New Publication: Learning Island-Insensitivity from the Input: A Corpus Analysis of Child-and Youth-Directed Text in Norwegian!

Dave Kush (Faculty) and colleagues have published a new article in Glossa!  This new article describes a corpus study that examines youth-directed reading materials to assess what direct evidence Norwegian children receive for filler-gap dependencies in island structures. Kush, Sant and Strætvern consider how different learning models would fare on the acquisition of target generalizations and speculate on how the observed description of filler-gap dependencies reflect the interaction of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic conditions! 

Kush, D. & Sant, C. & Strætkvern, S. B., (2021) “Learning Island-insensitivity from the input: A corpus analysis of child- and youth-directed text in Norwegian”, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5774

SLUGS Academic Seminar!

 Professor Alexei Kochetov is presenting at the SLUGS academic seminar on Monday, October 25th! He will be presenting his work on Kalasha laterals; Phonetic Realizations and Change in Progress! 

For the full abstract please see the SLUGS website! Zoom link and password are also available on the website. 

Hope to see you all there!! 

Research Ethics Workshop!

The Junior Forum session on October 26th will be open to all members of the department to discuss research ethics! Suzi Lima (faculty) and Susana Béjar (faculty) will be joining on behalf of the department's Ethics Committee. 

The workshop will feature:

• Q&A with Dean Sharpe (Research Ethics Board Manager for Social Sciences and Humanities) 
• Suzi and Susana speaking about the department Delegated Ethics Review Committee (DERC) 
• Readings and discussions on ethical protocols prepared by graduated students 

Please refer to the listserv email for more details! 

Congratulations Christopher!

Former MA student Christopher Legerme (now pursuing his PhD at MIT) has won the NWAV student abstract award for his work on Haitian determiners. This work evolved out of his MA Forum paper, which was completed in the summer of 2021 and was supervised by our very own Sali Tagliamonte (Faculty).

We are enormously proud of Christopher and we look forward to his presentation!

The title of his thesis (and NWAV talk) is "Creole on the Cusp: Phonological Variation and Change in Haitian Determiners.”

He won this award based on anonymous reviewer comments, which include these (read out at the conference opening):

"super important paper, and the abstract is well-written. We know exactly what has been done and why, and we know the results upon which the interpretations and claims are made."

"Good empirical methods, as long as the nasal/non-nasal distinction can really be coded perceptually. Good engagement with relevant literature. Data on a variety that's well-studied but not with variationist methods."

Restarting the Morphology Research Group!

Martin Renard (PhD Student) has brought back the Morphology Research Group alongside Gavin Bembridge (York U)! 

This group is meant to be an informal space to discuss issues related to the field of morphology (based on members' research, work and/or interest).  Members are invited to present and suggest discussion topics for future meetings! 

To participate, please email Martin (martin.renard@mail.utoronto.ca) to sign up for the email list! 

Publication: Learning Embedded Verb Placement in Norwegian: Evidence for Early Overgeneralization

Dave Kush (faculty) has co-authored a new publication! Learning Embedded Verb Placement in Norwegian: Evidence for Early Overgeneralization investigates how children acquire generalization of work orders from ambiguous and infrequent input.  Tina Ringstand (co-author) and Kush focus on verb placement in relative and complement clauses in Norwegian. 

Great work Professor Kush! 

Ringstad, T., & Kush, D. (2021). Learning embedded verb placement in Norwegian: Evidence for early overgeneralization. Language Acquisition, 1-22.

UofT Linguist Involved with the Jackman Humanities Institute!

Professor Ana Perez-Leroux is a part of the Jackman Humanities Institute Alumni Research Lecture Series! Perez-Leroux video, Telling the Story of Another Vaccine, covers how the people of the Dominican Republic came together to fight against polio. This is a great way to learn about the largest volunteer organization in the DR! Plus, the topic is fitting for the time we are in!

North East Linguistics Society 52

Rutgers University will be hosting The North East Linguistics Society 52 this year from October 29th-31st.  PhD student Samuel Jambrović (in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese) is scheduled to present on October 31st! Jambrović will be presenting work on the Evidence for Predicativism in Restrictive Apposition and the Proprial Article. 

This is a presentation you do not want to miss! 

Information regarding registration has yet to come! 

Call for Study Group Volunteers!

SLUGS is once again hosting facilitated study groups for linguistic undergraduate courses! This semester they are holding FSG from LIN228 and LIN232.  There is a call for volunteers to help guide the study groups and answer students questions. If you are interested in volunteering, please fill out the Volunteer Form! 

This is a great way to give back to the Linguistics Department and help out some eager undergraduate linguists! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! The department is thankful to have such amazing faculty members and students! Hope you all enjoy some turkey and pumpkin pie! 

Linguistics students are getting down to work

Neither bad weather nor the restrictions for social distancing and safety keep these students from getting down to serious discussion!

Angela Cristiano, Maya Blumenthal, Ryan MacDonald and Parker Robbins enjoy Sid Smith's East Patio.

Professor Lima + Access and Inclusion Peer Program!

Dr. Suzi Lima (faculty) is currently working with the Access and Inclusion Peer Program here at UofT.  Lima will be in attendance at the Latin American Students and Clubs Welcome on Oct 15! This event provides the opportunity for undergraduate students to interact with the Latin American community here at UTSG! 

For those interested, please register before October 15th! 

Publication - Licensing Null Arguments in Recipes Across Languages

 Professor Diane Massam (faculty) has published an article titled Licensing Null Arguments in Recipes Across Languages.  Massam worked with Ileana Paul to illustrate those null agents and null patients can be possible in recipes within a wide range of topologically and genetically diverse languages. Read their full article to understand the differences in the origins of null agents and null patients! 

Great work Professor Massam! 

PAUL, I., & MASSAM, D. (2021). Licensing null arguments in recipes across languages. Journal of Linguistics, 1-25. doi:10.1017/S0022226721000293

UofT @ Moscow HSE Pragmatics Workshop

Angelika Kiss (PhD) and Andrei Munteanu (PhD) will be presenting their joint work on Form-meaning relations in Russian declarative questions at this year's Moscow HSE Pragmatics Workshop. The event will be hosted virtually from Sept 30 - Oct 1 by the International Laboratory for Logic, Language and Formal Philosophy and the School of Linguistics at the HSE University (Moscow).

The workshop programme including abstracts can be found at this link.