University of Toronto Department of Linguistics Blog
The Society of Linguistics Undergraduate Students is selling the linguistics hoodies pictured here! For just $45 you can finally rep your linguistics program and support TULCON!
Hoodies will be sold in-person during SLUGS office hours (Tuesdays 19:00-20:00 or Wednesdays 17:00-18:00) in SS568, or you can reserve your order using the Stripe link (https://buy.stripe.com/5kA4hz9s28aYepGcMM) and pick it up during office hours.
All proceeds fund TULCON and future SLUGS initiatives!
Research Group and Department meetings with a tropical flair as we met in an unusual location on January 26, 2024!
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| Alexei, Samuel, Suzi, Naomi |
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| Cool Nathan & Naomi |
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| Sun-lovers Pedro and Naomi |
Thanks to Nathan and Alexei for the photos!
Congratulations Prof. Pedro Mateo Pedro and coauthors Philip T. Duncan (University of Kansas) and Harold Torrence (UCLA) for their new paper 'Indeterminate pronouns in Kaqchikel' in Linguistic Variation. The article examines the morphology, syntax, and semantics of certain non-interrogative structures involving wh-expressions in the Mayan language Kaqchikel.
Abstract:
This paper investigates the morphology, syntax, and semantics of five non-interrogative constructions that involve wh-expressions in Kaqchikel, a Mayan language of the K’ichean branch spoken in Guatemala. We focus on the properties of maximal free relative clauses, existential free relative clauses, ever free relative clauses, free choice items and negative indefinites. We show that the interpretive properties of these constructions are strikingly similar to those found in a number of unrelated languages.
Happy reading!
Congratulations to faculty member Emily Atkison who has coauthored a new paper with Akira Omaki (University of Washington) entitled 'Adaptation of Gap Predictions in Filler-Gap Dependency Processing during Reading' in the journal Languages.
Abstract:
Syntactic adaptation effects have been demonstrated for an expanding list of structure types, but the mechanism underlying this effect is still being explored. In the current work on filler-gap dependency processing, we examined whether exposing participants to a less common gap location—prepositional object (PO) gaps—altered their gap predictions, and whether these effects would transfer across tasks when this input was presented in a quasi-naturalistic way (i.e., by reading stories). In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that comprehenders dampened their direct object (DO) gap predictions following exposure to PO gaps. However, Experiments 2A and 2B suggest that these adaptation effects did not transfer when the quasi-naturalistic exposure phase was presented as a separate task (Experiment 2A) and when they also needed to generalize from a syntactic to a semantic measure of direct object gap predictions (i.e., filled gap vs. plausibility mismatch sentences; Experiment 2B). Overall, these experiments add filler-gap dependency processing, as well as the gap predictions associated with it, to the growing list of structures demonstrating adaptation effects, while also suggesting that this effect may be specific to a singular experimental task environment.
The article is published open-access so anyone is free to read it!
You might enjoy this article, written by former Premier and linguistics student, Kathleen Wynne.
Imagination is boundless, knowing no limits or restrictions. It is able to take our minds beyond the norm, where strings of thought are spun together into a tapestry of ideas, innovations, questions and answers. While often undervalued when compared to testable knowledge, the impact of imagination in our everyday lives may be deeper than we expect.
For the 20th anniversary of UTism (the University of Toronto Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Mind), CASA (the Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence Students Association) brings to you a conference which will aim to examine the interplay between imagination and the mind through various interdisciplinary fields.
Admission for UofT students is 10$, and general admission is 15$.
Save the date for February 10-11, 11am-5pm, 2024.
This year's UTism invites you to imagine the possibility of imagination through contemporary research in philosophy, psychology, computer science, neuroscience, and linguistics.
Our own Myrto is a speaker!
Instagram: https://instagram.com/casa.uoft
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/uoftcasa/
This year, we have quite a few people who have travelled a long way to join our Department and experience their first Toronto winter.
The Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics recently released a new volume (their 46th!) featuring several members of the Toronto Linguistics community. The volume was edited by Gregory Antono and includes 11 papers that were presented at the 1st Toronto-Montreal Bantu Colloquium held at UTSC.
Here is a summary of the contributions.
We thank all of the student volunteers and staff who helped make this edition possible.
Happy reading!
UofT will be well represented at this year's meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Several of our faculty and graduate students will be presenting their individual and joint work in New York City.
Here is the list of presentations:
Talks
Posters
SSILA
The Language Variation and Change (LVC) Research Group and RAs from the Heritage Language Variation and Change Project (HLVC) celebrated the coming of winter with their annual fondue party.
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| Alexei & Hassan prep baguettes |
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| Nick's cheese is the stretchiest; Kirill, Siyi and Laura miss it, though! |
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| Julian debates diverse chocolate desserts. |
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| Kirill shows us how it's done. |
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| Our art. |
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| Patrick and the holiday hat |
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| Hassan and the holiday hat |
A new paper coauthored by Avery Ozburn (Faculty), Gianna Canavesi (PhD Student), and Samuel Akinbo (Faculty) has appeared in the Journal for the Association of Laboratory Phonology. The paper entitled "Perception of ATR in Dàgáárè" examines how well speakers of Dàgáárè (Mabia; Ghana) distinguish ATR contrasts and looks at the effects of harmony and disharmony on perception.
Here is the abstract:
This paper reports on two related perception studies about the property Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) in Dàgáárè (Mabia; Ghana). We examine how well native speakers are able to distinguish ATR contrasts as well as the effects of harmony and disharmony on perception, thereby testing hypotheses that have been made in the literature about the perceptual motivations of harmony systems. We find that, as expected, ATR mid vowels and Retracted Tongue Root (RTR) high vowels are the hardest to distinguish in Dàgáárè, but contrary to expectations, harmony does not improve accuracy in discriminating ATR contrasts. Nonetheless, we find the accuracy on disharmonic disyllabic forms is significantly worse than the accuracy in monosyllabic forms, which may indicate that disharmony hurts perception. We examine the implications for our understanding of the motivations of harmony systems and discuss how this paper contributes to the very minimal existing literature on perception in African languages.
Congratulations Avery, Gianna, and Samuel! We're excited to see so many wonderful collaborations within our department.
Two of our very own linguists, Dr. Barend Beekhuizen and Dr. María Cristina Cuervo, appeared in the media recently to talk about the Oxford University Press Word Of The Year "rizz".
If you are not familiar with the word "rizz", we have good news! Barend (on CP24) and Cristina (on 640 Toronto Radio) offer insight into what the word means, who is using it, and how it may have emerged in the language.
Check out the links below for more information.
Barend's conversation with Bakari Savage and Lindsay Biscaia on CP24: https://www.cp24.com/
Cristina's conversation with Ben Mulroney on 640 Toronto Radio:
UofT Linguistics had a wonderful time at Fall Campus Day on Saturday, Nov 18, 2023. Here are photos from the event showing our SLUGS representatives busy discussing linguistics and promoting our undergraduate program to high school students and first year students. Our trivia questions and attractive prizes of samosas, tote bags, buttons, chips and candy drew an impressive crowd!
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A new paper on the cross-linguistic variation of word meanings has been published in the journal of Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory by Prof. Barend Beekhuizen, Maya Blumenthal (MA Alumni), Lee Jiang (PhD Student), and colleagues! The paper is entitled 'Truth be told: a corpus-based study of the cross-linguistic colexification of representational and (inter)subjective meanings'.
We've included the abstract below:
The study of crosslinguistic variation in word meaning often focuses on representational and concrete meanings. We argue other kinds of word meanings (e.g., abstract and (inter)subjective meanings) can be fruitfully studied in translation corpora, and present a quantitative procedure for doing so. We focus on the cross-linguistic patterns for lemmas pertaining to truth and reality (English true and real), as these abstract meanings been found to frequently colexify with particular (inter)subjective meanings. Applying our method to a corpus of translated subtitles of TED talks, we show that (1) the abstract-representational meanings are colexified in patterned ways, that, however, are more complex than previously observed (some languages not splitting a ‘true’-like from ‘real’-like terms; many languages displaying further splits of representational meanings); (2) some non-representational meanings strongly colexify with representational meanings of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’, while others also often colexify with other fields.
Beekhuizen, B., Blumenthal, M., Jiang, L., Pyrtchenkov, A. & Savevska, J. (2023). Truth be told: a corpus-based study of the cross-linguistic colexification of representational and (inter)subjective meanings. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2021-0058
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/cllt-2021-0058/html
Jack Chew celebrated his 100th birthday on Friday, November 18, 2023, at a steakhouse on King St. He was a founding member of the Centre for Linguistic Studies, precursor of the Linguistics department, and the first professor at the University of Toronto to teach the introductory course, LIN 100.
A member of the Linguistics section of the Anthropology Department and a proud polyglot, he taught a course on Languages of the World, among others. His Columbia Ph.D thesis, published by Mouton, on Japanese honorifics, was one of the first studies that used the term “generative.”
Thanks to J.K. (Jack) Chambers for this nice photo and report.
We are pleased to announce the winners of 5 Undergraduate Awards in Linguistics for 2022-23:
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| Thanks to Kelly (right), Camille, Kai and Mary for making our lounge beautiful and welcoming! | ||
Newly minted PhDs - Congrats to these Doctors!
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 | New MAs - Congratulations!
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 Guillaume, Naomi & Derek bask in reflected glory. |  Cake and more cake |  MAs and friends |
 Jess hooded by Elizabeth |  Radu hooded by Nathan |  Pocholo hooded by Naomi |
 Pocholo hooded! |  Pocholo celebrates in front of (Con Hall and) the CN Tower |  Myrto sports a matching purse |
For a Globe & Mail article about changing language (and Gen Z trends), Asst. Prof Barend Beekhuizen weighed in with his linguistic expertise. Check out a fun story and find his quote here:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-amplify-the-practical-magic-of-the-girl-prefix/
