The Racial Justice Committee in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto is implementing a program to support students who identify as Black or Indigenous on applying to graduate school in linguistics in North America. This program is open to students applying to any graduate program in Canada/the United States, and not necessarily to the University of Toronto.
October 11, 2024
Linguistics Grad School Application Support Program for Black and Indigenous Students
The Racial Justice Committee in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto is implementing a program to support students who identify as Black or Indigenous on applying to graduate school in linguistics in North America. This program is open to students applying to any graduate program in Canada/the United States, and not necessarily to the University of Toronto.
October 1, 2024
The Department of Linguistics celebrates the start of the 2024-25 academic year!
On Friday, September 13, 2024, UofT linguists participated in an all-day event celebrating the start of the new academic year and, more importantly, welcoming new members to the department!
September 2, 2024
Linguistics Coffeehouse Recap!
Raising over $1400 for Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa, Mahlmann, Raihert, and Wu wanted to bring this event to the attention of the wider UofT Linguistics community to surpass that amount next year.
A community organization on the territory of the Six Nations of the Grand River, Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa works as a school to support the vitality of Kanien'kéha, a Mohawk language. Earlier in May, this blog covered WSCLA, at which several speakers gave presentation concerning the revitalization of this language.
For all those interested in supporting the goal of revitalizing the Mohawk language at Grand River, feel free to visit their Donate page, or look out for more events such as these next year.
Congratulations to this trio and all those who donated!
August 28, 2024
AI-Driven Hype in Classrooms: Navigating Ethical Issues - Presented!
During the summer of 2023, Lex Konnelly and Nathan Sanders presented on AI "hype" in classrooms to help instructors address issues bubbling to the surface as ChatGPT's range broadens with each question it is asked by some unsuspecting student.
Addressing ethical and pedagogical considerations for AI-driven text generation in classrooms, particularly of linguistics, they presented a foray into the ever-changing landscape evolving at a rate "faster than scholars can publish work on them" (Sanders).
Though some faculty members with whom the researchers partnered focused on ways they could Chat-GPT-proof their assessments, others were interested in integrating such tools into their classwork.
Importantly, the researchers' approach is not punitive, but rather, constructive - an approach to merging of AI tools with educational models which will benefit not only morale in the classroom, but student media and technology literacy in a world rapidly going wireless.
Perhaps today's students can benefit from learning how to hack tools such as chatbots to maximize their potential for learning.
Perhaps future integration of artificial intelligence brings with it the potential of a rapid decline or even total erasure of the capacity to learn hard skills.
Regardless, the researchers' position is that the fields of linguistics and artificial intelligence are necessarily intertwined.
Due to tools' like Chat-GPT's reliance on large language models, students of both linguistics and computer science, or even artificial intelligence engineering, have much to gain by probing the threads linking their interests to each other, potentially by exploring something like the groundbreaking focus on Computational Linguistics offered by UofT.
Presented by Konnelly at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in January, this work will be published soon as a proceedings paper.
As Sanders and Konnelly will be the first to tell you, by the time this post goes live, this information may be obsolete.
We at WHITL don't see this as a reason not to comment, but as an opportunity to mark our ideas on an AI-timeline quickly extending into the future, and an exciting chance to engage with all students across UofT.
AI in the classroom poses all kinds of ethical questions for students and professors, and raises new questions every time it is used. This work gives us some interesting and thought-provoking ways of dealing with technology which passes the Turing Test daily, and (usually) with flying colours at that.
August 12, 2024
The heat is on this summer - you need SPF!
The 2024 annual Summer Phonetics - Phonology Forum (SPF) took place on August 7th, and now we know why they call it SPF!
Session 1, chaired by Professor Alexei Kochetov, saw presentations by both faculty and graduate students.
Laura Griffin's YouTube Shorts Sample, a language learning resource targeted towards the younger generation of Mbembe speakers. |
Professor Yoonjung Kang chaired Session 2, seeing the following presentations:
Lunch was held at Sidney Smith in the Linguistics Lounge.
Session 3, chaired by presenter and Professor Avery Ozburn, showcased two projects.
Session 4 was chaired by Jessamyn Schertz, Professor of Language Studies at UTM.
Session 5 was chaired by Professor Nathan Sanders, and saw the following presentations, followed by closing remarks.
WHITL and the Forum's organizers, Samuel Akinbo, Yoonjung Kang, Alexei Kochetov, Philip Monahan, Avery Ozburn, Nathan Sanders, and Jessamyn Schertz, have much to be proud of, and much to look forward to next year!
August 7, 2024
Linguistics Spotlight: Myrto Grigoroglou
Myrto Grigoroglou and her team have much to look forward to as they prepare for the 2024-2025 academic year, and all that it will entail in the many fields of research in which they are conducting continuously impressive work.
August 2, 2024
UofT Linguists Impress at the 2024 CLA Conference
From June 17-19, 2024, UofT Linguists trekked to Carleton University to attend the 2024 Canadian Linguistics Association (CLA) Conference.
Will Williams, PhD student, shared this list of talks and posters by UofT people. Bolded names indicate University of Toronto affiliation.
Looking forward to CLA 2025, and the presentation of more incredible presentations such as the ones below!
Posters
Thales Buzan, Cristina Name & Laura Colantoni (Faculty)
Native English Speakers’ Perception of Questions Produced by L1 Brazilian Portuguese and L1 English Speakers
Caroline Mekhaeil (PhD student, UTM)
Could Individual Language Dominance Explain the Transfer to L3 French?
Caroline Mekhaeil presents poster |
Morphophonological Polarity in West Chadic Languages
Rim Dabbous, Marjorie Leduc (MA Alumna), David Ta-Chun Shen & Charles Reiss
Locality in phonology is epiphenomenal
Radu Craioveanu (Alum)
Long and short diphthongs in North Saami
Radu Craioveanu presents poster |
Liam McFadden (Undergrad), Avery Ozburn (Faculty) & Samuel Akinbo (Faculty) - Best Poster!
Language mapping for linguists
Liam McFadden presents poster |
Talks
Ash Asudeh, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Neil Myler, Daniel Siddiqi & Lisa Sullivan (Alum)
Metasyncretism and secondary exponence in LRFG
Samantha Jackson (incoming Faculty, ex-postdoc) & Derek Denis (Faculty)
Speaking of immigrants: Commentary on the aural employability of (non-)Canadian English
Samira Ghanbarnejadnaeini (MA Alum)
“Woman, Life, Freedom:” A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of Gender and Political Activism
Laurestine Bradford (MA Alum)
A Source of Conativity in Tlingit Pluractional Verbs
Angelika Kiss (PhD student), Jianing Zhou, & Justin Leung (PhD student)
Declarative questions in Shanghainese and Cantonese
Yawovi Godo, Lydia Mei, Andreea Cristina Nicolae & Lyn Tieu (Faculty)
Étude expérimentale des propriétés d’exhaustivité de la disjonction en français : L’interaction de l’exclusivité, du libre choix, et des implicatures ad hoc
Lisa Sullivan (Alum) & Nicole Rosen (Alum)
/e/-/i/ overlap in Manitoba English
Calvin Quick (PhD Student)
Agreement with nominal antecedents in Welsh
Simone Diana Zamarlik (Alumni)
Preposition stranding in a non-preposition-stranding language: The puzzle of optional preposition omission under sluicing in Polish
Crystal Chen (PhD Student), Lyn Tieu (Faculty) & Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux (Faculty)
Investigating the role of gaze and the semantics of demonstratives in referent identification
Samuel Jambrović (PhD Student), Awarded "Honorable Mention"
Defending predicativism: Lessons from Barbie
Nadia Takhtaganova (PhD Student) & Barend Beekhuizen (Faculty)
Variation in the Morphosemantics of Postnominal Prepositions: The Case of Romance A
Arsalan Kahnemuyipour (Faculty) & Sahar Taghipour (Alumni)
Ezafe in the context of PPs
Justin R. Leung (PhD Student)
I’m like, “Like is not a complementizer, it seems like”
Dionatan Cardozo (Visiting student)
Quantified Phrases in Brazilian Portuguese: Preliminary Experimental Results
Christiana Moser (PhD Student), Bahar Tarakcı, Ercenur Ünal & Myrto Grigoroglou (Faculty)
Multimodal recipient mentions in possession-transfer event descriptions: language-specificity outweighs conceptual peripherality
Patrick Kinchsular (Undergrad)
External Possession in Kinyarwanda: A Tale of Two Applicatives
Annie Chong, Avery Ozburn (Faculty) & Tamam Youssouf
Phonologically-conditioned allomorphy in Oromo plurals
Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux (Faculty), Laura Colantoni (Faculty), Danielle Thomas (alum) & Crystal Chen (PhD Student)
Gender in Toronto Heritage Spanish
Anissa Baird (PhD Student) & Emily Atkinson (Faculty)
Five- & Eight-Year-Olds’ Interpretation of Ambiguous They
July 30, 2024
Song Jiang and Alexei Kochetov Publish on Mandarin rhotics!
Attendees of the 13th International Seminar on Speech Production, ISSP. |
Song Jiang (left), PhD candidate at the Uoft Phonetics Lab, and Alexei Kochetov, Professor of Linguistics (right), recently published their work, Variability in the articulation of Beijing Mandarin rhotic vowels.
Rhotic vowels are modified by the consonant /r/ - think "heard" and "bird".
Noticing that the "contextual and/or inter-speaker variability" of North American English rhotic vowels such as /ɹ/ and [ɚ] was widely documented, and that that of the Mandarin rhotic vowels, such as [ɚ, u˞], was less so, they set out to conduct an "extensive ultrasound investigation" of these rhotic vowels in Beijing Mandarin.
In fact, they were able to indicate a "greater than previously reported variability in the articulation of Beijing Mandarin rhotic vowels" by examining variation in tongue configuration, (retroflex or bunched) vocalic contexts, and reported greater similarity between rhotic vowels to rhotic vowels, than in rhotic and non-rhotic vowels.
This publication was presented as a poster on Wednesday, May 15th at the 13th International Seminar on Speech Production, (ISSP 2024) held this year in Autrans, France.
We are so proud of this momentous accomplishment, and congratulate them on their hard work.
(All quotes from the paper's abstract, found in the link above.)
July 26, 2024
Sali Tagliamonte's CRC Grant is Renewed!
The renewal of this grant, which was confirmed earlier in June, awards $200,000 annually for 7 years to the University College linguist.
For more information, see https://www.utoronto.ca/celebrates/14-u-t-researchers-awarded-new-or-renewed-canada-research-chairs or check out the relevant accounts: @salitag, or @theucprincipal, as well as:
X: @UC_UofT
Instagram: @uc_uoft; @theucprincipal
YouTube: @UC_UofT
Facebook: @universitycollegetoronto
July 23, 2024
Naomi Nagy, Linguistics Chair, Publishes Book about Heritage Language Variation and Change!
July 21, 2024
Greg Antono Successfully Defends Thesis Proposal!
July 19, 2024
PhD Candidate Angelika Kiss Successfully Completes Thesis Defense - Congratulations, Doctor!
On Thursday, June 20th, 2024, Angelika Kiss of the Department of Linguistics completed her last step toward officially becoming Dr. Kiss! Congratulations!
Completing her thesis defense of Form-meaning relations in non-canonical questions, Dr. Kiss impressed her committee consisting of Professors Guillaume Thomas, Laura Colantoni, and Keir Moulton, as well as her supervisor, Professor Michela Ippolito. Also in attendance at the defense was Fatima Hamlaoui, who performed internal/external reviews.
Dr. Kiss' Thesis Defense Reception, featuring Guillaume Thomas, Fatima Hamlaoui, Michela Ippolito, Angelika Kiss, Hans-Martin Gaertner, Keir Moulton (L-R) |
Dr. Michela Ippolito and Dr. Angelika Kiss |
The Department of Linguistics congratulate her on the successful completion of her dissertation, and are excited to see her future works.
July 17, 2024
Our Newest Alumni: Linguistics PhDs at Convocation
Announcing the newest PhDs from the Department of Linguistics! They were conferred their degrees at convocation on June 5th.
Sahar Taghipour: Case and Phi-agreement in Laki: Parametrizing split-ergativity in Kurdish
Sahar with her supervisor, Professor Arsalan Kahnemuyipour. |
Andrei Munteanu: Probabilistic Evaluation of Comparative Reconstructions
Kiranpreet Nara: An acoustic study of Punjabi tones and an investigation of ongoing tonal changes
The Graduate Office congratulates and welcomes their newest alumni into this exciting next chapter of their journeys.
July 15, 2024
Arcadian Greek vs. Standard Greek: Dr. Photini Coutsougera Publishes A Dictionary with the Answers
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July 11, 2024
Language Research Day - BAM!
On Monday, June 3rd, the University of Toronto hosted Language Research Day (LRD), a student-led academic conference designed to facilitate interaction and learning among graduate students in the field of language research.
Spanning campuses, languages, and levels of inquiry, this hybrid conference hosted over 100 in-person and virtual attendees.Professor and Linguistics Department Chair Naomi Nagy gave the opening keynote, (Heritage) Russian case-marking: Variation and paths of change.
Dr. Craig Chambers, a joint PhD in Cognitive Science and Linguistics, gave the closing keynote, Where and how does nonlinguistic cognition fit into language abilities? This presentation was drawn from a cross-sectional study on real-time language processing, and aids in the complete understanding of the "mental architecture supporting language abilities across the human lifespan."
One other Linguistics Dept member presented: PhD student Nick Haggarty, who was featured in June's spotlight on Queer Linguistics.
We look forward to seeing the development of this exciting event in 2025!