October 10, 2023

NWAV51 in NYC!

U of T linguists have a strong presence at 

NWAV51 (New Ways of Analyzing Variation), 

North America's premier sociolinguistics conference, this year!





Beekhuizen, Woolford: Intensifiers never go out of style: quantifying style and its effects on lexical variation

Franco, Tagliamonte: Getting socialized: Variation and change in the passive in Canada

Hachimi, Small: Stylized performance of prepositions: a potential innovation in comedy talent show (withdrawn)

Kang, Gao, Yun, Ryu: An apparent-time study of Daejeon Korean stop laryngeal contrasts

Kang, Yun, Ryu: VOT merger in progress and speech rate accommodation in perception: a case study of Daejeon Korean  

Sali Tagliamonte: The ‘1984’ of linguistic change: A sociolinguistic shock point in the late 20th century.

Kaleigh Woolford: Taking center stage: Measuring variation and change across the center and periphery of lexical fields  

Mechelle Wu: The floating bubble: Linguistic innovations of the highly mobile Third-Culture Kids (TCKs)


And from the HLVC Project: 

Griffin, L. /o/! They’re j/u/st about the same!:  

  Vowel Shift in Heritage and Homeland Seoul Korean

Leung, J. Setting {straight} the record {straight}: Acceptability of alternative word orders in resultatives by heritage Cantonese speakers

Nagy, N. Extending variationist approaches to more languages: Problems & Possibilities

Petrosov, Nagy. (Heritage) Russian case-marking: Variation and paths of change

Tse, H. AM/P~OM/P merger in Hong Kong vs. Toronto Cantonese: An under-documented homeland sound change in a heritage language context

Umbal, P. Stability in the face of contact: Evidence from Heritage Tagalog /u/

 

Prior department members:  

Carrier, J.: Split ergativity and loss of rich verbal agreement 

Muthukumarasamy and Narayan: Exploring variation in heritage Tamil retroflex perception and production 

Neuhausen, M.: “My safe word will be[ʍ]iskey!” – An acoustic approach to the whine-wine split  

Pabst, K.: Northern Maine as a transition zone: Evidence from rhoticity in Southern Aroostook County English

 

That's a a lot of sociolinguistics on October 13-15, 2023!

September 18, 2023

Welcome to a new postdoc!

 

Mojgan Osmani received her PhD from Tarbiat Modares University in 2019. Her doctoral dissertation is entitled ‘The Study of Phases in the Structure of Kurdish Sentences’. Her primary areas of research interest are case and agreement systems, in particular ergativity. Dr. Osmani has just started working as a University of Toronto Mississauga Postdoctoral Fellow in Humanities under the supervision of Professor Arsalan Kahnemuyipour. She is based in the Department of Language Studies at UTM, but also spends time at the Department of Linguistics, UTSG. Her postdoctoral work is focused on the syntax of clitics in Iranian languages, especially central Kurdish (Sanandaji). Her research dataset has recently been expanded to include additional Iranian languages. The variation found in the distribution of clitics in Iranian languages, despite lots of syntactic similarities otherwise, makes them a perfect test case for a microparametric study. Dr. Osmani has also joined the Syntax of Nominal Linkers project (PI: Arsalan Kahnemuyipour).

September 13, 2023

Welcome Party 2023

Linguists gathered again at the Madison Avenue Pub to celebrate the start of a new school year and the end of the first week. Lots to talk about after the Campus Kick-off Research Fair.


Ewen and Samuel discuss and enjoy the sun.

MA Forum gets their discussions going, too. Calvin, Will R. and Louie face the camera.

 
Naomi and Keir try out speechifying as the incoming Department Chair and Grad Chair.

Guest speaker Thomas Kettig, York U Sociolinguist, shares some of his Hawaiian style, after a great lecture about Hawaiian sociophonetics.

Members of the LVC group gather for a photo (L to R):

Incoming grad chair Keir and outgoing grad chair Arsalan and the  take a moment to relax and enjoy the party.
Suzi, Pedro and Samuel A. advertise great beer for us.


Youp enjoys pub fair.


May 3, 2023

Sali wins CLA National Achievement Award 2023

 

 Congratulations Sali!

La Dre Sali Tagliamonte   [English version below]

La professeure Sali Tagliamonte (PhD U. d’Ottawa, 1991; MA U. d’Ottawa 1983; BA (Hons) U. de Toronto, 1981), directrice du département de linguistique de l'Université de Toronto, est une spécialiste mondialement reconnue de la sociolinguistique variationniste. Sa solide réputation mondiale repose sur plusieurs aspects, notamment son développement astucieux de la théorie sociolinguistique, son adoption essentielle de la méthodologie sociolinguistique qui a changé la discipline et l'impact de ces contributions sur la description dans le domaine. En effet, son leadership scientifique au Canada et dans le monde, manifesté par des contributions pionnières substantielles et distinguées au cours des trois dernières décennies, une communication efficace des résultats de la recherche grâce au mentorat universitaire et à la sensibilisation du public, et des initiatives extraordinaires de renforcement de la communauté linguistique, ont élargi les frontières de la recherche et grandement enrichi le domaine de la sociolinguistique variationniste.

Certaines de ses contributions les plus importantes sont les suivantes: elle a publié des livres universitaires innovateurs, des manuels scolaires révolutionnaires et une chronique authentique engageante et importante de l'émergence de ce sous-domaine linguistique du pionnier William Labov (1927-) et de ses contemporains. Ces travaux constituent à eux seuls une œuvre inhabituelle dans un domaine où les articles dans des revues internationales sont la norme. En effet, Cambridge University Press, le principal éditeur de travaux dans ce domaine, s'est engagé à recevoir d'elle deux autres livres. La professeure Tagliamonte a également initié et dirigé des avancées dans les méthodes statistiques et quantitatives pour étudier la variation et le changement de la langue; elle a dirigé plusieurs projets de collecte de données sociolinguistiques, inégalés en taille et en portée; ses archives VSLX Lab, contenant une profondeur temporelle inégalée de locuteurs couvrant les années de naissance de 1879 à 2011, et plus de 16,3 millions de mots de plus de 1,400 personnes, ont adopté, numérisé et transcrit un certain nombre d'enregistrements dialectologiques et d'histoire orale représentant les premiers stades de l'anglais en Ontario. En tant qu'enseignante remarquablement performante et innovante, elle a spécifiquement conçu des pratiques pour intégrer l'apprentissage et transmettre l'enthousiasme et l'importance de la recherche à ses étudiants, en commençant par les étudiants de premier cycle et en continuant jusqu'aux boursiers postdoctoraux. Enfin, grâce à des processus concurrentiels, elle a obtenu plus de deux millions de dollars en soutien financier fédéral pour aider à fournir ces contributions exceptionnelles.

L'excellence en recherche de la professeure Tagliamonte a été reconnue par ses collègues nationaux et internationaux. En 2013, un jury composé de ses pairs l'a élue membre de la Société royale du Canada - la plus haute distinction pouvant être obtenue par un universitaire canadien. Cette même année, en compétition avec des collègues de toutes les disciplines, elle a également remporté l'une des six prestigieuses bourses nationales de recherche Killam. En mai 2017, elle a obtenu une chaire de recherche du Canada très convoitée, 1 sur 142 à l'échelle nationale; 1 sur 45 en Ontario; et 1 sur 28 à l'Université de Toronto, et a été élue, encore une fois par un jury composé de ses pairs, comme membre de la Linguistic Association of America (fondée en 1924) en reconnaissance de ses contributions distinguées.

L'Association canadienne de linguistique est ravie de reconnaître la Dre Tagliamonte en lui décernant le Prix national d'excellence 2023.

 
Dr. Sali Tagliamonte

Professor Sali Tagliamonte (PhD U. of Ottawa, 1991; MA U. of Ottawa 1983; BA (Hons) U. of Toronto, 1981), Chair of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto, is an acknowledged world-leading scholar of variationist sociolinguistics. Her sterling global reputation rests upon several foundations including her astute development of theory, her pivotal embrace of discipline-changing methodology, and the impact of these contributions on description in the field. Indeed, her scholarly leadership in Canada and beyond, manifested through substantial and distinguished pioneering contributions across three decades, effective communication of research findings through academic mentoring and public outreach, and extraordinary linguistic community-building initiatives, have extended research boundaries and greatly enriched the field of variationist sociolinguistics.
 
Some of her most significant contributions include the following: she has published ground-breaking academic books, field-changing text books, and an engaging and important authentic chronicle of the emergence of this linguistic subfield from pioneer William Labov (1927- ) and his contemporaries onward. These alone constitute an unusual body of work in a field where journal articles are the norm. Indeed, Cambridge University Press, the leading publisher of work in this field, has contracted to receive two more books from her. Professor Tagliamonte has also initiated and led advances in statistical and quantitative methods for studying language variation and change; she spearheaded multiple sociolinguistic data collection projects, unmatched in size and scope; her VSLX Lab archives, containing an unparalleled time depth of speakers spanning birth years from 1879–2011, and over 16.3 million words from over 1,400 individuals, have adopted, digitized and transcribed a number of dialectological and oral history recordings representing earlier stages of English in Ontario. As a remarkably successful and innovative teacher, she has specifically designed practices to embed learning and convey the excitement and importance of research to her students, beginning with undergraduates and continuing through to post-doctoral fellows. Finally, through competitive processes, she secured over two million dollars in federal funding support to help deliver these outstanding contributions.

Professor Tagliamonte’s research excellence has been recognized by her national and international colleagues. In 2013, a jury of her peers elected her as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada - the highest honour achievable by a Canadian academic. That same year, competing against colleagues across all disciplines, she also won one of only six prestigious national Killam Research Fellowships. In May, 2017, she secured a coveted Canada Research Chair, 1 of 142 nationally; 1of 45 in Ontario; and 1 of 28 at the University of Toronto, and was elected, again by a jury of her peers, as a Fellow to the Linguistic Association of America (est. 1924) in recognition of her distinguished contributions.
 
The Canadian Linguistic Association is delighted to recognize Dr. Tagliamonte by awarding her the 2023 National Achievement Award.

March 27, 2023

Undergrad Graduation Lunch!! 🎓🍽️🎉

Graduating from university is a significant accomplishment that deserves celebration, and what better way to do so than with a graduation lunch? Recently, the Department of Linguistics hosted a luncheon to honour the hard work and achievements of their undergrads who will be graduating this term! 

In the comfort of the Linguistics Lounge, students and faculty members reflected on their time in the department and chatted about up-and-coming plans! Between the amazing company and the delicious food, the event was a hit!! 








Huge thank you to the staff and faculty members who took the time to organize and attend the lunch! We are very proud of our graduating students and are excited to see what lies ahead for them! 


Can you guess some of the next steps our undergrads will be taking??  




March 16, 2023

Is Nathan Sanders actually using games to teach linguistics?

Who here took LIN228/229 with Nathan Sanders (Faculty) and LOVED the games he created to help students learn? Who here has no clue what we are talking about but wants to hear more? 

If you said yes, you're in luck as Sanders will be giving an online talk to the Linguistics and Language Development Student Association at San José State University on this very topic! This will be taking place March 20th at 6:00pm EST. Please register to get the Zoom link.

Read over his abstract to understand why this will be such an exciting talk! 🤩



"Using Learning Games for Phonetics and Phonology"

Research shows that students perform better in courses when they take part in active learning, which involves activities or discussions in class that engage them in the process of learning, rather than traditional lectures that require them to passively listen (Hake 1998, Freeman et al. 2014, Michael 2006). However, many instructors may still be reluctant to introduce active learning into their courses for various reasons (Henderson and Dancy 2007, Deslauriers et al. 2019). Educational games have long been known to be useful ways to reap the benefits of active learning, by increasing student engagement, participation, and ultimately, performance (Cruickshank and Telfer 1980, Lepper and Cordova 1992, Sugar and Takacs 1999, Massey et al. 2005, Ritzo and Robinson 2006). Furthermore, games can be easy to implement in the classroom, sometimes requiring little more than pencil and paper or minimal adaptation of existing games, alleviating some of the difficulties instructors have with introducing active learning. Phonetics and phonology are particularly well-suited for adaptation to games, especially matching games, because they involve multidimensional structures allowing for many different ways of dividing up important concepts into meaningful groups of matching elements (the IPA, phonological features, etc.). In this talk, I present a few examples of educational games I have used in my courses for phonetics and phonology content, with discussion of the design principles that underlie the games to help other instructors understand how best to design and adapt their own games.

This talk is based on some of his work done with Danielle Daidone (University of North Carolina Wilmington).  Be sure to check out the full paper as well!



March 2, 2023

TULCON16!!!

In case you have not heard, SLUGS is hosting TULCON16 this upcoming weekend!! With an incredible line up of keynote speakers, including Noam Chomsky himself), this will be a jam packed weekend of wonderful linguistic work! 

Presentations cover a range of topics from speech disorders to the use of A.I. to theoretical syntax and everything in between! Below you can see the list of all UofT speakers presenting at the conference.Visit the TULCON16 website to get the extensive schedule with abstracts

UofT Presentations: 

- Dr. Regina Jokel (Faculty)  "Language as a diagnostic tool"

- Ewan Dunbar (Department of French)  "Are the Robots as smart as babies now?

- Siyi Fan (Undergrad)  & Shiyang Sun (Undergrad) "A variationist study of first-person-singular subject ellipsis in epistemic verb phrases of Heritage Cantonese" 

- Tony (Juntao) Hu (Undergrad) "Secondary thematic role encoding in require vs. allow verbs"

- Patrick Kinshular (Undergrad) "Semantic constraints in Kirundi phonology"

- Mechelle Wu  (Undergrad) "The citizens of everywhere and nowhere: A pilot study examining the linguistic behaviours of Third-Culture Kids (TCKs)" 

- Naim Lim  (Undergrad) "Acoustic study of word-initial liquids in Korean loanwords for English produced by Korean speakers"

- Hafza Nuh  (Undergrad) "An analysis of English stop consonant perception and production in L1 Somali speakers and comparison with L1 English speakers: A study of /p/ and /b/

- Laura Escobar (Undergrad) "The intonation of statements in the casual spontaneous speech of Tokyo Japanese" 

If you are interesting in attending, please register in advance.  For those who would like to get involved with TULCON, SLUGS is accepting volunteers to help with organization matters throughout the day.

We are SO excited for TULCON and hope you all can make it! 
  

January 23, 2023

Podcast Alert: Naomi Nagy on A Little More Conversation with Ben O'Hara-Bryne!!

After a viral accent slip on a US news channel, people have been asking many questions about regional dialects. Naomi Nagy (Faculty) was the perfect person to discuss this topic on the podcast A Little More Conversation with Ben O'Hara-Byrne


Nagy talks about the differences in accents and the way they change here in Canada and the US. So if you are looking to answer the question "why do people slip in and out of their accents" this is the episode for you! 

You can listen to the podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Music! Nagy's interview starts at 14:40. 

December 23, 2022

Keren Rice's Final Day of Teaching!

The Fall semester has officially come to an end, leaving us all excited for the Winter Break! This year is especially bittersweet as it marks the final semester with Faculty member Keren Rice before she settles into retirement! 

Following her final lecture (unsurprisingly, an upper-year phonology course) she was surprised by students and faculty members with a mini-celebration to commemorate all her hard work throughout her career! 


Rice made major contributions to the fields of Indigenous language studies, phonology and morphology, as well as having left long-lasting marks on many of her students! As excited as we are for her to begin her next chapter, she will be greatly missed in the classroom! 

Rice with her students!

Faculty members who joined the party! 



 


December 8, 2022

First-ever winners of the Dean's Research Excellence Awards!

This year, the Faculty of Arts and Science established the Dean's Research Excellence Awards to recognize faculty members whose research achievements have been cited as especially noteworthy!

Given that brief description, it is no surprise to see that Naomi Nagy (Faculty) is one of the five recipients! As this award is aimed to help researches compete successfully in national award competitions, winners will receive $10, 000 to further their professional development. 

The five recipients of this year's Dean's Research Excellence Award: (clockwise from top left) Wil Cunningham (Psychology), Megan Frederickson (Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Randall Hansen (Political Science, Munk School) Naomi Nagy (Linguistics) and Kaley Walker (Physics) 


Nagy’s Heritage Language Variation and Change Project positions her at the front and centre of her generation of scholars. With students and colleagues in several countries, she has been documenting studies of variation in 10 heritage languages spoken in Toronto. Nagy has also been engaged in a longitudinal study of an endangered, unwritten, Franco-Provençal language called Faetar.

Huge congratulations goes out to Naomi Nagy! We are excited to see more of her amazing work! 

November 3, 2022

Activism in the Department!

Faculty member Arsalan Kahnemuyipour took part in a rally on Parliament Hill which marked the 1000th day of the downing of Flight PS752. Flight PS752 was taken down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ missiles, killing 176 passengers including 55 Canadians. Families of the victims continue to fight to learn the true circumstances surrounding this tragic event. 


Faculty life in our department is not just about academics and we applaud our faculty members and students who use their voices to fight against injustices across the world!

September 25, 2022

The Espresso Machine is back in Action

espresso machine 

 The espresso machine (the one with a portafilter, not pods) needed a little TLC after being neglected while we were operating remotely. It's been cleaned and adjusted and is making good coffee again!



August 14, 2022

Katharina defends PhD - In person!

We are delighted to be back to in-person dissertation defenses and Katharina Pabst did us proud (on 26 July 2022) with her presentation and lively Q&A about sociolinguistic description and documentation:

Putting “the Other Maine” on the Map: 

Language Variation, Local Affiliation, and Co-occurrence in Aroostook County English

We had a little reception featuring cupcakes, ayuh!

And alcohol for sanitizing...

 


August 12, 2022

In person workshop! SPF on August 8

We are getting back to in-person events. Many members of the department, undergrads, grads, faculty and staff, got to see each other for SPF, the Summer Phonetics/Phonology Forum, 2022 edition. 

One highlight was lunch together in the lounge:

Some of the organizers: Alexei, Phil and Jessamyn (faculty at StG, UTSC and UTM, respectively) 


More organizers: Nathan and Keren, plus Naomi and the beautiful window garden 


Koorosh Ariyaee (PhD student) and Gideon Mehna (UTM undergrad presenter)
 
 Mary and Yoonjung (organizer) catch up. Kiranpreet and Jessica do the same, with Greg's dog Mochi.


Great food from Cumin Kitchen
 

Presentations were really interested and diverse. They included:

Martin Renard
Stem and Initial Segment Faithfulness in Kanien’kéha Dresher Prize Winner

Simon LiVolsi, Angela Cristiano, Naomi Nagy
Modeling Italian variable apocope

Jessica Yeung
How not to learn an ATR harmony pattern: Results from two pilot experiments

Song Jiang and Alexei Kochetov
An ultrasound study of English rhotic allophones produced by L1 and L2 speakers

Abram Clear and Naomi Nagy
Identifiably Italian: Acoustic features of the Toronto Italian Ethnolinguistic Repertoire

Yi-Ting Deng, Gianna Giovio Canavesi, Ji Whan Kim, Gideon Mehna, and Avery Ozburn
A preliminary investigation of the tone system of Keiyo Hafza Nuh, Aman Sakhardande, and Avery Ozburn
Plosive voicing in Keiyo

Radu Craioveanu
A prosodic typology of preaspiration



Thank you, Organizing committee (Peter Jurgec, Yoonjung Kang, Alexei Kochetov, Philip Monahan, Avery Ozburn, Keren Rice, Nathan Sanders, Jessamyn Schertz)!

 And thanks to Simon LiVolsi, recent grad from St. George, for taking these photos!



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August 5, 2022

Dresher and Cowper Grad Student Prizes!! 🎉


We are proud to share the winners of the 2021-2022 Dresher and Cowper Prizes! 
🎉


Martin Renard (PhD Student) is the recipient of the Dresher Prize for his phonology paper entitled "Stem and Initial Segment Faithfulness of Kanien'kéha"!  




Akil Ismael (MA Student) is the recipient of the Cowper Prize for his paper entitled "Ergativity in Shilluk"!



Congratulations to both Renard and Ismael! The Department is incredibly proud of your work and is excited to see what the future holds! 


Note: The prizes are named for two emeriti profs in our Department: Elizabeth Cowper and Elan Dresher.



August 3, 2022

Newest Faculty Member: Shohini Bhattasali!

In the Fall, we will be welcoming a new faculty member to the Department of Language Studies at UTSC! Shohini Bhattasali will be joining us as a computational linguist! We had the great pleasure of sitting down with her for an interview. Keep reading to learn more about her! 


What attracted you to the UofT linguistics department?

UofT has an incredible intellectual community and this is reflected through the research and the curriculum. I would love to help strengthen the computational linguistics program and I’m very excited to collaborate within Linguistics and with other departments (e.g. cognitive science, and information science). I also like how each campus has its unique identity but still makes up one cohesive whole. 

Do you have any expectations regarding the department? 

Everyone seems really welcoming and friendly. I am excited to see what everyone is working on and learn more about collaborative, interdisciplinary opportunities. The students at UofT seem very motivated and I’m excited to work with them and guide them along the way. I’m especially looking forward to working with students who want to incorporate computational modelling into their projects or are interested in the cognitive science of language and need guidance. 

You have taught/assisted many courses ranging from computational linguistics to Hindi to writing, which has been your favourite? 

Definitely the linguistics courses! They line up with my interests much more. While I was a teaching assistant for linguistics courses, I got to design tutorials. This was a great teaching experience as I got to see how the students were able to apply the theories they were learning. The writing courses were also great because I was able to design a course from scratch for first-year students. It was very fulfilling to see the students' trajectories as they improved their academic writing skills. These courses were the most rewarding in terms of seeing students improve and gain confidence in their writing! 

Do you notice any trends amongst your top students?

My top students are typically the ones who are engaged and ask questions in class. They are the ones who are not afraid to dive deeper into ongoing topics during class discussions. I know some students are shy and might be intimidated by speaking up in class, but they can still participate in tutorials and drop by during office hours. While it is hard to generalize, student engagement can often be an indicator of how they are doing. If they can relate their personal interests to the material, they will be more motivated and interested in learning. It is great to see students interested in what I am lecturing about and how it changes the way they see linguistics. Students coming from high school often don’t know much about linguistics so it's particularly enjoyable to observe the ah-ha moment where their interest is sparked and they figure out how linguistics isn’t centred around prescriptivism. 

What has been your most memorable research project? 

My dissertation was mainly based on a large-scale fMRI study. I had started grad school with an interest in computational linguistics and discovered neurolinguistics along the way. My advisor was starting a new cognitive neuroscience project and gave me an opportunity to be involved in this cross-linguistic fMRI study. He believes in experiential learning so it was a steep learning curve but I was involved in the experimental design, data collection, data analysis and then training other grad students and undergrad RAs. It was my first time working with neuroimaging data, but this experience really helped guide my research program. It took over a year to collect the brain data but the good thing with using continuous, naturalistic fMRI datasets is that it's not tailored to one research project and we can use it for many different research topics. I’m a big fan of naturalistic fMRI/EEG/MEG datasets for reusability and replicability purposes!

What are some of the issues you face in the field of computational linguistics?

In the last 10 years, the field has exploded and grown exponentially. It can be challenging to even define what “computational linguistics” is as the field is changing so quickly. Additionally, the line between natural language processing and computational linguistics is getting blurry. I personally see computational linguistics as a scientific study of language using computational tools, whereas natural language processing is more about engineering and building tools that are useful for language applications, e.g., Amazon Alexa (speech recognition) and Google Translate (machine translation). 

Artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches have also become tremendously popular, but we need to be careful in applying these approaches blindly to neuroimaging data because there is still so much about the brain we don’t know. While we can use these new fancy tools to get good results on certain tasks, we cannot always rely on them to understand why we get the results we get. For example, a computational model like GPT-3 is very good at predicting the next word in a sentence, but we don’t fully know how the prediction is being generated. If we don’t fully understand the representations being learnt by these models, how can we use them to understand the representations that the brain is using? As scientists, we always critically think about the tools we use and this is just another tool we have at our disposal. Maybe in a few years, we will have a more in-depth understanding of these models, and we can leverage that to understand cognitive mechanisms behind language comprehension and production. I do use computational models in my work to operationalize and embody cognitive hypotheses but I always prefer using simple and interpretable models over these fancier, black-box models.

Do you have any hobbies / secret passions? 

I love reading! I also like to bake since it’s a great way to destress while still feeling productive. Dance and music have played a large role in my life. Growing up in India, I trained as a classical Indian dancer (Odissi) for 15 years and then, I was on my college dance team too. I also love attending classical music concerts and dance performances. I’m looking forward to attending more of those in Toronto! 

What are you most looking forward to about living in Toronto? 

Toronto is a big diverse city which is exciting! I grew up in a large city too, but I have mostly lived in smaller, college towns during undergrad and grad school so I’m very happy to be moving to an urban area. I’ve also heard a lot of good things about Toronto’s multicultural food scene which makes sense given the large immigrant population. I also love visiting museums, discovering local bakeries, and finding new go-to coffee spots. It will be interesting to see what I will find in Toronto! I’m also looking forward to exploring more of Ontario and Canada in general since I’ve only visited Quebec City. 

I will be going back and forth between the Scarborough and St. George campuses, and luckily for me I already have a few connections on all campuses which I’m excited about. Nathan Sanders  (Facultywas actually my undergrad thesis advisor so it’s such a small world moment to now be his colleague! One of my best friends from grad school is a faculty in iSchool (Shion Guha) and another friend is joining UTM Language Studies (Lingzi Zhuang, new faculty member). Overall, I am excited to join UofT and am looking forward to creating a lab at the intersection of computational linguistics and cognitive neuroscience, meeting the students and making more connections here!


We would like to thank Shohini for taking the time out of her busy schedule to be interviewed! We look forward to seeing her on campus in the Fall! Feel free to connect with her on Twitter if you have any questions or if you want to introduce yourself! 

August 2, 2022

UofT Linguists at the Cognitive Science Society's Annual Meeting!

The Cognitive Science Society held their Annual Meeting here in Toronto from July 27th - 30th 2022.  This year's meeting hosted the latest theories and data from the world's best cognitive science researchers. No surprise, we found many UofT faculty members and students in the programme! The Submitted papers have been published in the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 44(44).  

UofT papers include: 

Overall,  this was a VERY eventful conference for our linguists! 🎉🎉🎉