New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 42 in Pittsburgh

NWAV 42 took place last weekend in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. U of T was extremely well-represented this time around. The talks and posters by current members of the department were (alphabetically by first author):

 • André Arsenault: "Sociolinguistic variation in Mari Old Babylonian."

• Marisa Brook: "Comparative complementizers in Canadian English: Insights from early fiction."

• Aaron Dinkin: "Linguistic and non-linguistic regions in perceptual dialectology."

• Chris Harvey: "Any and no negation in Southern Ontario English."

• Matt Hunt Gardner, Derek Denis, Marisa Brook, and Sali Tagliamonte: "The new global flow of linguistic influence: be like at the saturation point."

• Naomi Nagy and Derek Denis: "An amplification role for lexical frequency in syntactic variation? Testing with heritage Italian."

Sali co-presented a paper with alumna Alexandra D'Arcy (University of Victoria) and colleague Celeste Rodriguez Louro (University of Western Australia) on the spread of be like throughout the English-speaking world.

Alex also presented a solo paper: "Does one change have ramifications for the other?",  introducing her corpus of Victoria English.

Alumna Nicole Rosen (University of Lethbridge) was a part of two talks: "Rhythmic variation in southern Alberta Englishes," with three colleagues, and "Religion as a factor in Southern Alberta English variation."

Former student Greg Madan presented "Enregisterment and disaccomodation: The rise of rhotic speech in rural New Hampshire."

Naomi Nagy also co-led a software workshop: "Extending ELAN into variationist sociolinguistics."

Other sociolinguists from U of T in attendance were Jim Smith (PhD), Ruth Maddeaux (MA), Emilie LeBlanc (MA), Martin Sneath (undergraduate), and French professor Anne-José Villeneuve. Alumni who put in appearances were Bridget Jankowski (recent PhD), Maddie Shellgren (MA, now at Michigan State University), and Shannon Mooney (MA, now at Georgetown University). Thanks to everyone for contributing to a fantastic conference!