FLAUT lecture by Suzi Lima (March 29th, 2017)

Friends of Linguistics At the University of Toronto (FLAUT) recently held a talk by Suzi Lima (Assistant professor, University of Toronto/Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) entitled: "Language maintenance and revitalization in Brazil". Abstract below, and then pictures!

Brazil is a multilingual country: approximately 160 Brazilian Indigenous Languages are currently spoken in Brazil (Rodrigues 2001), and for around 55% of them, comprehensive language documentation is not available (cf. Moore, Galucio and Gabas 2008). Language documentation has become a critical tool for language maintenance (through bilingual education) and revitalization strategies across the country. Many Brazilian indigenous peoples are currently involved in language revitalization projects that are based on previous language documentation efforts. This is the case for instance with the Guató, Pataxó, Puruborá and Umutina peoples; in all these cases, indigenous peoples are reconstructing their ancestral languages using materials produced in previous documentation projects (Franchetto, Nonato, Camargo 2014). In this talk, I will give an overview of language maintenance and revitalization projects in progress in Brazil.

Radu Craioveanu (Ph.D.) and Guillaume Thomas (faculty)

Naomi Francis (MA 2014, now at MIT), Ross Godfrey (Ph.D.), and Dan Milway (Ph.D.)

Radu Craioveanu, Jessica Mathie (Ph.D.), and Tomohiro Yokoyama (Ph.D.)

Suzi Lima (Dept. Spanish & Portuguese, and speaker for the event)

FLAUT lecture by Marshall Chasin (November 16th, 2016)

Friends of Linguistics At the University of Toronto (FLAUT) recently held a talk by Marshall Chasin titled "Clatter, Music and Hearing Loss". Here's a picture from the event.

Left to right: Yves Roberge, Marshall Chasin, Colin Swift (representative of the New College alumni association), Guillaume Thomas, and Jack Chambers. (Picture courtesy of Jennifer McCallum.)

Spring Reunion lecture by Elaine Gold

The Friends of Linguistics at the University of Toronto (flʌut) and Spring Reunion 2016 are co-hosting a lecture by faculty member Elaine Gold: "Bringing linguistics to the public: The Canadian Language Museum." This will be taking place on Wednesday, May 25, from 7 to 9 PM, in the department lounge.

Elaine founded the Canadian Language Museum in 2011 aiming to reach the Canadian public through short, portable exhibits on languages in Canada. Thus far, the Museum has created and curated five such travelling exhibits, as follows:

Canadian English, Eh? (2012)
Speaking the Inuit Way (2013)
Le français au Canada (2014)
Cree: The People’s Language (2015)
A Tapestry of Voices: Celebrating Canada’s Languages (2016)

Elaine will be discussing her work and the role of the Museum and its future directions. The presentation will be followed by a period of informal discussion and then a reception. Students, alumni, faculty, and friends are all welcome!

flʌut talk: Guillaume Thomas

Please join us for the first flaut (Friends of Linguistics at the University of Toronto) talk of the 2015-16 year. Professor Guillaume Thomas will be presenting "Documenting Garani oral culture", based on his fieldwork in Brazil. The talk will be taking place from 7 to 9 PM on Wednesday, October 14, in the department lounge. All are welcome!

flʌut talk: Alana Johns

Friends of Linguistics at the University of Toronto (flʌut) presents a talk by Alana Johns (Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Aboriginal Studies Program): "Fieldwork with the Inuit Language: Resources and Challenges."

The presentation will take place on Thursday, May 28, from 7 PM to 9 PM, in the department lounge. It will be followed by an informal discussion and a reception.

Students, alumni, faculty, and friends are all welcome! Please RSVP to our department administrator, Jill Given-King.

flʌut talk: Nicholas Welch

Friends of Linguistics At the University of Toronto (flʌut) presents a lecture by Nicholas Welch (postdoctoral fellow, University of Toronto):

Revitalizing Languages: Challenges and Successes

Thursday, November 6, 2014, 7-9 PM.
Linguistics Department Lounge - Sidney Smith Hall, Fourth Floor

Linguistic diversity, like biological diversity, is in crisis worldwide. Children are growing up speaking an ever-shrinking number of languages. The death of a language is often accompanied by the disappearance of a culture, an oral literature, and a way of life. Throughout North America and the world, efforts to revitalize threatened languages are underway. Language revitalization is a very difficult undertaking, however, and requires resources that are usually already strained. It is therefore vitally important to understand which strategies have been most successful and why. Dr. Welch will discuss what we can learn from the few success stories and how this information can be applied to other languages. In particular he will draw on his experiences with the Tlicho Yatii, Tsuut'ina and Navajo languages.

Informal discussion and reception to follow. Open to all students, alumni, faculty, and friends!

FLAUT lecture by Jack Chambers on May 30

Post courtesy of Elaine Gold

Friends of Linguistics At the University of Toronto [flaut]
and Spring Reunion 2013
present a lecture by

JACK CHAMBERS
Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto
 
Title: "Sleeping with an Elephant: English at the Canada-U.S. Border" 

Abstract:

Generally, we sound more like our neighbours than like people who live
farther away from us. But sometimes the continuum is disrupted by a barrier
of some kind ‹ an ocean, mountains or something less tangible like a
political boundary. The longest political boundary is the one that divides
Canada and the United States. Evidence from the Dialect Topography of Canada
shows that the border sometimes functions like a brick wall, blocking the
diffusion of linguistic elements. In other cases, it is permeable to some
extent, more like a screen door. The difference between what stops at the
border and what crosses it partly distinguishes local phenomena from global.
But sometimes it seems simply arbitrary, and those differences signal our
individuality and our independence.

PRESENTATION, INFORMAL DISCUSSION AND RECEPTION

Thursday May 30
 7-9 p.m.
 
DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
SIDNEY SMITH HALL
4th floor 
LINGUISTICS LOUNGE
OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY AND FRIENDS

Updated: photos from the event below

(Photo credit: Dan Milway)

(Photo credit: Dan Milway)

(Photo credit: Emily Clare)

(Photo credit: Emily Clare)

Upcoming FLAUT Talk: Elan Dresher (March 21/2013)

On Thursday, March 21, Elan Dresher will present a FLAUT talk entitled “Changes in Syllable Quantity and Stress in Middle and Early Modern English.” This event will take place at 7pm, in the Department of Linguistics lounge.

Abstract:

This talk will consider some changes in syllable quantity and the rules for main stress that had considerable effects on the prosody of English. The causes of these changes have been much debated, and touch on fundamental issues in diachronic and synchronic linguistics. The first set of changes altered the quantity (vowel length) of stressed syllables in the Middle English period, and pose the question: Why aren’t there more singular~plural pairs like staff~staves in Present Day English? At a more general level, these changes have led some to ask: are languages viruses that colonize children? The second set of changes involve the rules of main stress: why did native speakers of English adopt the Latin stress rule? Were these changes in progress already at the time of Chaucer (c. 1400), or did they occur considerably later? All the changes discussed in this talk show the relevance of the synchronic grammar and the role of language learners in accounting for phonological change.

Upcoming FLAUT Talk: Gerard Van Herk, Nov. 15

Students, alumni, faculty and friends, please take note: next week in the department there will be a talk hosted by Friends of Linguistics At the University of Toronto (FLAUT) and the Society of Linguistic Undergraduate Students (SLUGS):

Prof. Gerard Van Herk 

Memorial University of Newfoundland 

NEWFOUNDLAND LANGUAGE MYTHS 

Abstract:
Myth can mean "a story that a society tells to explain the world" or "thing that's not true". This talk looks at two widespread language myths in Newfoundland: that the local variety of English is dying, and that it is unique. Recordings from urbanizing villages and usage surveys across generations show that the dialect is changing, but change isn't death; historical and comparative work shows that Newfoundland English is not an only child ­ it has sisters in the Caribbean and the US south.

Gerard Van Herk is the Canada Research Chair in Regional Language and Oral Text at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and director of the Memorial University Sociolinguistics Laboratory (http://musl.ling.mun.ca/about.html).

PRESENTATION, INFORMAL DISCUSSION AND RECEPTION 

Thursday November 15, 2012 7-9 p.m. 

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS SIDNEY SMITH HALL 

4th floor LINGUISTICS LOUNGE 

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY AND FRIENDS

Niuean syntax and coconuts

On May 26, Professor Diane Massam gave an entertaining and informative lecture, 'Small Island, Big Language: The Story of Niue,' as part of the Flaut lecture series. She described some of her research on Niuean, an Oceanic language spoken in Niue, an isolated rocky island in the South Pacific. Niue Island is both the world's smallest independent self-governed nation and the world¹s largest upraised coral atoll. She also told us about its geography, history, and culture. Niuean challenges universal claims such as All languages have nouns and verbs and All sentences have a subject and a predicate. She also showed us some beautiful photos, which I hope she'll post a sampling of here.

Alana also promises a video of an anonymous linguist illustrating proper cocounut-opening technique. As a bystander quipped, "Linguists don't just crack the code of languages. They know how to crack coconuts, too." All part of linguistic fieldwork!

I need me an audience!

Don't miss this interesting talk on Thursday evening!


Friends of Linguistics At the University of Toronto [flaut]
and
The Society of Linguistics Undergraduate Students (SLUGS)
present a lecture by

AILIS COURNANE
PHD Student, University of Toronto

I need me an audience!

Southern United States English (SUSE) has an interesting reflexive
construction which behaves quite unlike Standard English reflexive
constructions. In Standard English one can say the sentences in (1) but not
those in (2). All the sentences are grammatical in SUSE.

1) a. I wrote myself a letter
b. I bought myself a car (*for my son)
2) a. I wrote me a letter to the president
b. I bought me a car (for my son)

The bolded pronoun in (2) is called a Personal Dative (PD). In this talk
Ms. Cournane will discuss the development of the Personal Dative from
reflexive constructions in Old English. She will also show how the SUSE
reflexive constructions are similar to double object constructions found in
a wide variety of languages. Multimedia clips from football players, folk
songs, politicians, and popular culture will be used to illustrate this
interesting, and widespread, linguistic phenomenon.

PRESENTATION, INFORMAL DISCUSSION AND RECEPTION

Thursday JANUARY 27, 2011
7 ­ 9 p.m.

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
SIDNEY SMITH HALL
4th floor
LINGUISTICS LOUNGE

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY AND FRIENDS
Hope to see you there!

Lecture by Elan, May 27

Everyone is invited to attend a lecture on Thursday May 27 that will be given by Prof. Dresher in the Department lounge. His topic is "Dating the Hebrew Bible: Can Linguistics Help?". Here is a short description of the talk:

Despite years of scholarship going back to the Renaissance, dating the books of the Hebrew Bible remains a controversial enterprise. Professor Dresher will discuss contemporary methods in historical linguistics and sociolinguistics that can be used to evaluate the relative age of the language in the Bible's many books.

The event runs from 7-9 pm and will include a reception and a question period. Please RSVP to William Forrest <lingdept@chass.utoronto.ca>, so that we know how much food to buy!

The event is co-sponsored by flaut (Friends of Linguistics at the University
of Toronto) and Spring Reunion 2010.

"Dene Soundscapes"

Friends of Linguistics At the University of Toronto
presents a lecture by

KEREN RICE
University Professor, University of Toronto

Dene Soundscapes

In this talk, Keren Rice explores the sounds of language and the sounds of nature in the north Mackenzie area of the Northwest Territories. Learn about the languages, see some pictures, and hear some unusual sounds in this first flaut presentation in our department’s new location.

PRESENTATION, INFORMAL DISCUSSION AND RECEPTION
Thursday march 18, 2010
7 – 9 p.m.

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
LINGUISTICS LOUNGE
4th floor
SIDNEY SMITH HALL
100 St. George Street

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY AND FRIENDS