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. 

Submissions will be accepted until December 1, 2024, but space is limited so we encourage applicants to apply early!

Students interested to participate will receive one round of feedback on their application materials, and anyone interested can fill out this form: https://forms.gle/wUvE4J9RAt4Ue4Li6.

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!

The day began with breakfast in the department lounge. Folks mingled around and numerous faculty members and students showcased their research posters. 

Kier Moulton (Graduate Chair) and Naomi Nagy (Department Chair) gave their welcome remarks. Kier reminded us that we also work on Fridays: we participate in research groups and learn new things; and we catch-up with colleagues as part of community building. Naomi then introduced the new cohort of MA and PhD students as well as our post-doctoral fellows.

Outside the lounge, students and faculty teamed up to play bowling! Congratulations to Derek Denis (faculty) and Nick Haggarty (PhD student) for winning! 

The day progressed with a series of lightning talks in various research groups and labs. We got to hear about recent and on-going work in the (H)LVC, CSoL, Syntax, Semantics, PHON, and LDDR groups. We also got to see the Phonetics Lab, Experimental Syntax-Semantics Lab, the TLC lab, and the newly renovated grad space! After lunch, we got to hear from some faculty members about their research interests and works-in-progress.

We capped off our second-annual Kick-off Day with a welcome party at The Pilot! Department members enjoyed an afternoon filled with food, drinks, and laughter. 

Thank you to everyone (especially our administrative staff) for making this day a success!

Linguistics Coffeehouse Recap!

During March of 2024, Jack Mahlmann, Claudia Raihert, and Mechelle Wu, graduate students of our department, organized a coffeehouse fundraising event. 

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!

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.

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!

UofT linguists, attendees and presenters alike, gathered for the reception, presentations, and lunch held at the Linguistics Lounge, pictured below.

Session 1, chaired by Professor Alexei Kochetov, saw presentations by both faculty and graduate students.

Louis Careri, Laura Griffin, Youmna Mohamed, Jemi Samuel, Avery Ozburn

Developing a model for community engagement in phonetics and phonology fieldwork

Louis Careri describes p-sided
challenges associated with fieldwork

Laura Griffin's YouTube Shorts Sample, a
language learning resource targeted towards the
younger generation of Mbembe speakers.

Yanfei Lu, 2024 Elan Dresher Prize winner  (see Elan below)

New approaches to stress patterns of Oneida 

Professor Yoonjung Kang chaired Session 2, seeing the following presentations:

Jessica Yeung

Where to go from here? Directionality and morphological structure in vowel harmony

Liam McFadden, Shana Rosenberg, Gianna Giovio Canavesi, Avery Ozburn

An artificial language learning experiment on rounding harmony target asymmetries

Lunch was held at Sidney Smith in the Linguistics Lounge.

Session 3, chaired by presenter and Professor Avery Ozburn, showcased two projects.

Jack Mahlmann

Can you hear the silence? Perceptual learning of plain-ejective contrast

 

B. Elan Dresher, namesake and founder of the prize of the same name (see Yanfei above)

Features and contrast: The universal versus the language particular 

Session 4 was chaired by Jessamyn Schertz, Professor of Language Studies at UTM.

Laura Escobar

Gender differences in f0, intonation and particle use in conversation and performative speech in Japanese

Derek Denis, Lauren Bigelow

Speech rhythm, stance, and sociolinguistic identity: Two case studies from Ontario Englishes

Session 5 was chaired by Professor Nathan Sanders, and saw the following presentations, followed by closing remarks.

Alessandro Jaker (Sisseton Wahpeton College)

How natural is tonal phonology? What happens to stress-tone interactions when tones reverse

Laura Griffin

Tonal alternations in Mwaghavul associative constructions

 

 

Closing remarks were brief! Thanks to everyone for participating and organizing!

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!

Linguistics Spotlight: Myrto Grigoroglou

WHITL Blog just got caught up with Myrto Grigoroglou’s many recent publications, coming out of 3 streams of research foci in just as many languages! 

Speaking to Grigoroglou about her research these past few months, many incredible projects come to light. A more comprehensive list can be found linked below. 

Read along to discover the impressive work being done by the Assistant Professor and her team.

Communication/development of pragmatic abilities: How children and adjust language to informational needs of listeners 

In the field of linguistics and cognitive science, researchers are concerned with the different ways in which people describe events to a third party who cannot see them occurring. 

Grigoroglou and her team probe this research, manipulating their experimental setup to get as much information out of the speaker as possible. Compiling this data, the team created a database comparing not only cross-linguistic data, but multi-modal signaling information. 

For example, in Turkish, considered to be a more gestured language than, say, English, speakers were found to gesture much more when presented with a familiar listener. 

Furthermore, the developmental component of this study, taking place in a naturalistic setting, is a novel one. Previously, studies mainly looked at the role of the addressee to examine how their involvement changed the speakers’ descriptions of events. 

This was Grigoroglou's launching pad as well: they started with the assumption that visual perception of a listener would affect a speaker's informativeness. Though this was enough to increase responsiveness in adults, they didn’t see meaningful changes with children. Having a naïve listener, however, did affect communication. 

In a step-wise approach, researchers manipulated the role of the listener, giving them more responsibility, a clear goal, and eventually interaction with the speaker. The most helpful listeners are, it turns out, naïve, familiar to the speaker, visible, and engaged. 

Though interaction increases how informative the speaker will be, this goes both ways. Researchers found that even an assumption that the listener was distracted was enough to decrease the amount of information they were willing to give. 

Being told by researchers that your listener is not paying attention, even if given visual or oral evidence to the contrary, is enough to shut down communication for most people. 

Communication factors in use of spatial languages: Language to describe space

This branch of Grigoroglou's work studies language used to describe space, words such as in/on. The team realized that when making static descriptions, people don't use out/off as much as they use motion descriptions. For example, instead of "the cat was off the rug," people might say "the cat was next to the rug" - a description more closely aligned with motion. 

Existing semantic theories say that these PPs (prepositional phrases) are ambiguous, and that motion PPs lie between static and motion prepositions. Analysis in the field currently says that  out/off are infelicitous, needing context in static descriptions. 

Grigoroglou and her team offer an alternative account: these are negative prepositions and have a negative meaning regardless of whether they are used in motion or static descriptions.

For something to come out of or off of means that means it was once in/on, and necessitates movement. Thus, in/out are complimentary antonyms existing in a relationship of entailment.

However, one of the most exciting aspects of this interview was discovering that, due to the similar spatial patterns of Turkish, French, and Greek, Grigoroglou's research results have universal validity. 

Acquisition of logical language/logical cognition: How children acquire conditionals

While working as a postdoctoral researcher studying the expression of hypothetical language in children aged 3-6, Grigoroglou was meeting in person with the participants and their parents to gauge how information is presented to familiar vs. non-familiar listeners. However, when the pandemic hit, this research was moved online. 

Trying to connect through Zoom, a new issue presented itself: a misalignment between the perspectives of speaker and listener, posing a newer, more intense need for information. Online data collection in this field reflects entirely different results than would appear in person.

Now, Grigoroglou is collecting child data from Turkish studies. This labor-intensive project, involving hundreds of hours of coding, is being completed by graduate students in Türkiye. 

This procedure for measuring gesturing in Turkish involves multiple steps. First, researchers segment speech into clauses. Next, they align the gestures with the speech segment using coding software called ELAN, which enables them to transcribe speech for clauses – for example, using 1 to code the presence of an instrument, and 0 to code its absence. Next, they look at and categorize gesture. This is partially done using a code book to standardize coding of otherwise hard-to-quantify movements. 

Plans for a second study in English, taking place in person, will manipulate knowledge of listener to see how that affects gesture. 

Looking Forward 

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. 

To read more about her work, see the three pieces discussed in this article linked below, or her profile on the University of Toronto's Discover Research page.

Multimodal Description of Instrument Events in Turkish and English 

Metaphor Comprehension in Preschoolers: A Pragmatic Skill

Logical language and the development of reasoning by the disjunctive syllogism

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

Samuel Akinbo (Faculty), Tongpan Fwangwar & Michael Bulkaam

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

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.)

Sali Tagliamonte's CRC Grant is Renewed!

Sali Tagliamonte is one of Spring 2024's recipient of a Canada Research Chair (CRC) Grant renewal!

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

LinkedIn: @University of Toronto - University College

Congratulations once more to Sali, and best of luck in the future!

Naomi Nagy, Linguistics Chair, Publishes Book about Heritage Language Variation and Change!

On June 27th, 2024, Department of Linguistics Chair, Naomi Nagy, published her book, Heritage Languages: Extending variationist approaches. [Click link to purchase :-)]. Stay tuned for a book lauch announcement in September.

In Canada, the term, "heritage language" refers to a language learned in the home by children, if that language is not one of Canada's official languages (French, English). Half the people in Toronto are heritage-language speakers!

This book seeks to dispel stigma surrounding the use of one's heritage language by investigating cross-generational variation and change in conversations with 400+ speakers, in 8 different heritage languages, in Toronto. The findings reveal many similarities between heritage and homeland varieties.

"Introduc[ing] new methodology to help readers understand and apply variationist sociolinguistic approaches to quantitatively analyze spontaneous speech," this novel approach to heritage language research showcases how change in grammar of heritage languages resembles change patterns seen hegemonic, majority languages, contradicting findings of "simplification/attrition patterns in experimental heritage language studies." [quoted from the publicity blurbs]

Comparing patterns not only across languages, but across generations, this research quotes heritage speakers to give voice and pride to the use of their languages. 

Nagy presented some of this research at BAM's Language Research Day, as her talk on Heritage Language Variation and Change (HLVC), which we covered on the blog earlier in July. Other findings are on the project's webpage.

This book promises to be a veritable toolbox for those interested in learning about or researching heritage languages, dedicated to language revitalization.

Currently, the Department Chair is in Italy conducting research also relevant to this pursuit - about the variation in Franco-Provencal language varieties over time and space, and how to connect speakers of different varieties via social media.

 

 

The author reports that this book was much more fun to write than her dissertation!

Greg Antono Successfully Defends Thesis Proposal!

In the early hours of Monday, July 15th, 2024, Greg Antono presented his thesis proposal - Topics in Mandarin referring expressions - to a committee consisting of Michela Ippolito, Craig Chambers, and his supervisor, Daphna Heller.

Seeing an impressive attendance of UofT linguistics, and a successful defense, this presentation was a huge accomplishment for Antono.

The Department of Linguistics congratulates him, and looks forward to celebrating a successful thesis defense soon!

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.

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. 

Arcadian Greek vs. Standard Greek: Dr. Photini Coutsougera Publishes A Dictionary with the Answers

From Dr. Coutsougera: 

"""

Dr. Photini Coutsougera of Mississauga Campus' Language Studies Department has recently published a new book, A Dictionary of Northeastern Arcadian Greek [in Greek] with Patakis Publications, Athens, Greece (2024)/ 320 pages. 

A Look Inside: Letter Αα, p. 66

The Dictionary of Northeastern Arcadian Greek comprises 4.200 entries and 5.120 senses. These entries were primarily collected during field work, over a period of approximately thirteen years, and from existing written sources. 

Subsequently, they were verified one by one  by a group of native speakers of the dialect, aged 80 and over. Each entry contains semantic, phonological, morphological, syntactic and stylistic information. It also contains a plethora of authentic examples in use, synonyms, antonyms, idioms and idiomatic phrases, proverbs, sayings, and verses from local folk poetry. Finally, a 28-page Prologue includes a compact grammar of the dialect, lays out the research methodology employed in the data collection, and defines Arcadian Greek on the basis of linguistic criteria which systematically differentiate it from Standard Greek. 

This book aspires to bring the Peloponnesian varieties of Greek to the fore as they have been conspicuously absent from the literature.

                                                                 """

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.

Other University of Toronto departments in attendance included Speech Language Pathology, Psychology, and Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, making up a participation as diverse as the languages discussed at the conference. 

The Linguistics Department, in part responsible for funding the event, was also represented by Pedro Mateo Pedro, as well as Angelika Kiss, who helped organize, and recently defended her PhD thesis (to be covered on the blog soon)!

To see more information, check out BAM's Instagram page or the #LRD2024.

We look forward to seeing the development of this exciting event in 2025!