Memorial Linguistics Department

COOL Newsletter: Fall 2011 Volume 2, Issue 2

2011-11-30T15:12:00.001-08:00

All the news that's fit to print! Find out about the most recent accomplishments of the COOL project (Cayuga: Our Oral Legacy). The COOL project's aims are "to increase the number of Cayuga speakers, fluency levels, and the number and variety of contexts in which Cayuga is spoken."

More information available here.

MEDIA: MUSL research project makes the front page news

2011-11-22T08:59:00.001-08:00

Gerard discusses the latest findings from the Petty Harbour research project:

http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2011-11-19/article-2809674/Oil-industry%2C-other-changes-not-killing-Newfoundland-language/1

Seminar Series Talk by Eric Acton, November 24

2011-11-14T05:00:00.001-08:00

We are pleased to have Eric Acton (a PhD student at Stanford University) in town on November 24th to give us "That straight talk": Demonstratives, solidarity, and Sarah Palin. (Co-authored with Christopher Potts). All are welcome to attend. Time: 3:30. Location: SN 2098.

Abstract

Sarah Palin’s manner of speaking has been the subject of both fervent praise and impassioned criticism. Supporters find Palin’s speech to beaccessible, engaging, and “real” while opponents label her manner ofspeaking presumptuous, inauthentic, and “pseudo-folksy.” This talk focuses on one salient feature of Palin’s speech—namely, that characteristic use ofdemonstratives, as in the quote below from the 2008 vice-presidentialdebate:

(1) Americans are craving that straight talk.

Echoing Lakoff (1974), Liberman (2008, 2010) claims that such “affective demonstratives…carry an emotional as well as demonstrative load,” byimplying a degree of “shared familiarity” between interlocutors. In thistalk, I will present the results of two corpus-based experiments that speakto this claim. The first, based on users’ responses to posts on a socialmedia web site, provides quantitative support for the notion thatdemonstratives can foster or manufacture a sense of familiarity, empathy,and solidarity. The second examines the 2008 vice-presidential debate,showing that Palin used demonstratives at a much higher rate than heropponent, Joe Biden. The results of the study further suggest that Palin’suse of demonstratives was part of a broader stylistic approach for engagingand aligning with her audience.The talk concludes by reflecting on how Palin’s use of demonstratives mayhelp to explain why her speech is so polarizing.

Sara Mackenzie To Give Upcoming Seminar Series Talk

2011-11-02T11:12:00.000-07:00

When: November 17th at 3:30pm

Location: SN 2098

on the topic of

Contrast and phonological similarity: evidence from consonant harmony

This talk argues that phonological similarity is evaluated over contrastive, phonological features. Evidence for this position is provided through analyses of consonant harmony processes. Typological studies of consonant harmony (Hansson, 2001, 2010; Rose and Walker, 2004) have shown that similarity plays a role in consonant harmony patterning with only highly similar segments interacting as targets and triggers. In this talk, two types of cases provide evidence that the relevant properties determining interacting segments are contrastive phonological representations. In one type of case (e.g. Bumo Izon), segments that appear to share a phonetic class with participating segments fail to participate in harmony. In the second type of case (e.g. Dholuo and Anywa), consonant harmony patterns differ between languages with similar phonetic inventories.

POSTPONED: Yvan Rose To Give Upcoming Seminar Series talk

2011-10-18T11:06:00.001-07:00

POSTPONED!!

New Date TBA

Join us on December 1st in SN 2098 at 3:30 when Yvan Rose will speak on:

Categorical Development in Child Language: Some Preliminary Results

Abstract

Vihman & Croft (2007) propose a (radical) templatic approach to phonological development, whereby children build prosodic templates from phonetic evidence available in their target languages. At the centre of this proposal is an outright rejection of features as independent categories in phonological representations. Building on earlier work by Levelt & van Oostendorp (2007), I reject this (radical) claim, and argue for the need for features in phonological development. Building on an early research project on the parallel development of consonants and consonant clusters, I present data from child Catootje (from the CLPF Dutch acquisition corpus). Categorical behaviours are noted, all of which suggest a central role for features in segmental development.

2011-10-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

Departmentof Linguistics

Presents

Dr.David Crystal

Renownedlinguist Dr. David Crystal, who will receive an honorary degree atMemorial’s fall 2011 convocation ceremonies. He will also speak on the topic of:

Language Death: Writing the Obituary of Languages?

Half the languages of the world will die out within the next century. This talk reviews the way languages are dying, asks why, and then asks what can be done. It presents the arguments why people should be concerned, drawing a parallel with other ecological domains. For less academic occasions, such as literary festivals, the talk includes extracts from literature, and also from David Crystal's play 'Living On', which dramatizes the endangered language situation. Time: 90 minutes.

DATE: Thursday,October 20th

TIME: 3:30– 5:00 p.m.

PLACE: SN2098

Receptionto follow

SN3036

Guest Speaker: Will Oxford, University of Toronto

2011-09-19T17:51:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to welcome back Will Oxford on September 29 at 12:00 (noon) in SN 2064! He will be speaking on ""Patterns of contrast in Algonquian vowel systems". All are welcome to attend.

Abstract

This presentation examines the historical development of Algonquian vowel systems from the perspective of contrastive underspecification. The presentation is based on a survey of all major vowel changes across the Algonquian family (approximately 20 languages and 50 changes). I will propose that Algonquian vowel systems fall into two basic contrastive types: (1) a place-based system found in Proto-Algonquian, the Central languages, and Blackfoot, and (2) a height-based system found in the Eastern languages, Cheyenne, and Arapaho-Atsina. Two striking but apparently unnoticed pan-Algonquian generalizations correspond with these contrastive types. The first generalization involves the merger of /e/, which has occurred in several Algonquian languages. In all languages with the place-based system,

/e/ merges with /i/, while in all languages with the height-based system, /e/ merges with /a/. The second generalization involves the development of innovative palatalization processes. In languages with the place-based system, palatalization always includes /i/ as a trigger, while languages with the height-based system repeatedly develop palatalization processes that are triggered by /e/ but not by /i/ (a typological oddity). I will show how the contrastive model of phonological change attributes both of these correspondences to a common source, thus giving us a new insight into the underlying phonological structure of Algonquian.

Photos from Seminar Series Fall 2011

2011-09-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all those who attended our first seminar series talks on September 9, 2011. Remember that all future talks will now take place on Thursdays at 3:30. Check back here for announcements regarding the next speakers and topics.

Mattias Hofmman: Mainland Canadian English Phonology in Newfoundland

Jennifer Thorburn: Co-Variation and the Linguistic Individual

Osama Omari's PhD Defense

2011-08-31T17:00:00.000-07:00

Osama will defend his dissertation, titled "Grammatical Subjects of Jordanian Arabic: Syntactic Discourse and Functions" on Friday, September 2, 2011 at 1:00 pm in IIC 2014. The examination is open to the public. Break a leg, Osama!

Ahmad Assiri's PhD Defense

2011-08-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

Ahmad will defend his dissertation, titled "Arabic Adjectival Phrases: An Agree-Based Approach" on Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 12:00 pm in IIC 2014. The examination is open to the public. We wish him the best of luck!

Visiting Graduate Student

2011-08-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Matthias Hoffman, a German PhD student currently working at MUSL. Matthias is in St. John's collecting data for his dissertation on "Contemporary Urban St. John's English". If you are interested in participating in his project or know someone who is, please contact him via his project website.

Fall 2011 Seminar Series

2011-08-29T07:52:00.001-07:00

We'll kick off the new semester with a double-header on September 9, 4pm in SN 3060, featuring the doctoral research projects of our own Jennifer Thorburn and visiting student, Matthias Hoffman.

Matthias Hofmann

PhD Candidate, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany

Title: "Mainland Canadian English Phonology in Newfoundland: Linguistic Change reflecting Economic Change?"

Abstract

Recent discovery of offshore oil has fundamentally changed the province of Newfoundland, Canada, from a poor cousin of the Canadian mainland to that of a ‘have’ province in terms of economy and education among others (Clarke 2010a: 132). As a consequence, the creation of new jobs and the need for developing Newfoundland’s infrastructure are accompanied by a dramatic change of the linguistic system. Investigating and contributing to knowledge of rapid linguistic changes as they occur is rare and hence important to analyze in the sociolinguistic tradition. This paper presents an investigation of a linguistic variable that has been identified as relevant to change in a North American context (particularly Canadian Shift) and for being innovative in Newfoundland English: the vowel in the DRESS lexical set.

Audio recordings from earlier research constitute the pilot study data, stratified by age, gender, and religion. The data set consists of 4 informants interviewed in Pouch Cove, NL, by members of the community. Pouch Cove has been a traditional outport community, which is currently changing towards a bedroom community of St. John’s, similarly to Petty Harbour (Van Herk, Childs & Thorburn, 2007).

As for the variable investigated, /ɛ/ is raised in areas settled by conservative speakers of southeast Irish origin such as St. John’s (Clarke 2010b). The NL instantiation of the Canadian Shift (Boberg, 2010, Clarke et al. 1995, Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006), on the other hand, results in a change in vowel quality in the opposite direction.

Results from the current study suggest a tendency for especially younger females to use a low mid /ɛ/ in the DRESS lexical set most frequently in careful speech.

References

Boberg, Charles (2010). The English language in Canada : status, history, and comparative analysis. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bucholtz, M., Bermuda, N., Fung, V., Edwards, L. & Vargas, R. (2007). "Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal?: The Preceptual Dialectology of California. Journal of English Linguistics 35(3): 325-352.

Clarke, Sandra (2010a). Newfoundland and Labrador English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Clarke, Sandra (2010b). Newfoundland and Labrador English. In Schreier, D. (Ed.), The Lesser-Known Varieties of English: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press. 72-91.

Clarke, Sandra, Elms, Ford & Youssef, Amani (1995). The third dialect of English: Some Canadian evidence. Language Variation and Change 7(2): 209-228.

Labov, William, Ash, Sharon & Boberg, Charles (2006). The atlas of North American English : phonetics, phonology, and sound change : a multimedia reference tool. Berlin ; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Preston, Dennis Richard & Long, Daniel (1999). Handbook of perceptual dialectology. Amsterdam ; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.

Van Herk, Gerard, Childs, Becky & Thorburn, Jennifer (2007). Identity Marking and Affiliation in an Urbanizing Newfoundland Community. In Cichocki, W. (Ed.), 31st Annual Meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association/31e Colloque annuel de l'Association de linguistique des provinces atlantiques. Fredericton NB, Canada. 85-94.

Jennifer Thorburn

PhD Candidate, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Testing speaker consistency across sociolinguistic variables

Abstract

Although sociolinguists often examine multiple variables in a particular community, correlations between variables are not often examined statistically. Following Guy's (2009) work on stable co-variables in Brazilian Portuguese and Tagliamonte and Waters' (2010) analysis of changes in progress in Toronto English, this paper investigates the notion of saliency and co-variability, to determine if salient covariables correlate with one another and/or show negative correlations with their nonsalient counterparts. To do so, I examine four sociolinguistic variables in data from Nain, an Inuit community in Labrador: verbal -s (I loves it), interdental stopping in voiced (them pronounced as dem) and voiceless (thing as ting) contexts, and adjectival intensification (right, very, really, so, etc.). The nonstandard variants of verbal -s and interdental stopping are often employed in identity work in Newfoundland (Van Herk et al. 2007, 2008) and are considered enregistered features of the dialect (Clarke and Hiscock 2009); adjectival intensification, in contrast, has received less attention in these discussions, though Clarke (2010) notes that the variant right is one of the trademark intensifiers of Newfoundland and Labrador English. (The other intensifier associated with the province, some, appears only twice in the Nain data and is consequently excluded from this study.)

Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated for an age- and sex-stratified sample of 25 residents for all pairs of variables, based on each speaker’s factor weight for the variants most associated with the regional dialect. While there are no significant correlations for the community as a whole, the data suggest that some salient variables correlate, at least for certain speaker groups.

From dialect feature to local identity marker: Converging patterns of verbal –s in two Newfoundland communities

2011-08-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

Date: Wednesday August 24, 2011
Time: 12:00-1:00 p.m.
Location: FM-2006 (sociolinguistics lab)

Feel free to bring your lunch or snacks to share!

A Brown Bag Talk

Susanne Wagner, Chemnitz University of Technology

Gerard Van Herk, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Recent research in Pouch Cove (Wagner) and Petty Harbour (Van Herk et al.) has revealed unexpected linguistic behaviours that challenge standard sociolinguistic wisdom. In Pouch Cove, middle-aged speakers have the highest rates of use of non-standard forms, and in Petty Harbour, young speakers are reversing the linguistic constraints on choice of verb form. In both cases, these findings go against 40 years of results from communities worldwide, and in both cases, the findings have been challenged when presented at scholarly meetings.

In this paper, we reconfigure the data from both studies to permit parallel analyses. These analyses support and reinforce the earlier findings, but they also help to explain them. The two communities, thanks to their distinct social, geographic, and economic profiles, are at different points along a change continuum between traditional Newfoundland speech and an urbanized, performative variety.

musl@mun.ca

(709) 864-8343

Curling, ghosts, and Newfoundland: constraints on null subjects

2011-08-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

DATE : Monday August 15, 2011
TIME : 12:00-1:00 p.m.
LOCATION : FM-2006 (sociolinguistics lab)

SUSANNE WAGNER
Chemnitz University of Technology

It is a well-known fact that English allows the omission of pronominal subjects in speech,
resulting in utterances such as Ø Told you so or Ø Looks like rain. While different from pro-drop
in pro-drop languages such as Russian or Italian, studies have shown that the mechanisms
governing the “deletion” of these pronouns are very similar to the processes involved in pro-
drop (see e.g. Harvie 1998, Haegeman 1990). However, not all instances of non-overt subject
pronouns can be considered typical. Consider e.g.

A: Did you ever work in (place name)?
B: Ø Never worked in (place name).
Ø Ø Not really into scary movies, just comedy movies mostly.
Ø Had a bad stomach, she used to rub my stomach.

In this talk, I will focus on null first person subjects. The processes and peculiarities
involved in recovering over 300 “deleted” instances of I and we in relation to over 8,000 overt
pronouns will be discussed. Statistical regression analyses show that factors influencing
presence/absence of pronouns do not only include those previously discussed in literature on
pro-drop languages, but also features such as VP length which are known to have an impact on
subject realisation in first language acquisition. Moreover, the data show possible persistence
effects to be at work, with one null subject favouring another in the next subject slot.

Overall, the analyses suggest that factors from a number of disciplines,
including morphosyntax, discourse theory and sociolinguistics, as well as various theoretical
frameworks (formal and functional schools) and stages of acquisition/competence (first,
second, adult language) should be considered when discussing null subjects in English.

Feel free to bring your lunch!
musl@mun.ca
(709) 864-8343

Matt Hunt Gardner Returns

2011-06-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

Matt Hunt Gardner (MUSL alumnus) will give a talk on June 28, 2011 from 12-1 pm in the Sociolinguistics Lab (FM-2006). Feel free to bring your lunch! Here's what the talk is about:

Matt Hunt Gardner

University of Toronto

Slit Fricatives in Cape Breton English

Focusing on methodology, this presentation reports results from two preliminary investigations of slit fricative production/use among speakers from the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. The first study examines acoustic and articulatory qualities of this sound and aims to determine what qualities, if any, differentiate slit fricatives from other coronal fricatives and stops. The results are compared with similar studies in other communities in which slit fricatives have been attested. The second study examines what internal linguistic factors may constrain the use of slit fricatives among young speakers and uses new statistical methods to argue that two systems (traditional and novel) for slit fricatives use may exist within the same generation in the community.

PhD student talks

2011-05-19T04:44:00.000-07:00

Linguistics Department

Presents

Case-Reservation in the analysis of the Indirect Attribute adjectives.

Presented by

Ahmad Assiri, Ph.D. Graduate Student

Also

Subjects and Subject Clitics in Embedded Clauses in Jordanian Arabic

Presented by

Osama Omari, Ph.D. Graduate Student

All are welcome to bring their lunch

DATE: Tuesday, May 24, 2011

TIME: 12:00 – 1:30 pm

PLACE: SN3058

Seminar Series, April 1

2011-03-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

The final talk in the W2011 Seminar Series is April 1 (4-5pm, in SN 4073). Vit Bubenik will be speaking on:

" On the Rise of Ergative Alignment in Indo-Aryan Languages"

There are several assumptions regarding the origins of the ergative construction in New Indo-Aryan languages: (i) passive-to-ergative reanalysis, (ii) the ergative hypothesis, i.e. that the passive construction of Old Indo-Aryan was already ergative, and a compromise stance that neither (i) nor (ii) are fully adequate. Most recently attention has been paid to various pathways in which typological changes operate over different kinds of nominal constituents (nouns versus pronouns) in a 'contingency view of alignment' (Dixon 1994, Haig 2008). I will argue that the Late Middle Indo-Aryan texts offer us a unique opportunity for our analysis of the ergative reorganization of an earlier nominative-accusative system of Sanskrit and early Prakrits in the framework of Construction Grammar exploiting the notions of markedness shift, morphological economy and long-term morphosyntactic change.

All are welcome! Reception to follow!

Seminar Series, March 25

2011-03-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Our next talk in the W2011 Seminar Series is Friday, March 25. Degif Banksara will be speaking on: "Against Mobile Morphemes". More details of this talk are found below. All are welcome!

Time: 4-5pm
Location: SN 4073

Against Mobile Morphemes

Degif Banskara
Chaha, one of the Semitic languages of Ethiopia, displays morphemes (e.g., the impersonal subject) that are sometimes expressed by labialization, palatalization or both (Polotsky 1951, Lelau 1967, Hetzron 1971, Banksira 2000). These processes affect phonemes that are located at various positions in a word. Due to this, the language has been considered to have ‘mobile morphemes’ (McCarthy 1983, Akinlabi 1996, Rose 1997, Piggott 2000). The two main characteristics of such morphemes are that i) their phonological content is less than a full segment – it is a feature or bundle of features – and ii) the position of these features is variable. In this presentation, I will argue that the so-called mobile morphemes of Chaha do not satisfy any of these conditions and that Chaha in fact does not have mobile morphemes at all.

From an empirical point of view, I will present data showing that the phonological signals of the putative mobile morphemes are not necessarily mobile nor less than a full segment – they sometimes surface as independent segments and their position is fixed. This is shown in (1a) where the impersonal suffix surfaces independently and occupies a fixed position like any other fixed suffix such as (1b).

(1) a. čənə-wi-m
come-impersonal-past
One came.

(1) b. čənə-čɨ-m
come-she-past
She came.

I will then propose that the independent and fixed -wi of (1a) is the output of morphology even in cases where mobility is at issue. This output of morphology, namely the underlying /-wi/ is submitted to phonological rules which may give rise to mobile phonological features depending on the nature of the stem. In other words, in addition to establishing dominance relations between morphemes, morphology establishes a fixed precedence relationship between them, this relationship is asymmetric, namely if ‘a precedes b’ is true then the inverse is not. However, phonological rules may alter this asymmetry by manipulating the phonological features associated with /-wi/ without manipulating their morphosyntactic features. These rules are blind to morphosyntactic features of the impersonal subject and they can apply within morphemes. Thus, mobility is a function of phonology – not of morphology – and phonological rules alone are responsible for featural mobility.

If this claim proves correct, it will have two important consequences. First, it will provide evidence that analyzing Chaha labialization and palatalization as mobile morphemes is descriptively inadequate. Thus, gradient Optimality Theoretic constraints such as “align morphological categories to an edge” proposed by Akinlabi (1996) to compute the movement of these morphemes can be dispensed with (see Piggott 2000 for similar proposals). Second, it will solve the puzzle that the placement of a morpheme in Chaha depends on its morphosyntactic content. Notice that the phonological signals of well-known and better understood morphemes cross-linguistically have a variety of shapes: C, V, CV, CVC, CVCC, and so on, or their moraic equivalents. Yet, such morphemes are not known to be mobile. So, theories that subscribe to mobile morphemes must attribute the special behaviour of mobility only to morphemes whose phonetic expression can be (partly) featural. In such analyses the morphosyntactic contents of a morpheme (e.g. the impersonal in (1a) vs. the 3fem. sing. in (1b)) will dictate their positions. On the contrary, the claim being made here is that the placement of a morpheme is blind to its morphosyntactic content and that the mobility of phonological features has nothing to do with morphology.

References

Akinlabi, A. (1996). Featural affixation. Journal of Linguistics 32, 239-289.

Banksira, D. P. (2000). Sound Mutations: The Morphophonology of Chaha. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Hetzron, R. (1971). Internal labialization in the tt-Group of Outer South-Ethiopic. Journal of the American Oriental Society 91, 192-207.

Leslau, W. (1967). The impersonal in Chaha. To honor Roman Jakobson. Essays on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, 1150-1162. The Hague: Mouton.

McCarthy, J.J. (1983). Consonantal morphology in the Chaha verb. The proceedings of the second West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, edited by M. Balow, D. Flickinger & M. Wescoat, 176-188. Palo Alto: Stanford Linguistics Association.

Piggott, G. (2000). Against featural alignment. Linguistics 36, 85-128.

Polotsky, J.H. (1951). Notes on Gurage grammar. Jerusalem: Israel Oriental Society.

Rose, S. (1997). Theoretical issues in comparative Ethio-Semitc phonology and morphology. Doctoral dissertation, McGill University.

Seminar Series, March 11

2011-03-01T04:37:00.000-08:00

A verb-raising analysis of concord on Blackfoot relative clauses.
Sara Johansson

In Blackfoot (Algonquian), relative clauses consist of an optional determiner, an optional head noun, and a verbal complex, all three of which are marked with nominal number and gender agreement morphology. In this paper, I demonstrate that the verbal complexes within relative clauses are in fact verbal in nature, rather than nominalizations. I propose that the verb raises to Rel to support a dependent morpheme, and that phi-feature marking arises due to concord on the Rel head. Preliminary work suggests that it is possible to extend this proposal to other Algonquian languages to capture cross-linguistic variation within the family.

March 11 at 4pm in SN 4073.
Reception to follow.
All are welcome.

Coming up in our Seminar Series

2011-02-25T08:31:00.000-08:00

March 11th
Sara Johanson (MA student, Linguistics). Title: TBA.

March 25th
Degif Banksira (Linguistics). Title: Against Mobile Morphemes

April 1st
Vit Bubenik (Linguistics).
Title: On the Establishment of Ergative Alignment in Indo-Aryan Languages

Talks start at 4pm. Receptions to follow. All are welcome.

Reminder: "Pushing the Envelope: Are Analogy-Based Approaches to Phonological Acquisition Viable?"

2011-02-10T16:32:00.000-08:00

The first talk in this semester`s seminar series, by Yvan Rose and Todd Wareham, will take place tomorrow at 4pm in SN 4073. A small reception follows in the seminar room.

BROWN BAGG-(ing) - TODAY!

2011-02-01T05:37:00.000-08:00

Suzanne Power and Evan Hazenberg will be discussing variable (ing) in data collected in Placentia, NL, and Ottawa, ON.

Feel free to bring your lunch or a snack for the group. We are hungry grad students.

Date: Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Time: 12:00 p.m.
Location: FM-2006 (Sociolinguistics lab)

Talk on the Making of the Dictionary of NFLD English

2011-01-17T11:07:00.001-08:00

This talk is sponsored by the English Department. Dr. Jeff Webb (Department of History) will speak on the writing of the Dictionary of Newfoundland English.

A Distinguishing Feature of the English Department:
The Writing of the Dictionary of Newfoundland English

Time: 1 p.m.-2 p.m.
Location: A-1049
All are welcome to attend.

Congratulations to Phil Branigan!

2011-01-17T10:58:00.000-08:00

Dr. Branigan's new book, "Provocative Syntax" has been published as Linguistics Inquiry Monograph 61, by the MIT Press.

More information about Dr. Branigan's book can be found here.

What people are saying about Phil (and his book) (from the MIT Press page):

"Provocative Syntax is a desperately needed breath of fresh air for Minimalist syntax's model of movement. ‘Provocation’ is an exciting alternative to the EPP that is still well grounded in Chomskyan tradition. This book is a must-read for anyone dissatisfied with motivating movement via uninterpretable features."
—Daniel Siddiqi, School of Linguistics

"Provocative Syntax sparkles with originality and erudition. Branigan brilliantly connects seemingly unrelated theoretical strands to weave a tight and elegant model of syntactic movement and provides theoretically unified solutions to many outstanding problems in the syntax of Germanic and Romance. Among the numerous books and papers spawned by Chomsky’s Minimalist program, this book is one of the most profound I’ve read.”
—Ur Shlonsky, Professor of Linguistics, University of Geneva

Seminar Series starts up again

2011-01-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

Yvan Rose (Department of Linguistics) and Todd Wareham (Department of Computer Science) will be speaking on the topic of phonological acquisition. Please see the abstract below. All are welcome to attend!

February 11, 2011
4-5pm
Location: TBA

Pushing the Envelope:
Are Analogy-Based Approaches to Phonological Acquisition Viable?

When learning a language, children must first learn the phonological categories (e.g. sound and syllable types) particular to that language. Even though such learning appears to exploit statistical regularities in language input (e.g. Kuhl 2004), this seems at odds with a growing body of evidence that the later stages of phonological acquisition are performed at a more symbolic level (e.g. Thiessen & Saffran 2003). One way of dealing with this problem is to assume that acquisition occurs by progressive and incremental generalizations over linguistic inputs. Such a model phrased within Dedre Gentner's structure-mapping theory of analogy-based generalization has been shown to be consistent with the later acquisition of individual words, syntax, and relational categories.

This suggests two important questions:

1) Can such a (possibly modified) model work for phonological acquisition?

2) How might such a model be tested?

In this talk, we will give some preliminary answers and further thoughts on these questions.

Twig: a blog

2010-12-23T08:54:00.000-08:00

This just came across my desk - a blog about the Dictionary of Newfoundland English and, well, words!

http://twignl.wordpress.com/

The entries are topical and timely - look now and you'll see one about Mummering and another on words that make you bivver, like creak-cold and airsome!

An interesting look behind-the-scenes at the DNE.

Upcoming Career Information Sessions

2010-11-11T06:16:00.000-08:00

"Audiology as a Career"
Dr. Erin Squarey
Parrott's Hearing Clinic

Wed. nov 24, 2010,
1-1:50
SN 4083

AND

"Speech Language Pathology as a Career"
Dr. Jill Perry and Dr. Christa Dawson
Eastern Health

Thurs. nov 25, 2010,
9-9:50
SN 2036

John Esling's Talk and Workshop

2010-10-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

Title: Laryngeal Phonetic Quality and the First Sounds of Speech
Date: October 29
Time: 4-5pm
Room: SN3042

Dr. Esling will also host a workshop for graduate students in Linguistics on the topic of submitting papers for publication. Time: 1pm. Room: SN 3036.

He's some more info about the topic of his talk:

Many languages have sounds that have been challenging to describe phonetically. Since 1993, we have built a team and a speech research centre at the University of Victoria for laryngoscopic phonetic experimentation that has attracted international attention as a site for articulatory phonetic research. Typically, a research opportunity arises in a language of pharyngeal/laryngeal interest, and researchers request to visit our facility to carry out the experimental component of their phonetic study. Colleagues and students at the University of Victoria have also initiated many studies of their own. We have analyzed glottals, glottalized consonants, pharyngeals, and laryngeals laryngoscopically in Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan), Nlakaâ€™pamuxcÃn (Salish), Palestinian and Iraqi Arabic and Tigrinya (Semitic), Yi, Bai and Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman), Pame (Otomanguean), Sui (Kam-Daic), Cantonese (Sino-Tibetan), Thai (Daic), Korean (Altaic), English and Danish (Germanic), Akan (Niger-Congo, Kwa), Kabiye (Niger-Congo, Gur), Somali (Cushitic), and Bor Dinka (Nilotic). In addition to providing answers to a number of language-specific articulatory phonetic research questions, this quantity of data has allowed us to formulate innovative models of pharyngeal/ laryngeal (P/L) phonetic production and a revision of the theory of cardinal states of the glottis (SOG).

We have also begun to develop 3D models of P/L vocal tract function, incorporating data from new experimental formats including high-speed video (Paris/HEGP), EGG, laryngeal ultrasound, and videofluoroscopy (UF Rio de Janeiro). Models incorporate biomechanical simulation in real-time of the oscillating structures of the larynx, including the vocal folds, ventricular folds, and aryepiglottic folds.

Using our phonetic paradigm, we are also able to provide a fuller account of the acquisition of the ability to produce speech sounds. In our study of phonetic development in the first year of life, we have found that very young infants produce all places and manners of laryngeal sounds, and these previously ignored sounds play a vital role in priming the emergence of oral sounds, which predominate by month 12. We have found that infants first develop phonetic control through the exploration and mastery of P/L sounds, whether or not these sounds form part of their ambient language: All infants initiate articulatory control for speech production in the pharynx.

Student Linguists At MUN

2010-09-10T17:46:00.001-07:00

So, you're sitting in
class this past week
and you finally
decided that you are
OK with Grimm's Law,
Chomskyan syntax
and Autosegmental
tiers...

You're not alone! Get connected. Socialize. Join SLAM
(Student Linguists At MUN).
All undergraduate majors, minors & curious students are welcome.

Follow us on Facebook or contact : lingslam AT yahoo DOT ca

Visit and Talk: Dr. John Charles Smith

2010-09-08T15:46:00.000-07:00

Professor John Charles Smith (U of Oxford) will visit our department on Monday, September 20, 2010.

He will talk from 1 - 2 P.M (location TBA) on:

'What counts as variation ? A study of the French ending -ont'

All are welcome to attend.

He is also interested in meeting with students and faculty. Please contact Dr. Bubenik if you would like to schedule a time slot.

Dr. John Esling (UVic) to visit Linguistics Department

2010-08-19T08:47:00.001-07:00

Dr. Esling is a phonetician at the University of Victoria in BC and principle investigator on the SSHRC-funded project "Infant Speech Acquisition" (InSpA), which studies the "earliest acquisition of the phonetic speech-production capacity". We are pleased to have him visit our department from October 28 to November 1st.

In addition to giving a talk entitled "Laryngeal Articulation: Infant Acquisition of the Phonetic Capacity", Dr. Esling has generously agreed to meet with all and any interested faculty or students to discuss their research or any questions relevant to phonetics.

More info to come in the near future. Please save the date.

In the meantime, have a look at his website and a description of his talk:

Many languages of the world exhibit features that can be classified in terms of laryngeal articulation. The auditory and acoustic cues of these features illustrate the extensive range of use of the laryngeal constrictor mechanism (controlling changes from the glottis through the aryepiglottic folds), with consequent effects on the pharyngeal resonator. Using direct laryngoscopic observation techniques, we have collected visual evidence of the fine control of laryngeal constriction in over two dozen languages, establishing a hierarchy for the operation of the mechanism and modelling laryngeal behaviour to illustrate the parameters of movement available in the laryngeal/pharyngeal articulator.

The laryngeal/pharyngeal articulator has also been identified as the principal articulator that infants first start to control as they test and practice their phonetic production skills from birth through the first several months of life. The auditory/acoustic cues that are generated in the pharynx are the same elements of sound production observed in newborn infants from a range of language environments. Infant vocalization data during the first year of life illustrate that laryngeal quality is primal, that articulatory awareness develops first in the pharynx and larynx through the manipulation of phonetic alternations, that control of the acoustic cues of speech originates in the pharynx, and that the acquisition of the ability to produce manners of articulation spreads from the pharynx in a process of pharyngeal priming that parallels and complements the ability of infants to discriminate auditory speech-sound categories perceptually.

42nd Algonquian Conference hosted by MUN Linguistics (Oct 21-24)

2010-08-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

The Algonquian Conference is an international meeting for researchers
to share papers on Algonquian peoples, the largest First Peoples group
in Canada. Fields of interest include anthropology, archaeology, art,
biography, education, ethnography, ethnobotany, folklore, geography,
history, language education, linguistics, literature, music, native
studies, political science, psychology, religion and sociology. It will
be held at Memorial University from October 21 - through 24.

The deadline for abstracts is September 1st. Further information can be
found at http://www.mun.ca/algonquian42.

MUSL students and faculty to present at NWAV 39

2010-08-19T08:37:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to all MUN sociolinguists who will be presenting their latest research at the 39th annual NWAV (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) in San Antonia in November. See the Memorial University Sociolinguistics Laboratory website for more details including links to the abstracts of each talk. The NWAV 39 website can be found here.

Paul De Decker and Jennifer Nycz, "For the record: Which digital media are good enough for sociophonetic analysis?"
Matt Hunt Gardner, "The in-crowd and the oatcasts: Diphthongs and identity in a Cape Breton high school"
Lindsay Harding, "Relatively Standard: Identity and relative clause marking in a community undergoing rapid social change"
Sarah Knee and Gerard Van Herk, "Stop and go (away): Linguistic consequences of non-local aspirations among small-town Newfoundland youth"
Jennifer Thorburn, "Don’t stop now: Interdental fricatives in Labrador Inuit English"

Undergraduate Linguistics Students Make the Dean's List

2010-07-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to our numerous undergraduates whose work this past year placed them on the Dean's List. Fantastic job everyone!

Those who are double majors are identified by ( ).

Amelie Aikman (German)
Kelly Burkinshaw
Samantha Cooper
Kirsten Haynes
Bridget Henley
Alyson King
Rosanna Pierson (History)
Alethea Power
Suzanne Power
Heidi Rice
Whitney Sharpe
Brandi Travers (Russian)
Karen Tucker (German)
Kathryn Walsh
Teresa Wood (Anthropology)

Dr. Carrie Dyck is a Research Star

2010-07-16T09:06:00.000-07:00

Be sure to check out Memorial's 2010 highly innovative and entertaining research repor t as it highlights Dr. Dyck's project on maintaining the Cayuga language (the language of the Iroquoian First Nations).

Dr. Ray Gosine, Memorial's vice-president (research) pro tempore, describes the report this way.

“In keeping with the innovative and risk-taking nature of research, we provided a generous dash of creativity in our approach to our research report,” Dr. Gosine said. “Our research efforts are stories, very good stories, and it made sense to reach to movies – the major story-telling vehicles of our time – to capture people’s attention. Our goal is to engage and inform the reader by producing a readable report, not a ‘run of the mill’ document that might get ignored. We believe Memorial’s research stories are too important not to tell with fanfare.”

Congratulations, Dr. Dyck!

2010 Seminar Series Talk: Dr. Steven Carr (new date)

2010-03-10T06:32:00.000-08:00

Dr. Steven Carr (Biology, MUN) is our invited lecturer on Friday March 19th (not April 2, as previously announced). His title and abstract follow. Venue (SN 3058) and time (4-5pm) remain the same.

"Let us go down, and there confound their language:" Genetic perspectives on migration "Out of Africa" and the peopling of Europe and the Americas

Steven Carr

Phylogeographic genetics (genetic relationships within their geographic context) or Archaeogenetics has provided precise insights into the emergence of the human species "Out of Africa". A series of articles in the 23 Feb 2010 review issue of "Current Biology" (summarized by Renfrew 2010) provides foundation materials that can contribute inter alia to development and testing of linguistic hypotheses. I will review the basic genetic biology (DNA sequence data, phylogeny reconstruction, coalescent theory, etc.), using as an example local work on variation and phylogeny of the founding population of Newfoundland, including First Nations individuals. Linguists are invited to reflect on implications for African and New World language groups.

Tense and Aspect in Arabic / March 26

2010-03-08T05:39:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to have Vit Bubenik, John Hewson and Osama Omari present "Tense  and Aspect in Arabic" on March 26 from 4:00 to 5:00 in SN 3058. All are welcome.

Tense and Aspect in Arabic
Vit Bubenik, John Hewson and Osama Omari

In this presentation we will focus on three major issues surrounding the study of tense and aspect in Semitic languages:

1. We will place the Arabic aspectual system into the larger context of Central Semitic languages (with Aramaic and Hebrew) and show that the Arabic system is strongly innovative in its analytic double finite perfect (of the type kāna qad kataba ‘he had written’) and double finite progressive aspect (of the type kāna yaktubu ‘he was writing’).

2. We will discuss typological differences between aspect-prominent Semitic languages and morphologically richer IE languages possessing temporal categories. We will argue for the appropriateness of the general aspectual terminology (perfect/retrospective versus perfective) in Semitic linguistics; and we will comment on the realization of the performative in Semitic languages.

3. The emergence of the progressive aspect and analytic perfect in Arabic can be most proficiently studied in terms of grammaticalization. The rise of the former category can be explicated as clause union; in the case of the analytic perfect the crucial piece of evidence is the categorical reduction of the lexical verb qaʕada ‘he sat’ to the perfect particle qad. We will demonstrate that Modern Arabic dialects offer a large number of parallel examples of the grammaticalization of other lexical verbs in their serial constructions.

2010 Seminar Series

2010-02-16T08:48:00.000-08:00

We are happy to announce two upcoming Seminar Series talks.

The first, titled 'Tense and Aspect in Arabic' by Vit Bubenik, John Hewson and Osama Omari, will be held on Friday, March 26 2010. Abstract will be posted in the near future.

Second, Steven Carr of the Biology Department will be our guest speaker on Friday ~~April 2, 2010~~ March 19th. Title and abstract TBA.

Both talks will be held from 4:00 to 5:00 in SN 3058. All are welcome.

Change and Variation in Canada Workshop to be held at MUN

2009-12-07T17:03:00.000-08:00

"The fourth annual Change and Variation in Canada (CVC IV) workshop will be held at Memorial University June 19-20, 2010. This student-led event will bring together researchers working within a variationist framework on Canadian language varieties or at Canadian institutions.

The call for papers will be made available in January 2010. We will also provide more details about the conference at that time."

For more information see the CVC IV website.

End of Semester LING FAIR a Success!

2009-12-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

On Friday, December 4, 2009, the Linguistics Department held its first showcase of undergraduate student projects. Close to 30 students participated in the event and a number of promising posters were presented. Congratulations, student linguists! Job well done.

Longest word contest -- ICELANDIC

2009-12-07T11:50:00.000-08:00

Memorial's Linguistics Department held a 'longest word' contest in conjunction with its end-of-term class fair. The longest word was in Icelandic. Here are the results! (Double-click on the picture to enlarge it.)

Linguistics Fair

2009-11-24T15:19:00.001-08:00

Come and see what our Linguistics students have been doing this semester! We'll have posters, presentations, a short film, Ongwehonwe and Inuit foods and other nibblies. Bring along the longest word you know in any language and enter it in our 'longest word' contest.

What: End-of-term class fair
When: Friday, December 4
Where: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Room SN 3058

Brown bag talk on Tuesday, Dec 1 @ 12pm

2009-11-18T16:53:00.000-08:00

Dr. Phil Branigan will be giving a brown bag talk on Tuesday, Dec 1 from 12:00 - 1:00 in the seminar room (SN 3036).

Title: Why is there syntactic movement?

Abstract: This talk is concerned with one foundational issue in syntactic theory. For over 20 years, the standard explanation for why syntactic movement occurs has been circular--in
fact, uncontroversially so. In this talk, I discuss the basis for this circularity: the EPP ("Extended Projection Principle"), introduced by Stowell and Chomsky in the early 80s. An alternative,
non-circular model of movement is presented--the *provocation* model--and a few case studies are examined to illustrate how this model deals better with known data.

DATE CHANGE: Seminar Series talk on Friday, November 27th

2009-11-09T04:54:00.000-08:00

Dr. Yvan Rose will present his current research in the area of child language development on ~~November 20th~~ November 27th at 4:00pm. Location: SN3058. A reception will follow the talk.

Exploring the relations between speech perception by infants and the early development of phonology

To learn how to speak, children must crack the code of their mother tongue. One of the big mysteries in the face of the obvious complexity of this challenge is that infants manage it with apparent ease, at an astonishing rate. Studies of early phonological development typically look at infant speech perception or early phonological productions, but do not address the relationships between the two. During this presentation, I will draw on recent experimental research results to discuss such potential relationships.

Brown bag talk on Tuesday, Dec 1

2009-11-09T04:51:00.000-08:00

Dr. Phil Branigan will be giving a brown bag talk on Tuesday, Dec 1 from 12:00 - 1:00 in the seminar room (SN 3036). Title and abstract forthcoming.

MUN Linguistics hosts 33rd annual APLA conference

2009-10-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

On November 6-7, 2009, Memorial's Linguistics department will host the 33rd Annual Conference of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association/l’Association de linguistique des provinces de l’Atlantique (APLA/ALPA). This year, the theme is ‘The Effects of Globalization on Local Languages and Dialects.’ The keynote address is free and open to the general public, and attendance at the conference is free for Memorial students.

The keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Sylvie Dubois (Louisiana State University) in the Arts and Administration Building (AA-1043) on Friday, November 6 from 7:00 - 8:00 p.m. Dr. Dubois' talk title is: Distinctive Paths of Linguistic Resistance: The Case of Cajun Vernacular English and Creole African-American Vernacular. A reception and cash bar will follow the talk.

Further information about the conference can be found at http://www.mun.ca/linguistics/APLA2009/, via e-mail apla33 [ at ] mun.ca or by calling the Linguistics Department at 737-8134.

Keynote Speech by Sylvie Dubois (Louisiana State University)

2009-10-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

Date: Friday, November 6, 2009
Time: 7:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Location: Arts and Administration Building (AA-1043)
Reception and cash bar to follow.

Distinctive Paths of Linguistic Resistance:
The Case of Cajun Vernacular English and Creole African-American Vernacular English

Language and social variation in Louisiana has a long and complex history. Any account of the present day varieties of English must begin with an historical overview of the ways in which language, ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic structure have been interwoven to form the intricate tapestry that is Louisiana. The focus of our talk is on the vernacular English currently spoken by Creole African-Americans of French ancestry (CAAVE) and Cajuns (CVE) living in South Louisiana. Language change and linguistic persistence characterize both black and white French-speaking populations. The most important change is the decline in the number of bilinguals. One aspect of persistence is the development of CAAVE and CVE dialects that distinguish THESE speakers from their fellow Southerners. Another one is the maintenance of these divergent dialects while others are disappearing elsewhere in Southern American English (Bailey 2001). When we compare the oldest speakers of both varieties, phonological and morphological variables show no difference. The only reason to speak of two vernaculars is social. For the next generations, persistence of the dialect takes quite a different form. In CAAVE, a high rate of glide absence is maintained across all generations. In CVE, the middle-aged generation uses this feature dramatically less, but the younger generation increases its use so that their frequency approaches the proportion found in the speech of the older generation. We argue against the fact that the similarities between CAAVE and CVE as spoken by older speakers are the result of interference from French. We suggest that they speak comparable dialects because they learned English from people who spoke English in and around their communities, not only as adults but as children as well, and that these English speakers had all these features in their speech. We will also show that linguistic persistence in CAAVE has more to do with the patterns of social intercourse, whereas persistence in CVE is better explained by the social changes that took place throughout the 20th century.

Brown bag talk on Tuesday, October 6

2009-10-05T05:43:00.000-07:00

Paul Pigott will be giving a brown bag talk on Tuesday, October 6 from 12:00 - 1:00 in the seminar room (SN 3036).

Sea ice knowledge in Labrador Inuttut: overwhelmed by English

Inuit on the Labrador coast are shown to have a comparatively complex system of classifying and describing sea ice: knowledge now held by Inuttut speakers over 40 years of age or older. Inuit Elders use up to 60 specialized concepts in their own words: Inuttut concepts like ‘ajugak’ a lead or crack used for hunting, fishing and travel. Interviews involving 24 speakers aged 37-79 show a decline in linguistic competence such that the youngest participants knew fewer than a dozen words. The extinction of at least 200 other North American speech communities since contact should be a warning about how quickly they can vanish and permanently alter the ability of future generations to experience the oral history of their ancestors. That is still not the situation in Labrador today. But inspired efforts to teach younger speakers must be made if Inuttut, a fundamental element of Canada’s linguistic history, is to survive into the next generation. The positive result of this study for Labrador Inuit is its documentation of an oral tradition that persists in its eloquent description of ice conditions along the Labrador Coast.

ConGRADulations

2009-09-30T07:58:00.001-07:00

Four Linguistics MA students will be graduating from MUN this fall. Warmest congratulations to:

Janet Burgess
Kimberley Churchill
Evelyn Kisembe
Ashleigh Noel

MUN linguistics project receives national television exposure

2009-09-08T05:51:00.000-07:00

A Memorial project tracking language change in Petty Harbour was profiled on Global National television news on Tuesday, September 8. The piece included interviews with community members and researchers from the Memorial University Sociolinguistics Laboratory. See the Changing Accent segment on Global National. Select the "Global National: Sep 8" video and skip to the fourth segment. (September 8, 2009) (Note: © 2009 CW Media Inc.)

The project, titled "Urbanization and Rapid Change in Newfoundland English", uses the community's change from a relatively isolated fishing community to a near-suburb of St. John's to investigate the effect of such changes on local language features. More information is available on the lab's website: http://musl.ling.mun.ca/rapid_change.html.

Celebrating Kanani Penashue's convocation

2009-08-14T04:58:00.000-07:00

Memorial's Gazette recently published a bio of Kanani Penashue on the occasion of her receiving her BEd (Native and Northern). Kanani speaks Innu, and has taken Innu linguistics at Memorial. (Her bio is about half-way down the page.)

Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages

2009-08-14T04:54:00.000-07:00

Memorial's historical linguists have published proceedings from the workshop on Indo-European Linguistics at the 18th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (6-11th August 2007) at the University of Qubec a Montreal. This workshop was convened by Dr. Vit Bubenik, Dr. John Hewson and Dr. Sarah Rose (Department of Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland).

The volume titled 'Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages' is a collection of 17 articles selected from the presentations by scholars working on new directions in Historical Linguistics focusing on questions of grammatical change, and the central issue of grammaticalization in Indo-European languages. Several studies examine examine particular problems in specific languages, but often with implications for the Indo-European phylum as a whole. Given the historical scope of the data (over a period of four millenia) long range grammatical changes such as the development of gender differences, strategies of definiteness, the prepositional phrase, or of the syntax of the verbal diathesis and aspect, are also treated. The shifting relevance of morphology to syntax, and syntax to morphology, a central motif of this research, has provoked lively debate and discussion in the discipline of Historical Linguistics.

The book has been published by John Benjamins (Amsterdam/Philadelphia) in July 2009 in the series Current Issues in Linguistic Theory.

Undergrad course paper makes it into print

2009-08-14T04:47:00.000-07:00

Six MUN linguistics students have seen a paper they wrote for an undergraduate class project make it into a refereed scholarly journal. The paper, entitled So very really variable: Social patterning of intensifier use by Newfoundlanders online, looks at how local participants in Facebook and BlueKaffee vary in the use of intensifiers, words that mean very. James Bulgin, Nicole Elford, Lindsay Harding, Bridget Henley, Suzanne Power, and Crystal Walters originally collected and analyzed the data for a collaborative course project in LING 3210, Language Variation and Change. They then polished it and submitted it to Linguistica Atlantica, where it appears in the just-released volume, Number 29.

Gerard Van Herk and Shad Valley

2009-08-14T04:44:00.000-07:00

Gerard Van Herk gave a lecture to students enrolled in the Shad Valley programme at MUN in July, about how young Newfoundlanders are adapting regional speech features for identity and gender purposes. Shad Valley is a summer enrichment programme for high school students, with a focus on science and entrepreneurship. The MUN version attracted over 40 gifted students from across Canada. Gerard’s seminar in 2008 was well-received and led to his being asked toaddress the entire group this year.

Cayuga grammar

2009-07-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

While doing fieldwork for a Cayuga dictionary between 1993-1999, Carrie Dyck also gathered information for a Cayuga grammar. You can view the ongoing draft at this website:

http://phon.ling.mun.ca/cayuga/Welcome

Pan-Innu dictionary workshop

2009-07-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

The editorial team of the Pan-Innu dictionary met at UQAM (June 10-12) to review more additions and revisions to the main database, a project funded by Marguerite MacKenzie's SSHRC CURA grant. The meeting was attended by speakers of three Innu dialects, Yvette Mollen, Hélène St. Onge and Anne-Marie André, primary editor and ethno-linguist José Mailhot, linguists Lynn Drapeau and Anne-Marie Baraby from UQAM and the principal investigator. The team has been meeting several times a year since the summer of 2006 and hopes to have an on-line version of the Innu-French-English lexicon posted on the www.innu.ca website by December of this year.

Innu environmental terminology workshop

2009-07-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

Marguerite MacKenzie and Laurel Anne Hasler were invited to lead a workshop (July 7-10) to begin the translation of scientific terminology into Innu-aimun for use by the staff and translators of the Environmental office of the Innu Nation (www.innu.ca). Three employees, a translator for each of the two Innu dialects, an environmental consultant and the linguists, reviewed a list of over 250 terms having to do with environmental assessment for hydro and mining development. Plans to construct a dam on the Lower Churchill River would significantly affect Innu lands (www.lowerchurchillproject.ca). This and subsequent workshops will result in a glossary of terms which allow the Innu interpreters and translators to better inform the community members during the consultation process.

Workshop on Southern East Cree

2009-07-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

Marguerite MacKenzie participated in a workshop to document Southern East Cree verb paradigms and to revise and add items to the dictionary of that dialect. Marie-Odile Junker and her team at Carleton University hosted the seven day meeting (June 1-9), where six Cree speakers worked with linguists prepare verb paradigms for eventual posting on the www.eastcree.org website. The dictionary already appears there and is regularly updated. Later in the month she met with instructors in the Cree Literacy Certificate program to continue detailed planning of the course content.

Philip Comeau (York University) speaks at MUSL Brown Bag Talk

2009-07-14T04:26:00.000-07:00

Philip Comeau (York University) will be giving a brown bag talk on Wednesday, July 22 at 1:00 pm (SN-3060). His paper is on the distribution of interrogative particles *–ti / –tu* in Canadian French. The abstract follows. Questions in both French and English are encouraged.

Previous accounts of interrogative particles in Quebec French differ not only in terms of the analyses, but also with respect to the distribution of these particles across the person paradigm (e.g., Picard (1992) claims they do not occur with second person subjects while Maury (1990) and Vecchiato (2000) report that they do). Subject-verb inversion, another variant for total interrogation, is reported to occur only with second person subjects (e.g., Auger 1994) or not at all (e.g., Vinet 2000). This paper presents an analysis of the spread of –*ti* across the person paradigm in one variety of Acadian French (Baie Sainte-Marie, Nova Scotia). Following a brief outline of the historical development of –*ti*/–*tu* in French, I present data from a number of varieties of Canadian French (both Acadian and Quebec) while considering a number of structural differences which may account for cross-dialectal differences.

Il existe en français populaire deux particules postverbales (–*ti* et –*tu*) qui marquent l’interrogation totale. Cependant, certains chercheurs ne sont pas d’accord sur la distribution de cette particule (p. ex. Picard (1992) soutient que –*tu* ne se trouve pas à la deuxième personne tandis que Maury (1990) et Vecchiato (2000) confirment la présence de –*tu* à la deuxième personne). Auger (1994) conclut que l’inversion du sujet et du verbe, une autre variante qui sert à marquer l’interrogation, se trouve uniquement à la deuxième personne alors que Vinet (2000) conclut que l’inversion n’existe plus comme option en français québécois. Suivant une analyse s'agissant de la répartition de la particule à travers du paradigme de personne dans le français acadien de la Baie Sainte-Marie (Nouvelle-Écosse), j’examine quelques différences dans les grammaires des variétés du français canadien, ce qui expliquerait les différences entre l'utilisation de la particule dans ces variétés.

Dr. Brittain takes part in Tibetan Education and Language Symposium

2009-07-14T04:23:00.000-07:00

In May, Julie Brittain took part in the Tibetan Education and Language Symposium, a week-long event hosted by the Tibet Sustainable Governance Program at the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Va). Her presentation, "Language under pressure: The Cree Child Language Acquisition Study and its contribution to language maintenance in a bilingual community", fitted with one the principal themes of the gathering - bilingual education. (In the Tibetan context, bilingual education refers to Tibetan and Mandarin Chinese.) This was a unique event as it brought together scholars and practitioners from all over the world, including a number from many different regions of Tibet, as well as from other parts of the people's Republic of China. Julie taught at Tibet University (Lhasa) in 1987-88 and goes back to the region as often as time permits.

MUSL labbies and associates do CVC

2009-06-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, presentations by MUSL personnel and associates were well-received at Change and Variation in Canada III. Samantha Parris presented on slit-t and slit-d in Cape Breton ("The reanalysis of a traditional feature in industrial Cape Breton"), Matt Hunt Gardner and Gerard Van Herk looked at intensifiers in online forums about different nations' Idol and Next Top Model programs ("That's so Pinoy! Intensifiers, gender and online Philippine fan forums" and "Idol worshippers and Model citizens: Nationality, choice, and language change" respectively), and Becky Childs discussed a pilot study on Canadian Raising in Petty Harbour ("Diphthongs, speaker orientation, and Newfoundland English: Indicators and explanations for linguistic variation"). More information on these talks can be found on the MUSL website (http://musl.ling.mun.ca)

Announcement: a course on Cayuga, an Iroquoian language, offered in F09

2009-06-17T11:35:00.001-07:00

In Fall 09, I am offering a a course on Cayuga, an Iroquoian language. The course is LING 4050/6050 “Linguistic Structure of a Northern American Aboriginal Language — Cayuga”. It will be held in SN3036, during slot 18 (Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30-11:45).

The prerequisites for the course are “Linguistics 1103/2103 and 1104/2104, or the permission of the instructor and the Head of the Department.” I am interested in accepting students from other departments who do not meet the prerequisites, as long as they are deeply motivated and have some background in morphological analysis (identifying prefixes and suffixes).

While the course focusses on the structure of Cayuga, I think it would also be of interest to students in Ethnomusicology, Religious Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, or Aboriginal Studies. Students from other departments could, for example, do research on Iroquoian language terms relevant to their discipline. We will be reading original versions of the Thanksgiving Address (an oratory associated with the Longhouse religion), a short story, some conversations, and excerpts from Anne-Marie Shimony’s classic work “Conservatism among the Iroquois at the Six Nations Reserve.”

Please circulate this announcement to students who might be interested in the course, and encourage them to contact me about it. I can be reached at 737-8170 or through e-mail cdyck@mun.ca

Linguistics graduates, May 2009

2009-06-08T10:12:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Meghan Hollett (BA, Linguistics and Russian Majors) and Erin Swain (MA Linguistics), who convocated in May, 2009!

"The Linguists"

2009-06-08T09:59:00.001-07:00

The film 'The Linguists' is available in streaming video for free at http://www.babelgum.com/thelinguists

Dr. Bubenik's keynote address

2009-06-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

Dr. Vit Bubenik was invited to give a keynote address at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Department of Linguistics, Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki (Greece) on May 2, 2009. His paper was titled ‘Hellenistic Greek in Contact with Latin and Semitic Languages’.

ISER funds MUN linguistics students

2009-05-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

Two MUN linguistics students have just received research grants from the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER). Jennifer Thorburn will receive funding for her project, "Inuit English in Nain, Labrador: A sociolinguistic analysis of salient supra-local features in an isolated ethnolect." Suzanne Power will receive funding for "Newfoundland English: Sociolinguistic Variation in Placentia Bay." These grants will help defray the costs of fieldwork as Jenn and Suzanne travel to these communities to collect sociolinguistic data that will form the basis of a dissertation (Jenn) and thesis (Suzanne).

The Language That Ate The World

2009-05-02T10:35:00.001-07:00

In late April, 11 students from local middle schools spent three days in the department, finding out about the past, present and future of English, as part of an enrichment mini-course called “The Language That Ate The World: English and How It Got That Way.” Grad students Rachel Deal and Matt Hunt Gardner, along with prof Gerard Van Herk, took the students through a range of hands-on activities, looking at everything from Old English ulcer remedies to Tok Pisin road safety manuals. And the students generated data of their own, working on recent slang, language use questionnaires, and trends in texting.

Will Oxford receives one of the new Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

2009-05-01T06:51:00.000-07:00

Will Oxford, who completed his MA with our department in 2007, is one of the inaugural recipients of the new Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships—the most important, prestigious and sought-after scholarships for doctoral students. Scholarship recipients will receive $50,000 each year for up to three years. A total of 166 scholarships will be awarded in 2009. The scholarship fund is administered by Canada’s three federal research granting agencies: SSHRC, NSERC and CIHR.

Mr. Oxford, the only linguist to receive the award, will begin his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto, where he will continue the research on Innu-aimun syntax, which has already appeared as a book, begun during his MA in the Department of Linguistics at Memorial.

For additional information about Will's award, see the MUN Gazette article.

SLAM mixer, April 09

2009-04-28T11:19:00.001-07:00

SLAM at Relay For Life

2009-04-28T11:18:00.001-07:00

SLAM Executive 2009

2009-04-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

Here is an excellent picture of the Executive members of Student Linguistics at Memorial (SLAM) for 2009. From left to right, we have Megan Simmonds, Catherine Burgess, Heidi Rice, Lucille O'Neill-Bidaud, Alethea Power, Stephanie Pritchett, and Gina Whelan. Thank you for your wonderful contributions to our social life in the 2008-9 academic year, SLAM!

MUN Linguistics team helps create Innu language children's books

2009-04-28T06:22:00.000-07:00

Marguerite MacKenzie and Laurel Anne Hasler of the Linguistics CURA project facilitated a second workshop for writing children's books in the language of the Innu of Labrador. The workshop was led by Donna-Lee Smith, specialist in writing and Director of the First Nations and Inuit Education Programs at McGill University. Classroom assistants and staff of Peenamin Mackenzie school in Sheshatshiu and the Mushuau Innu Natuashish school attended. Four books from the fall workshop had been printed for use in classrooms and a further six were completed this time.

Linguistics Faculty Involved in Cree Language and Education Initiative

2009-04-23T07:46:00.001-07:00

Marguerite MacKenzie and Julie Brittain have been invited to join a committee which will, over the coming months, be working toward producing a written report overviewing the Cree Nation of Quebec's Cree-medium education program (Cree as a Language of Instruction Program: CLIP). The Cree School Board has nine schools, one in each of the Cree communities in northern Quebec. CLIP offers Cree-medium education to children up to Grade 3 (or Grade 2, depending on the community). The committee had its initial planning meeting in Montreal April 15th. The review is being conducted on behalf of the Cree community.

Kevin Terry receives prestigious 'Fellow of the School of Graduate Studies' award

2009-04-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Kevin Terry, who recently received the title of 'Fellow of the School of Graduate Studies' at Memorial University. This award recognizes outstanding academic achievement throughout a graduate program. A certificate and pin will be presented at the upcoming Graduate Awards Ceremony in recognition of the award.

SECOL 76

2009-04-19T06:26:00.001-07:00

Earlier this month, Gerard Van Herk and Jennifer Thorburn presented papers at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics in New Orleans. Gerard's paper was on early African American English corpora and Jennifer's was a comparison of a phonological variable in two dialects of English.

Sandra Clarke's retirement party

2009-04-13T10:29:00.000-07:00

We belatedly publish these pictures of Dr. Clarke's retirement party. The party took place on September 28, 2006.

Pictures: Sandra Clarke (above)
Below:
John Hewson, department founder.
Peter Trudgill and Sandra Clarke.
Christophe dos Santos, Jennifer Thorburn, and Laurel-Anne Hasler
Suppertime!

Memorial Working Papers in Linguistics

2009-04-13T09:25:00.001-07:00

Volume 1 of the Memorial Working Papers in Linguistics is now available on the department website at http://www.mun.ca/linguistics/MLWPL/index.php. This volume contains a selection of excellent undergraduate student papers from the 2006-7 academic year.

Aldrich Student Conference 2009

2009-03-24T06:27:00.000-07:00

Six students from Memorial's linguistics department presented a talk at the annual Aldrich Student Conference on March 22. The titles and abstracts of their talks are presented below.

070OA : 22 March 2009 - 10.00-11.15 AM - BN1009
Word-final consonant clusters in three dialects of Arabic
Ahmad Assiri
Department of Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
My research examines government and binding relationships between word-final consonant clusters in one syllable type of Arabic: CVCC. The data comes from three different dialects of Arabic: Jordanian Arabic (JA), Lebanese Arabic (LA), and Asiri Arabic (AA). These dialects differ in the way word-final consonant clusters are treated. That is, consonant clusters are either divided by an epenthetic vowel or remain undivided; specifically, epenthesis applies in JA across the board; whereas, in AA epenthesis is not tolerated. LA, on the other hand, ranges between epenthesis and lack of epenthesis.
In light of the general premises of Government Phonology, I assume sonority and place structures for Arabic consonants in attempt to characterize the relationships between word-final consonant clusters in all three dialects. An Optimality Theoretic analysis will also be used for more comprehensive account of the data.

071OA : 22 March 2009 - 10.00-11.15 AM - BN1009
A Sociophonetic Study of Interdental Variation in Jordanian Arabic
Osama Omari
Department of Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
This paper examines variation in the realization of interdental fricatives among young speakers of Jordanian Arabic (JA). Three linguistic variables will be analyzed: (), (ð), and the interdental emphatic fricative (ðʕ). Adopting a Labovian token-by-token approach, I examine the possible linguistic and social constraints on the choice of the variants by the speakers. The linguistic and social factors coded in the study are the immediate phonological environment, stress, word class, syllable and word position, frequency, sex of the informants, and urbanization. Multivariate analyses of the data show that three major factors constrain the variation: the social factors (sex and urbanization), the immediate phonological context, and the saliency of the linguistic position. The linguistic findings in this paper may challenge the lexically conditioned hypothesis on variation (Abdel-Jawad and Suleiman 1990), which relies heavily on the notion of classifying lexical items according to their etymological and phonological relevance to the standard variety (i.e., Standard Arabic).

072OA : 22 March 2009 - 10.00-11.15 AM - BN1009
Vowels and Identity: Nova Scotians living in St. John's
Matt H. Gardner
Department of Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
In this study I examine the effects of dialect contact on six Nova Scotians living in St. John’s. I test the hypothesis that those here the longest and/or those with the densest local social networks have the most centralized, or Newfoundland-like, low back vowels. While it was found that length of residency and social network density were the two most significant factors, unexpectedly, those with the strongest community ties or who had been living in Newfoundland the longest showed the least centralized low back vowel, while the participant who had been in Newfoundland the least and who had the least dense local social network produced low back vowels even more centralized that the past data predict for Newfoundland. Data from this study also shows evidence of the Canadian Shift. I also discuss the correlation between negative stereotypes (both homegrown and in St. John’s) and these participants’ identity creation through language.

Session 25 : Oral Presentation
Date : 22 March 2009
Room : BN1009
Time : 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM

073OA : 22 March 2009 - 11.30-12.45 PM - BN1009
The Role of Perceptual Salience in Child Language Acquisition: Preliminary Findings from Northern East Cree
Kevin Terry
Department of Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
Peters (1983, 1985) and Slobin (1985) claim that perceptual salience plays an important role in the initial child language acquisition processes of extraction and segmentation. These proposals are based mainly on evidence from languages, like English, which have relatively simple morphological systems. A growing number of studies test these theories against evidence from more morphologically complex languages.
In this paper, I define the processes of extraction and segmentation and identify what is meant by ‘perceptual salience’. I examine the role that perceptual salience has been found to play in the acquisition of several languages with complex morphological systems including Mohawk, Quiché Mayan, Navajo and Quechua. In light of this evidence, preliminary findings from a study of the speech of a child acquiring Northern East Cree, an Algonquian language spoken in Quebec, are also presented. These data have been made available through the Chisasibi Child Language Acquisition Study (www.mun.ca/cclas/).

074OA : 22 March 2009 - 11.30-12.45 PM - BN1009
Lexicalization of the Quotative be + like and Non-Traditional Speech Communities
Meghan Hollett and Bridget Henley
Department of Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
The TV show Grey's Anatomy is commonly associated with young, trendy females. In our study, status as a viewer or non-viewer of Grey's Anatomy was foregrounded in order to test whether this distinction is reflected in speech. Sociolinguistic interviews were conducted with 24 informants (12 male and 12 female; 12 viewers and 12 non-viewers), and analyzed for instances of quotative complementizers. This variable, which introduces quotations (eg. We were like "Oh my God"; They say "Oh, we hated it.") is appropriate for the analysis at hand because of the strong social connotations of the most frequently used variant: the quotative be + like. Previous studies have shown be + like increasing in frequency and lexicalization in Canada (Tagliamonte & D'Arcy 2004), and particularly in St. John's (D'Arcy 2004). We will discuss the advantages of the methodological framework used in this study, and present evidence to suggest further lexicalization than previously reported.

075OA : 22 March 2009 - 11.30-12.45 PM - BN1009
Icelandic Quirky Case in the Minimalist World
David Bowden
Department of Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
In English, sentences like me need money and him felt dizzy are completely ungrammatical. However, in Icelandic these sentences are perfectly acceptable. To English speakers, such phrases sound odd, and for good reason. This is because in most languages speakers must use the equivalents of I, he, she, and we for subject words and not their related oblique forms like me, him, her, and us. Icelandic exhibits a crosslinguistically rare phenomenon termed Quirky Case, or Aukafallsfrumlag in Icelandic scholarship, whereby speakers can employ oblique forms in the subject position. What is it about Icelandic that makes it acceptable for speakers to break this seemingly hard and fast rule, and how can linguists make sense of it? In this presentation, possible revisions to the previously accepted notions of how nominal case assignment and grammatical roles interact will be discussed.

Carrie Dyck was awarded a SSHRC CURA Letter of Intent grant

2009-03-20T06:28:00.000-07:00

Carrie Dyck was awarded a SSHRC CURA Letter of Intent grant in March 2009. The funds are for developing a full CURA proposal. "The purpose of the [CURA] program is to support the creation of alliances between community organizations and postsecondary institutions which, through a process of ongoing collaboration and mutual learning, will foster innovative research, training and the creation of new knowledge in areas of importance for the social, cultural or economic development of Canadian communities."

Paul De Decker awarded the Arts Pedagogical Research Initiative

2009-03-20T06:22:00.000-07:00

Paul De Decker was awarded an Arts Pedagogical Research Initiative for 2008-9. "The Arts Pedagogical Research Initiative (APRI) has been established by Dr. Tremblay, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, to encourage creative and innovative practices in teaching and learning in the Faculty of Arts at Memorial. The intent of the program is to support the implementation of new teaching projects or programs which are designed to enhance student learning."

SLAM Scholarship Winner!

2009-03-18T09:43:00.001-07:00

SLAM (The Society for Linguistics at Memorial) would like to congratulate Justin Markussen-Brown on winning the SLAM Scholarship 2009.

We, SLAM, were very impressed with his application as well as his commitment to the Linguistics Department/SLAM and are honoured to award this scholarship to such a deserving applicant.

We would also like to send a special thank you to: Dr. Marguerite MacKenzie, Dr. Carrie Dyck, Ruby Bishop and Juanita Lawrence for helping us with the preliminary stages of the scholarship and beyond.

A big thank you to all those who donated to the scholarship fund through bake sales and other fundraising and thank you to anyone who we may have forgotten.

-SLAM

Dean's List Scholarship Winner, 2007-8

2009-03-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

Karen Tucker (Linguistics Major) received the Dean's List scholarship for 2007-8. "This scholarship, established by donors to the Opportunity Fund who have directed that their donations be used for scholarships within the Faculty of Arts, is valued at approximately $1,000.00 annually. It is awarded to a student who achieves high ranking on the Dean's List of the Faculty of Arts and who meets the requirements for scholarship standing, but who is not in receipt of other significant scholarship funding. The award will be made by the Senate Committee on Undergraduate Scholarships, Bursaries and Awards based on a recommendation from the Dean, Faculty of Arts. "

Dean's List, 2007-2008

2009-03-06T04:35:00.000-08:00

The Dean's List is a way of recognizing excellence in students who are registered for a BA or BA Honours degree. Compiled annually in the spring, it includes the very best students.

To make the Dean's List, students must complete a minimum of 9 courses over two semesters (or 10 over three semesters) and achieve high marks.

Linguistics students on the Dean's List for 2007-2008 are:

Aikman, Amelie
Bowden, David
Bulgin, James
Crossan, Hilary
Flynn, Amy
Foley, Brittany
Harvey, Andrew (French/Linguistics)
Hollett, Meghan (Russian/Linguistics)
Ingram, Alisha
Ingram, Elizabeth
Power, Kimberly
Sarlak, Nira
Smith, Laura (Russian/Linguistics)
Sparling, Maggie
Tucker, Karen (French/Linguistics)

Dr. Sylvia Luraghi speaking Jan. 14, 2009

2009-03-05T04:48:00.000-08:00

Silvia Luraghi, University di Pavia will be giving a talk entitled "Where do Beneficiaries come from? Sources for Beneficiary expressions in Classical Greek, and the relation between Beneficiary, Recipient and Purpose".

DATE: January 14th, 2009
TIME: 3:30 p.m.
PLACE: SN2033

Department Colloquium, March 30

2009-03-04T11:12:00.001-08:00

Date: March 30, 2009
Time: 3:30 - 4:30
Venue: C2033
Authors: Phil Branigan and Doug Wharram

Title: Distributive semantics in Innu-aimun
Abstract:

Indefinite nouns are interpreted distibutively when they co-vary with a higher plural or quantificational phrase, as in the English sentence "Those camels have 2 humps each." (The humps is understood as a set of objects distributed over the set of camels because it is followed by the word each.) In Innu-aimun, a similar semantic effect on indefinite nouns occurs when they are accompanied by a reduplicated numeral. We describe when these reduplicated forms can and cannot occur, and try to make sense of their grammatical properties by developing a formal semantic analysis. We show that this new approach compares favorably with previous attempts to analyse similar distributive reduplication structures in some other languages (Cree and Hungarian), and discuss what this implies for semantic theory more generally.

Department Colloquium, January 26

2009-03-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

Title: Work that -S! Drag queens, gender, identity, and traditional Newfoundland English
Authors: Gerard Van Herk, Becky Childs, & Matthew Sheppard
Time: 3:30 - 4:30
Place: C2011
Abstract: We study the adoption and adaptation of a traditional Newfoundland English speech feature, non-standard verbal s-marking (as in We knows a lot of people or I loves it), by social groups not usually associated with traditional dialect: young urban women and drag queens. Using quantitative data from sociolinguistic interviews and language surveys, we show that the form is both decreasing in frequency and progressing from a strictly grammatical function to a resource for the performance of gender and affiliation with local and urban identities.

Brown bag talk on Monday, March 16 at 1:00 pm

2009-03-04T10:50:00.001-08:00

Tyler Kendall (Duke University) will be giving a brown bag talk on Monday, March 16 at 1:00 pm in the Sociolinguistics Lab (FM-2006). His paper is entitled "Performance, consciousness, and salient sociolinguistic variables in Petty Harbour English." Everyone is welcome.

In this talk, Tyler examines interview data from MUN research in Petty Harbour to ask whether evidence can be found within the speech stream that bears on questions of performance and consciousness. One of the findings of MUSL research in Petty Harbour has been that the younger speakers in the community make use of salient local variables for identity-work. Through a quantitative examination of speech timing features (such as pause and speech rate), Tyler considers this finding and shows that there does appear to be evidence in the timing data that inform our understanding of the linguistic performance of salient variables.

Lexicalization of the Quotative be + like and Non-Traditional Speech Communities

2009-02-27T04:27:00.001-08:00

Bridget Henley and Meghan Hollett will be presenting Lexicalization of the Quotative be + like and Non-Traditional Speech Communities this Monday (March 2) at 1:00 pm in the socio lab (FM-2006). The abstract is below. Please forward this to anyone who might be interested in attending.

The hit primetime TV show Grey's Anatomy is commonly associated in the public imaginary with young, trendy females. In our study, status as a viewer or non-viewer of Grey's Anatomy was foregrounded in order to test whether this distinction is reflected in speech. Sociolinguistic interviews were conducted for 24 informants (12 male and 12 female; 12 viewers and 12 non-viewers), and analyzed for instances of quotative complementizers. This variable, which introduces quotations (eg. We were like "Oh my God, these people…"; And they say "Oh we hated it") is appropriate for the analysis at hand because of the social markedness of the most frequently used variant: the quotative be + like. Previous studies have found that the variant be + like is increasing in frequency and lexicalization in Canada (Tagliamonte and D'Arcy 2004), and particularly in St. John's (D'Arcy 2004). We will discuss the advantages of the methodological framework used in this study, and present evidence to suggest further lexicalization than previously reported.

Innu-aimun Teaching Vocabulary Workshop

2009-02-26T04:27:00.001-08:00

Laurel Anne Hasler and Marguerite MacKenzie spent three days (Feb. 23-25) in Sheshatshiu, Labrador, working with Innu staff and classroom assistants to revise the lexicon of teaching vocabulary. A list of 500 terms was established and will be printed in a reference booklet . The two Innu communities in Labrador (Sheshatshiu and Natuashish) are moving quickly towards local control of their education system. Strengthening teaching and resources in the Innu language is an important goal of this process, supported by the department's SSHRC-funded Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) project (www.innu-aimun.ca).

Department Colloquium, March 9

2009-02-26T04:25:00.001-08:00

Date: March 9
Time: 3:30 - 4:30
Place: C2033

Authors: Sarah Rose, Derek Nurse, John Hewson

Abstract:
The structure of the verb in the non-Bantu Niger-Congo languages.

This talk provides an update on the ongoing research program of the
Memorial University Bantu Working Group. We present a summary of our current
research into the verbal categories of tense and aspect in the non-Bantu languages of
West and Central Africa. Our primary focus will be how the verbal structures of
these understudied languages differ in significant ways from the better-studied
Bantu languages of East and Southern Africa. Topics addressed include: agglutinating (synthetic) verbal morphology (typical of Bantu) vs. isolating
(analytic) structures (typical of non-Bantu Niger-Congo); tense- prominent vs. aspect prominent languages; and how time is expressed in a tenseless language.

Department Colloquium, March 23

2009-02-26T04:23:00.001-08:00

Date: March 23, 2009
Time: 3:30 - 4:30
Place: C2033

Title: Relationships between language typology and the acquisition of word-final consonants in French

Author: Christophe dos Santos

Abstract:

Many generalizations about syllabification across languages point to a strong effect of sonority. For example, the more sonorous a consonant is, the more likely it is to appear at the end of syllables (in syllable codas). Are such generalizations accidental or driven by general principles in phonology? Child language development can help us address this question, because children have to build phonological systems from the ambient languages they are exposed to. If general principles lead phonological systems in general, they should manifest themselves in acquisition. During this presentation, I will show that Marilyn, a first-language learner of French, syllabifies her word-final consonants on the basis of sonority before she attains the type of syllabification we expect in the target (adult) system.

New website: Memorial University Sociolinguistics Lab

2009-02-19T09:28:00.000-08:00

The Memorial University Sociolinguistics Laboratory now has a new website: http://musl.ling.mun.ca/index.html

Cree Literacy Planning Workshop

2009-02-17T12:07:00.001-08:00

Marguerite MacKenzie met with Cree instructors on January 23-25 to revamp the content of the first four of ten courses in the Cree Literacy certificate program, offered through McGill University. This program, which focuses on improving reading, writing and spelling in Cree syllabics, as well as acquiring familiarity with Cree grammar, will now be offered to community members, including parents and daycare workers, as well as to Cree teachers. The Cree School Board of Quebec has implemented a program of Cree as the language of instruction in the primary grades in most communities.

Pictures from Feb. 13 department potluck

2009-02-17T08:44:00.000-08:00

Christophe dos Santos, Kevin Terry

Jean Briggs, Marguerite MacKenzie

Jenn Thorburn, Carrie Dyck

Jeannie De Decker, Gerard van Herk

Julie Brittain, Ron Schwartz

Paul De Decker, James Bulgin, and John Hewson

Jim Black, Meghan Tanner, Gerard van Herk, and Ron Schwartz

Osama Omari, Ahmad Assiri, Christophe dos Santos, Kevin Terry, and Rachel Deal

Derek Nurse

And apologies to people who came after the camera was put away!

SLAM (Society for Linguistics at MUN) mixer

2009-02-13T06:47:00.001-08:00

SLAM is having a Valentine's Mixer in SN-4087 from 5:00pm-8:00pm on Friday, Feb. 13th.

Department Colloquium Monday Feb. 16, 2009

2009-02-13T05:19:00.001-08:00

The Chisasibi Child Language Acquisition Study (CCLAS)

Julie Brittain, Carrie Dyck and Kevin Terry

In this talk, we report on faculty and student research arising out of the Chisasibi Child Language Acquisition Study (www.mun.ca/cclas). Chisasibi is an East Cree-speaking community in Northern Quebec. Begun in 2004, the data collection phase of the project (video-recording) was completed in 2007 and we are now engaged in data processing and data analysis. CCLAS aims to document how children acquire East Cree (an Algonquian language) as a first language. The methodology of the study is ground-breaking, and the extent of data gathered is unparalleled, making CCLAS among the largest L1 acquisition study for any language. We will provide a brief overview of the project and discuss how it will contribute to our knowledge of language acquisition.

Date: Monday, February 16, 2009

Time: 3:30 - 4:30

Place: C2033

Department potluck Feb. 13

2009-02-13T05:16:00.001-08:00

The Departmental Potluck is February 13, 2009, starting at 7:00 p.m.
at Dr. Marguerite MacKenkzie's house (40 Allandale Road). Students do
not need to contribute to the potluck.

Welcome to the MUN Linguistics Blog

2009-02-10T06:51:00.001-08:00

With your help , we can post current news items for everyone to read, and keep current.

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