Congratulations, Ailís!

Ailís Cournane defended her thesis, "Modal development: Input-divergent L1 acquisition in the direction of diachronic reanalysis", on Thursday, August 27. The committee consisted of Ana-Teresa Pérez-Leroux (supervisor), Michela Ippolito, Yves Roberge, Cristina Cuervo, Mihaela Pirvulescu, and external examiner Laura Wagner (Ohio State University). Congrats, Dr. Cournane!

SLE 2015

The 48th annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea is being held in Leiden, Netherlands, from September 2nd to 5th.

Elizabeth Cowper (faculty), Bronwyn Bjorkman (postdoc), Daniel Currie Hall (Ph.D. 2007), Rebecca Tollan (2007), and Neil Banerjee (BA) are presenting: "There then and now."

Julianne Doner (Ph.D.) is presenting "Spanish morphemes at the interface: How syntactic position affects prosody.

Alumna Monica Irimia (Ph.D. 2011, now at the University of York) is part of a presentation with colleagues Andrea Ceolin (University of York), Aaron Ecay (University of Pennsylvania), Cristina Guardiano (Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia), Giuseppe Longobardi (University of York), Dimitris Michelioudakis (University of York), and Nina Radkevich (Harvard University):
"Sic transeunt parametri mundi."

Alumna Lyn Tieu (MA 2008, now at CNRS) is part of a talk with Kazuko Yatsushiro (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft), Alexandre Cremers (CNRS), Jacopo Romoli (University of Ulster), Uli Sauerland (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft), and Emmanuel Chemla (CNRS): "Disjunction in child language: Inclusive, exclusive, or conjunctive?"

In memoriam: Emma Johnson (1977-2015)

We are deeply saddened to have learned that alumna Emma Johnson (MA 2003) passed away on August 20th after a battle with cancer. Emma did research in psycholinguistics in our department, and later received a degree in speech pathology and worked in Ottawa for a number of years. We would like to extend our condolences to Emma's family, including her partner, Jason, and their children, Joey and Maddie. Rest in peace, Emma.

Research Groups: Week of August 17-21

Wednesday, August 19 - 10 AM to 12 PM in SS 2111
Syntax/Semantics Group
Ivona Kučerová (McMaster University): "The ergative puzzle."

There’s a growing body of work attempting to unify various ergativity phenomena under a common denominator, the most common denominators being aspect, (various versions of) semantic scope, and information structure. Putting aside that these unifying proposals have only a partial empirical coverage, there are other properties that these approaches cannot account for (though their technical implementations rely on them): prevalence of nominalized structures, applicative-like structures in transitive environments, and commonality of VP fronting. The empirical landscape offers itself to three possible accounts: (i) there is a common denominator but it lies elsewhere; (ii) what appears to be a unified phenomenon is in fact a conspiracy of several factors; and (iii) ergativity is an artificial construct based on Indo-European centred conception of grammar. In this presentation - more a brainstorming session - I will go over some recent ideas about factors that might underpin syntactically `special’ behaviour of arguments and how they relate to notions of locality, transitivity and argument alignment in general, in the hope of finding possible correlates expected under (i) & (ii).

Congratulations, Jaehee!

Congratulations to Jaehee Bak (Ph.D. 2011), who has accepted a tenure-stream position in the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Chungnam National University in Daejeon City, South Korea (just south of Seoul). He starts this position on September 1st 2015. Great news, Jaehee!

Congratulations, Kyumin!

Congratulations to alumna Kyumin Kim (Ph.D. 2011), who has accepted and begun a new tenure-track job as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Cheongju University in South Korea!

Congratulations, Alana!

Congratulations to Alana Johns and her colleagues Jean L. Briggs and Conor Cook on the publication of the Dictionary of Utkuhiksalingmiut Inuktitut Postbase Suffixes! The work is being published by Nunavut Arctic College and will be released shortly. Based on Jean Briggs's fieldwork conducted with speakers of the Utkuhiksalingmiutitut dialect of Inuktitut in Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven) and Qamani'tuaq (Baker Lake), the book is a comprehensive list of word-forming suffixes with examples taken from real speech and morphological and phonological analysis.

The work reflects the efforts of a team of scholars over many years - in Briggs's case, many decades. Briggs, an anthropologist, learned the Utkuhiksalingmiut dialect while conducting doctoral research between 1963 and 1968 in the camp at Chantrey Inlet, now located in Nunavut. Writing down words was originally just a learning aid for Briggs, but it evolved into a dictionary project once Briggs made contact with linguists working with Inuktitut, who were unfamiliar with the Utkuhiksalingmiut dialect. When the Utkuhiksalingmiut people moved to Gjoa Haven, they too became interested in documenting their dialect, given the new contact with other dialects that had the potential to alter it.

The idea of creating a dictionary of postbases was Alana’s, and her linguistic expertise and extensive knowledge of Inuktitut has been informing the project for over a decade. Conor Cook, a former University of Toronto student now working in Iqaluit, was in charge of the database searching, drafting and proposing entries and putting the manuscript together.

Congratulations to Alana and the entire team on this milestone.

(Photo courtesy of Sali A. Tagliamonte.)

ICPhS 2015

The 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS) is meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, from August 10th to 14th. Our department is well-represented!

Maida Percival (MA 2014, incoming Ph.D. student) is presenting "Dene stop contrasts: Data from Délįnę Slavey." She is also one of the recipients of the conference's IPA Student Awards. Congratulations, Maida!

Paulina Lyskawa (MA) is presenting "The ultrasound study of /ɹ/ in non-native speakers."

Mercedeh Mohaghegh (Ph.D.) and Craig Chambers (faculty) are presenting "How phonological context affects comprehension: The case of assimilated nasals and stops."

Phil Howson (Ph.D.) and Alexei Kochetov (faculty) are presenting "An EMA examination of liquids in Czech."

Jessamyn Schertz (postdoc), Yoonjung Kang (faculty), and Alexei Kochetov (faculty), with colleagues Eun Jong Kong and Sungwoo Han, are presenting: "Dialectal variability in place and manner of Korean affricates."

Phil is additionally presenting a talk with colleagues Noriko Yamane and Po-Chun Wei: "An ultrasound examination of taps in Japanese."

Alexei is also part of a talk with Stefania Marin and Marianne Pouplier: "Timing patterns of word-initial obstruent-sonorant clusters in Russian."

Alexei is additionally presenting a poster: "Length in Kannada alveolar and retroflex laterals: A preliminary acoustic study" at the Satellite Workshop on Geminate Consonants across the World.

Yoonjung is also part of a presentation with colleagues Hye-Young Bang, Morgan Sonderegger, Meghan Clayards, and Tae-Jin Yoon: "The effect of word frequency on the timecourse of tonogenesis in Seoul Korean."

Yoonjung is part of another presentation with colleagues Tae-Jin Yoon, Sungwoo Han, Hyeseon Maeng, Jiae Lee, and Kyounghue Kim: "A corpus-based approach to dialectal variation in Korean vowels."

Juli Cebrian (Ph.D. 2002, now at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) is presenting "Reciprocal measures of perceptual similarity".

Juli is also presenting a talk co-authored with Angelica Carlet: "Phonetic similarity, Identification vs. discrimination training: Learning effects for trained and untrained sounds."

Ewan Dunbar (MA 2008, now at the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, CNRS, France) is presenting a poster "Quantitative methods for comparing featural representations", co-authored with Gabriel Synnaeve and Emmanuel Dupoux.

Richard Gananathan (MA 2014, now at the Chinese University of Hong Kong) is presenting a paper with colleagues Yanjun Yin and Peggy Mok: "Interlanguage influence in cues of narrow focus: A study of Hong Kong English."

Manami Hirayama (Ph.D. 2009) is presenting a poster: "Complete and incomplete neutralizations between underlying and derived geminates in Japanese: Evidence from three gemination processes."

Sara Mackenzie (Ph.D. 2009, now at Memorial University of Newfoundland) is presenting a talk with Paul De Decker and Rosanna Pierson: "An acoustic and articulatory study of /l/ allophony in Newfoundland English."

Nicole Rosen (Ph.D. 2007) is part of a presentation with Justin Turner, Fangfang Li, and Nicole Netelenbos: "VOT Production among school children in Francophone vs. French immersion schools in Anglo-dominant Southern Alberta."

Former visiting student Michael Wagner is part of two talks: "Production planning and coronal stop deletion in spontaneous speech" (with James Tanner and Morgan Sonderegger), and "Acoustic correlates of focus marking in Polish" (with Fatima Hamlaoui, Marzena Żygis, and Jonas Engelmann).

Congratulations, Sandrine!

Alumna Sandrine Tailleur (Ph.D. 2012, now at l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi) would like to introduce Lucas McDonough, born on March 9, 2015. Congratulations to Sandrine and her family!

(Lucas's wardrobe handmade by department Ph.D. student and artist Ailís Cournane.)

Dog Days Syntax Workshop

This year's Dog Days Syntax Workshop will take place on Wednesday, August 12, in SS 2106. The workshop will begin with breakfast/coffee at 8:00 AM; talks will begin at 9 AM and conclude shortly before 6 PM. Each talk has a 25-minute slot: 15-20 minutes for the presentation and the rest for questions. Presenters will be as follows:

Bronwyn Bjorkman (postdoc 2012-2015, now at Queen's University): "The Case of aspect."

Monica Irimia (Ph.D. 2011, now at the University of York) with colleague Sonia Cyrino (State University of Campinas, Brazil): "Syntactic positions for DOM: The case of Brazilian Portuguese and Romanian."

Dan Milway (Ph.D.): "Formalizing Agree."

Brandon Fry (University of Ottawa): "A unified view of Agree."

Neil Banerjee (BA): "Associate positions in historical English expletive 'there' constructions."

Mark McAndrews (BA): "Modelling near-synonymous suffix alternation in an Inuktitut corpus."

Kenji Oda (Ph.D. 2012, now at Syracuse University): "Reconsidering Irish non-verbal predication."

Bethany Lochbihler (University of Edinburgh), Will Oxford (Ph.D. 2014, now at the University of Manitoba), and Nicholas Welch (postdoc): "Inanimacy as personlessness: Evidence from Dene and Algonquian."

Guillaume Thomas (faculty): "Cumulative readings of 'each'?"

Julie Goncharov (Ph.D.): "Mindful de se constructions."

Ivona Kucerova (McMaster University): "What happened when a puppy slept: An attempt to derive the syntactic structure of a two-word sentence in Czech."

Eric Mathieu (University of Ottawa): "Feature-free parameters."

Anna Seltner (MA): "The conjoint-disjoint alternation in Bantu languages: Evidence for low focus?" This paper is the 2015 (inaugural) winner of the Elizabeth Cowper Prize in syntax.

Bridget Copley (CNRS/Université Paris 8): "What can cause what: futurates and have causatives at the interfaces with semantics."

Cristina Cuervo (faculty): "The importance of less productive transitivity alternations."

Leslie Saxon (MA 1979, now at the University of Victoria): "The Tłı̨chǫ syntactic causative (and inchoative)."

Research Groups: Week of August 3-7

Wednesday, August 5 - 10 AM to 12 PM in SS 2111
Syntax/Semantics Group
Julianne Doner (Ph.D.): "Spanish morphemes at the interface: How syntactic position affects prosody."

NWAV 44 Update

NWAV 44 abstracts have been reviewed and registration is open. We will have 7 training/professionalization workshops, 7 invited plenary speakers, a workshop on Intersections between sociolinguistics and other fields, ~90 posters and ~140 oral presentations.  See details and (register early for a discount) at http://linguistics.utoronto.ca/NWAV44.

U of T will be represented in presentations by:

Aaron Dinkin
Anne-Jose Villeneuve
Bridget Jankowski
Darcie Blainey
Derek Denis
Emilia Melara
Emily Blamire
Heather Burnett
Jack Chambers
Julien Carrier
Marisa Brook
Matt Hunt Gardner
Michael Iannozzi
Paulina Lyskawa
Ruth Maddeaux
Sali Tagliamonte
Shayna Gardiner
Yoonjung Kang

Questions can be addressed to any of the organizers:
Philipp Sebastian Angermeyer, York University
Aaron Dinkin, University of Toronto
Michol Hoffman, York University
Naomi Nagy, University of Toronto
Sali A. Tagliamonte, University of Toronto
Anne-José Villeneuve, University of Alberta
James Walker, York University

Canadian Language Museum exhibits at the Pan-Am Games

Three portable exhibits created by the Canadian Language Museum (with faculty member Elaine Gold at the helm) are now being shown one at a time at the Aboriginal Pavilion of the 2015 Pan-American Games:

July 21-22: French
July 23-24: Inuit
July 25-26: Cree

They will be available to see between 10 AM and 5 PM at the Fork York Visitor Centre atrium, as part of a greater celebration of First Nations cultures.

Research Groups: Week of July 20-24

Wednesday, July 22 - 10 AM to 12 PM in SS 2111
Syntax/Semantics Group
Elizabeth Cowper will be presenting a practice version of her talk for ICHL: "Illusions of transitive expletives in Middle English" (co-authored with Bronwyn Bjorkman, Daniel Currie Hall, Rebecca Tollan, and Neil Banerjee).

ICHL 22

The 22nd International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL) is being held in Naples, Italy, from July 27th to 31st.

Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty) is presenting a plenary talk:
"Roots and branches in the variation of English."

Elizabeth Cowper (faculty), Bronwyn Bjorkman (postdoc), Daniel Currie Hall (Ph.D. 2007), Rebecca Tollan (Ph.D.) and Neil Banerjee (BA) are giving a presentation:
"Illusions of transitive expletives in Middle English."

Clarissa Forbes (Ph.D.) is also giving a presentation:
"Acquiring accentual (un)predictability in morphological domains: Root stress in Gitksan."

Alumna Monica Irimia (Ph.D. 2011, now at the University of York) is part of a presentation with colleagues Andrea Ceolin (University of York), Aaron Ecay (University of Pennsylvania), Cristina Guardiano (Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia), Giuseppe Longobardi (University of York), Dimitris Michelioudakis (University of York), and Nina Radkevich (Harvard University):
"Sic transeunt parametri mundi."

Marisa Brook in The Stranger

Ph.D. student Marisa Brook was interviewed for a story in Seattle weekly The Stranger on why everyone - and women in particular - seems to be using the hedge phrase "I feel like" all the time.

Research Groups: Week of July 13-17

Wednesday, July 15 - 10 AM to 12 PM in SS 2111
Syntax/Semantics Group
Clarissa Forbes (Ph.D.): "Connect Four! The morphosyntax of argument marking in Tsimshianic" (collaborative work with Henry Davis, University of British Columbia).

In this talk, we propose a new analysis for the argument-introducing connective morphemes in Interior Tsimshianic. Our proposal moves away from the prevalent case-based analysis (Hunt 1993) to one which attributes connective alternations to an ultimately morphophonological process, given a proper analysis of agreement. We extend this proposal to Coast Tsimshian, where minor differences in connective marking predict interesting variation in agreement patterns between the two systems.

Goodbyes and hellos for 2015-16

As the 2015-16 academic year approaches, we have a lot of personnel turnover!

Our department bids adieu to:

• Bronwyn Bjorkman (postdoc), who is taking up a tenure-track position in morphosyntax at Queen's University.
• Walter Pedersen (faculty), finishing a one-year contract-limited term appointment in semantics.
• Anne-José Villeneuve (faculty, Department of French), who has accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Alberta.
• Derek Denis (Ph.D. 2015), who is moving to the University of Victoria to do a postdoctoral fellowship with fellow alum Alexandra D'Arcy (Ph.D. 2005).
• Liisa Duncan (Ph.D. 2015), who is now teaching at York University.
• ...and those completing the MA program. Several are moving immediately into Ph.D. programs: Frederick Gietz is staying on for ours, Paulina Lyskawa is going to the University of Maryland, Yining Nie is heading to New York University, and Luke West is off to UCLA.

We welcome back Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty), who has spent the last two years as a Killam Fellow.

And we welcome:

• Heather Burnett (postdoc), a new Banting postdoctoral fellow; she will be working with Sali.
• Guillaume Thomas (faculty), our new semanticist (and also instructor in syntax).
• Finally, we have 25 new graduate students: 9 in the Ph.D. program and 16 MAs. Welcome, all!

Elan at Cambridge and Oxford

Faculty member Elan Dresher has recently returned from the UK, where he gave three talks:

"Contrastive Feature Hierarchies in Diachronic Phonology," for the Annual General Meeting of the Philological Society, Jesus College, University of Cambridge.

"Contrastive Hierarchy Theory and the Nature of Features," at a seminar for the Rethinking Comparative Syntax (ReCoS) project of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge.

"Vowel Changes in West Germanic," for a colloquium hosted by the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics of the University of Oxford.

Elan at Oxford in the local dress.

Congratulations, Isaac!

Congratulations to Isaac Gould (MA 2010), who defended his Ph.D. thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Syntactic learning from ambiguous evidence: Errors and end-states," earlier this month, with committee members Adam Albright, Michel DeGraff, and David Pesetsky. Congratulations, Dr. Gould!