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

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"?

"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

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.

Daphna in Arizona

Daphna Heller wishes to share a photo from her recent trip to Tucson, Arizona. There she gave a colloquium at the University of Arizona, and met with Adam Ussishikin to discuss their collaboration on lexical access in Modern Hebrew.

Kyumin's baby, Min Jae Park

Kyumin and Jae write:
We are excited to announce our baby boy's arrival. He was born in Feb 13, at 6:29pm, which was 6 weeks earlier than expected. (so, he's born in Toronto, not in Calgary). He weighs 2.165kg. His name is Min Jae Park. He is under NICU care, as he is premature. But, he is fine, he just needs to grow up more. He will be discharged from the hospital probably in one and a half weeks later.
These pictures are of Min Jae, one day old, still in an incubator.

M.A. Students in New Zealand

Over the winter break in December and January, two of our current Master's students, Isaac Gould and Nik Rolle, took a trip to New Zealand. Here are some of the pictures from their trip.

Overlooking the Waimana river valley in Te Urewera national park at dusk.

An early morning shot at one of the harbours in Auckland.

Intrepid Nik braves the volcano with his gas mask.

The greenish water is from the sulphur from the volcano.

Intrepid Nik blazes a trail through the forest.

Isaac dancing with a Puka Pukan in the Fale Pasifika at the University of Auckland.

Manami's Farewell

On January 22nd we held the first party at the new department space. While enjoying good food and basking in the natural sunlight coming through the lounge windows, we also said goodbye to Manami Hirayama, who has recently completed her PhD at the department. We wish her the best of luck on her move back to Japan.

More pictures from the party can be found by following this link.

Phonetic work on Argentine and Cuban Spanish

Alexei Kochetov and Laura Colantoni (Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese) have been actively involved in an extensive phonetic electropalatographic (EPG) investigation of Argentine and Cuban Spanish.

This project – the first articulatory kinematic study of these varieties – consists of a series of experiments examining variation in the articulation of coronal consonants, the processes of nasal place assimilation and s-deletion, and a change in progress in Buenos Aires Spanish resulting in the depalatalization of palatal nasals. EPG is particularly suitable for this kind of research, as it records the timing and location of the tongue constriction during speech using an artificial palate equipped with 62 electrodes. Data collection and analysis for the project (funded by Connaught) are being performed in the Linguistics Department Phonetics Lab, with the assistance of a work-study student Bojana Radovanovic.

Some of the results from the project have been presented at the 158th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of the America in San Antonio, TX in October, 2009 (poster), the 23rd conference Going Romance in Nice, France in December 2009 (slides), and will be presented soon at the 28th West Coast Conference in Formal Linguistics in Los Angeles, CA (February 2010), the 40th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages in Seattle, WA (March 2010), and at the 12th conference on Laboratory Phonology in Albuquerque, NM (July 2010).

Alexei and Laura are currently looking for more speakers of Cuban Spanish from Havana. Please contact them at al.kochetov@utoronto.ca or laura.colantoni@utoronto.ca if you happen to know suitable candidates.

Hank Rogers

We are very sorry to report the death of Professor Emeritus Hank Rogers, a member of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto since 1967.

We will miss him!

To learn more about Hank, visit his website.

Further information and directions to his funeral can be found at: www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/news_events/rogers/.

You are invited to make donations in his memory to the Henry Rogers Undergraduate Scholarship in Linguistics.

Please share your thoughts about Hank by commenting on this post.

Looking for Russians & Koreans

The Heritage Language Variation and Change Project is nearing the end of the interviewing and recording phase, but we still need to find a few types of speakers. So, if you know of anyone who fits these categories, please let me (Naomi) know!

We are looking for Russian speakers who are from Moscow or St. Petersburg

Female, age 38-40, lived in Moscow or St. P. until she was ~20, then moved to the GTA
Female, older than 40, parents born in the GTA, grandparents from Moscow or St. P.
Male, under age 40, born in the GTA, parents born in Moscow or St. P.
Male, under age 40, parents born in the GTA, grandparents from Moscow or St. P.

And, if you know ANY third generation Koreans who speak Korean, we'd love to talk to them! (3rd generation means their grandparents are from Seoul, but their parents and they were born in the GTA.)

Many thanks!

Marina's new baby Yana

Dear all,
Our family is all excited to announce our new baby daughter's arrival! She was born 22.01.10 at 3:33 pm, weighing 3476 g, height 51 cm. Her name is Yana Maria Lieber ('Yana' rhymes with 'Hannah', her big sister's name, and the Russian nickname for 'Hannah' is 'Anya', which in Russian is spelled as the reverse of 'Yana'; 'Maria' was my grandmother's name).
Both Yana and me are happy and healthy. We attach a picture of Yana, almost one day old, with her big sister and Mommy.

Marina, Zeev and Hannah

Sali and Derek defend teenagers in Montreal Gazette

Recent media buzz in the UK warned teens all over the world that their "teenspeak" is making them "unemployable". On this side of the pond, the media was a little less extreme and consulted linguists with real data, including U of T's Sali Tagliamonte and Derek Denis.

Video rapportage of the move-in

Alana writes:

This video was taken on the first day in December 2009 that members of our dept. actually started using the new dept. It was mid-move and I think it shows the magical moment when the grad students transformed an empty lounge into our new living quarters.

Overheard on Campus

Linguistics was featured in this week's edition of the Varsity's "Overheard on Campus":

(Students leaving after a linguistics class)
Student 1: I'm just walking this way, but not because I'm scared of getting mugged or anything. Even if we meet a mugger, we can stand together and beat 'em like two dogs attacking a bear!
Student 2: You know, that was exactly what I was thinking!
(Some time later...)
Student 2: Well, you know, despite our skinny frames, we are mighty warriors wielding language!

(Spotted by Elan)

We've arrived!

After a whirlwind week, the Department of Linguistics has now completely moved to Sid Smith. This picture sums up what life has been like here this week.

More photos taken by Bill can be found here:
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/Moving/Settling
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/Moving/images/Images/Dec_18/index.html

Progress!

Bill has taken a few new photographs of our new home as of Dec. 10th. Note the progress made on the plumbing!

All the photos are available here: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/Moving/images/Images/Dec_10/index.html

Photos and videos from the End of Term/End of Robarts party

On Friday Dec. 4th, the Department of Linguistics had their annual End of Term holiday party. It was well attended, the food and drinks were delicious and the music, courtesy of departmental band F-Zero, was great.



Bill took some photos of the action, all available here: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/linguistics/Moving/images/Images/index.html . In this album, there are also some photos of the hard working LGCU "Book Collection" Committee packing up our books for the move.


We also have a few videos from resident videographer, Alana Johns.
Is this a photo-op?
http://sharing.theflip.com/session/ee9d6a0a522b8e9b7b5c633cf101c023/video/7769913

Do numerals incorporate in Inuktitut?
http://sharing.theflip.com/session/ee9d6a0a522b8e9b7b5c633cf101c023/video/7769954

Elan in New Orleans

Elan Dresher gave an invited talk on “Methodological Issues in the Dating of Linguistic Forms: Considerations from the Perspective of Contemporary Linguistic Theory,” at the National Association of Professors of Hebrew session on Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew, part of the 2009 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, November 2009.

Naomi's trip to Italy

At the beginning of November, Naomi attended a conference, Corpus Linguistics and Language Variation, or CLAVIER '09, in Modena Italy. She presented the first findings from the Heritage Language Variation & Change in Toronto project -- a comparison of Faetar lexical variation in Faeto, Italy and the GTA. Following that, she met with linguists who have worked on the Calabrese dialect, another component of the HLVC project, in Firenze, Roma, and Cosenza. This is a link to some of the sites she saw on the way. [http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?token=482055568112%3A967505449]