End of Term Parties!

Last week we celebrated the end of another successful term and year! This year has been a particularly busy year, so we had lots to celebrate! Tanya Slavin, Bettina Spreng, Elham Rohany Rahbar, Monica Irimia, and Anne St. Amand successfully defended their theses, and will be convocating in June.

We successfully hosted NELS 42 and MOT 2012 (as well as TULCon, which was hosted by SLUGS).

In mid-December, Alana Johns led a transcribing workshop in Nain Nunatsiavut (link to blog here: http://ukausivut.wordpress.com/), which was funded by her SSHRC research grant for "Beyond the Word".

Several of our graduate students and faculty members gave talks and presented posters at various conferences. Some of these include:

New Perspectives on Language Creativity: Composition and Recursion at UQAM in late September: Kenji Oda (who presented joint work with Alex Motut)

The Minimalist Program: Quo Vadis? - Newborn, Reborn, or Stillborn? at the University of Potsdam in early October: Alex Motut (who presented joint work with Kenji Oda)

The annual meeting of the LSA in Portland, Oregon in January: Radu Craioveanu, Elan Dresher, Monica Irimia, Yoonjung Kang (who presented joint work with Alexei Kochetov and two other collaborators outside of U of T), Andreea Kosa, Beth MacLeod, Naomi Nagy (who presented joint work with Joanna Chociej), Sali Tagliamonte (who presented joint work), and Keren Rice

OCP 9 at ZAS in Berlin, Germany in mid-January: Christopher Spahr

ACAL 43 at Tulane University, New Orleans in mid-March: Radu Craioveanu and Ross Godfrey

WSCLA 17 at the University of Chicago in mid-March: Richard Compton and Tanya Slavin

In December, our Christmas party featured "the largest permutation of F-Zero" (Cowper, pc), led and conducted by Elan Dresher, who led a two-hour sing-along.


This year's F-Zero included:

Elan Dresher: guitar, banjitar, harmonica, recorder, percussion,
Susana Béjar: violin,
Erin Brassel: trombone,
Sarah Clarke: violin,
Elizabeth Cowper: keyboard, classical guitar,
Daniel Currie Hall: bass guitar, cello,
Derek Denis: electric guitar,
Bobby Hsu: flute,
Bridget Jankowski: French horn,
Christina Kramer: clarinet, recorder,
Christopher Spahr: bass guitar, and
Michael Szamosi: percussion.

Congratulations to everyone on a successful year!

Photo credits: Christopher Spahr and Eugenia Suh

Canadian Language Museum opening

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Mar 22 saw the Opening of the Inaugural Exhibit of the Canadian Language Museum ‘Canadian English, Eh?’ in Wilson Hall, New College. The opening was lively and very well attended; delicious pastries were provided by Linguistics grad students and friends. Punch and finger food was generously provided by New College. The exhibit was displayed for 2 weeks and was very well received. The students of LIN201H1S Canadian English, taught by Prof. Naomi Nagy, participated in the exhibit both by acting as docents each day at lunch and by a special hour-long presentation of their own research into Canadian English.

The exhibit traveled to Waterloo at then end of May for the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and then to Montreal at the beginning of June for the conference on Change and Variation in Canada VI.

For more information on the Canadian Language Museum, please go to http://www.languagemuseum.ca.

--> Heather Mawby, Elaine Gold,Tamara Ivis, Caylie Gnyra, U of T Masters of Museum Studies students who curated the exhibit, with Elaine Gold, Chair of Canadian Language Museum and exhibit consultant

--> Diane Massam and Nik Rolle

--> Derek Denis and Alex Motut

--> Elan Dresher and Kevin Heffernan

--> Sali Tagliamonte, Elizabeth Cowper and Yves Roberge

--> Craig Diegel, Yves Roberge and Erin Brassel

Marisa Brook, Chris Spahr and Sali Tagliamonte discuss the exhibit

 

-->Crowd scene & exhibit

 

-->Grad students + Sali

Thanks to

--> Tara Clews for these great photos!

 

 There was also this picture in the U of T bulletin on April 3, 2012. 

Debating contrast

This is a link to a lively and interesting debate on contrast in phonology by Elan Dresher and Andrew Nevins held at Leiden Feb. 2012.  (Click posting title for link.)

Ed's bench under the sakura blossoms

Alana provides this lovely picture of the Edward N. Burstynsky (1935-2007) memorial bench, in full glory with the cherry blossoms

Fêting Elan

We fêted Elan, who retired in December 2011, at a party during MOT on March 9, 2012.

Elan Dresher, guest of honour, examines the present that the department gave him - a Chieftain Irish whistle.

Many thanks to Alana for the photos!