students Isaac Gould, Safieh Moghaddam, and Nicholas Rolle each presented a paper at the conference in distinct syntax sessions. Isaac presented on the absentive marker and Safieh presented on focus constructions, both in Lamnso’ [Bantoid: Cameroon], while Nicholas presented on morphosyntactic aspects of personal pronouns in Esan [Edoid: Nigeria]. All three of these talks come from continued work on these languages stemming from past Field Methods courses taught by University Professor Keren Rice.
The conference ended with a bang, held at the hall of the Eritrean Canadian Association of Toronto. There, the participants feasted on a great variety of foods from East and West Africa, sipped on Ethiopian beer, all to the tunes of a great Zimbabwean band Asaansi (sp?), whose name in Shona means “Waves”. The night was capped by lots of dancing, both by the band and by the participants. You can see more of the festivities here:
Our linguistics students Derek Denis, Nicholas Rolle, and Isaac Gould
Co-organizer Peter Avery
Wonderful African food
The great Zimbabwean band
Plenary Speaker Sharon Rose
Plenary Speaker Sammy Beban Chumbow
Co-organizer Bruce Connell
Women in traditional Nigerian garments
Profs. James Essegbey and Salikoko Mufwene
The conference was organized by Peter Avery, Parth Bhatt, Bruce Connell, Juvenal Ndayiragije, Emmanuel Nikiema, Keren Rice, and Nicholas Rolle, with the help of volunteers too numerous to mention here in full.
May 20, 2010
Lecture by Elan, May 27
Everyone is invited to attend a lecture on Thursday May 27 that will be given by Prof. Dresher in the Department lounge. His topic is "Dating the Hebrew Bible: Can Linguistics Help?". Here is a short description of the talk:
The event runs from 7-9 pm and will include a reception and a question period. Please RSVP to William Forrest <lingdept@chass.utoronto.ca>, so that we know how much food to buy!
The event is co-sponsored by flaut (Friends of Linguistics at the University
of Toronto) and Spring Reunion 2010.
Despite years of scholarship going back to the Renaissance, dating the books of the Hebrew Bible remains a controversial enterprise. Professor Dresher will discuss contemporary methods in historical linguistics and sociolinguistics that can be used to evaluate the relative age of the language in the Bible's many books.
The event runs from 7-9 pm and will include a reception and a question period. Please RSVP to William Forrest <lingdept@chass.utoronto.ca>, so that we know how much food to buy!
The event is co-sponsored by flaut (Friends of Linguistics at the University
of Toronto) and Spring Reunion 2010.
May 13, 2010
Naomi went to Hamburg
Naomi recently spent a week in Hamburg, Germany, discussing research projects in the domain of urban multilingualism with the Linguistic Diversity Management research group at the University of Hamburg.
It was her first time in Germany, and she was delighted to find an abundance of chocolate, as well as common interest in systematic approaches to understanding contact-induced language change.
 |  |
It was her first time in Germany, and she was delighted to find an abundance of chocolate, as well as common interest in systematic approaches to understanding contact-induced language change.
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May 1, 2010
Spring has arrived on campus
Alana has sent along this lovely photo of the cherry trees blossoming by Ed Burstynsky's memorial bench outside Robarts. (Click on the image to see it full-size.)
It's the little things in life
Of all the things you'd expect to find on a linguistics blog, a faucet is pretty low on the list --
-- but regular users of our departmental lounge will understand just how heartwarming the preceding photo is!
-- but regular users of our departmental lounge will understand just how heartwarming the preceding photo is!
41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics
The University of Toronto and York University, Glendon Campus are hosting the 41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics 2010.
The conference will take place from Thursday, May 6 to Saturday, May 8. May 6 and 7 are in Sidney Smith Hall, University of Toronto, while May 8 is at the Glendon Campus.
Registration begins on Wednesday, May 5, at 5:00pm, in the linguistics lounge on the 4th floor of Sidney Smith Hall.
Visit the conference website for full details.
The conference will take place from Thursday, May 6 to Saturday, May 8. May 6 and 7 are in Sidney Smith Hall, University of Toronto, while May 8 is at the Glendon Campus.
Registration begins on Wednesday, May 5, at 5:00pm, in the linguistics lounge on the 4th floor of Sidney Smith Hall.
Visit the conference website for full details.
April 6, 2010
UT linguist talks at GURT
Atiqa Hachimi reports that she recently returned from the Georgetown University Round Table on Arabic Language and Linguistics.
The title of her talk was:
"Arabic sociolinguistics and mobility: Exploring the social reinterpretation of old urban varieties in contemporary North Africa"
She's off to another conference at U of Texas next week. and she'll make sure to take pictures this time :-)
Georgetown Campus
The title of her talk was:
"Arabic sociolinguistics and mobility: Exploring the social reinterpretation of old urban varieties in contemporary North Africa"
She's off to another conference at U of Texas next week. and she'll make sure to take pictures this time :-)
Georgetown Campus
Manami at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics in Tokyo
Manami Hirayama writes from Tokyo to say that she landed a postdoc
appointment at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics in Tokyo. The
Institute is one of the marvels of the linguistics world, a corporation founded in 1948
and occupied continuously by teams of linguists doing pure research. It is a great place
for Manami to get started. Manami's project is phonology and her boss is Haruo Kubozono.
The Institute moved to a new glass-and-chrome building a few years ago in Tachikawa, on
the western edge of Tokyo, and the commute for Manami from her parents' house is almost 2
hours each way. She is also going to start a part-time teaching job in a few weeks.
She says, "I've been seeing my friends and people whom I hadn't seen for a long time,
which is nice as well. I miss Toronto very much, at the same time, however. People are in
my dreams!"
Maybe she'll send us some pictures to link? of the "Dialect research room"?
appointment at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics in Tokyo. The
Institute is one of the marvels of the linguistics world, a corporation founded in 1948
and occupied continuously by teams of linguists doing pure research. It is a great place
for Manami to get started. Manami's project is phonology and her boss is Haruo Kubozono.
The Institute moved to a new glass-and-chrome building a few years ago in Tachikawa, on
the western edge of Tokyo, and the commute for Manami from her parents' house is almost 2
hours each way. She is also going to start a part-time teaching job in a few weeks.
She says, "I've been seeing my friends and people whom I hadn't seen for a long time,
which is nice as well. I miss Toronto very much, at the same time, however. People are in
my dreams!"
Maybe she'll send us some pictures to link? of the "Dialect research room"?
March 9, 2010
"Dene Soundscapes"
Friends of Linguistics At the University of Toronto
presents a lecture by
KEREN RICE
University Professor, University of Toronto
Dene Soundscapes
In this talk, Keren Rice explores the sounds of language and the sounds of nature in the north Mackenzie area of the Northwest Territories. Learn about the languages, see some pictures, and hear some unusual sounds in this first flaut presentation in our department’s new location.
PRESENTATION, INFORMAL DISCUSSION AND RECEPTION
Thursday march 18, 2010
7 – 9 p.m.
DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
LINGUISTICS LOUNGE
4th floor
SIDNEY SMITH HALL
100 St. George Street
OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY AND FRIENDS
March 5, 2010
MinJae update
Dear all,
We would like to thank all of you for kind and supporting messages about the baby.
It has really been great comfort and encouraging in this super-stressed time.
We also want to let you know that MinJae is finally discharged from the hospital and in a good condition to fly
back to Calgary! We are leaving next Tuesday.
Best wishes to all of you and thanks again!
Kyumin and Jae.
We would like to thank all of you for kind and supporting messages about the baby.
It has really been great comfort and encouraging in this super-stressed time.
We also want to let you know that MinJae is finally discharged from the hospital and in a good condition to fly
back to Calgary! We are leaving next Tuesday.
Best wishes to all of you and thanks again!
Kyumin and Jae.
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