Student Accomplishments - Congratulations to:
Undergraduate student, Jessica Cobler who has been awarded the annual Michael Dobrovolsky Undergraduate Linguistics Award for academic merit and extra-curriular service (2012).
PhD student, Svitlana Filonik who has been awarded the Chancellor's Challenge Graduate Scholarship.
PhD student Sameera Allihibi who successfully passed her Candidacy Exam, on October 3, 2012.
PhD student Nicholas Welch who successfully defended his thesis titled, "The bearable lightness of being: the encoding of coincidence in two-copula languages", on August 8, 2012. Nick has now accepted a Post-doctoral appointment at the University of Toronto and will be working with Dr. Keren Rice and continuing his research on the grammar of time in Athapaskan languages.
MA student Joey Windsor who successsfully defended his thesis titled, "When nothing exists: The role of zero in the prosodic hierarchy", on July 31, 2012. Joey officially starts his PhD with the Department this Fall.
PhD student Stephanie Archer who successsfully defended her thesis titled, "Infant Perception of Phonotactics: The Roles of Statistical Frequency and Acoustic Salience", on July 19, 2012.
MA student Vincent Carveth who successsfully defended his thesis titled, "Explorations in the Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Qiandong-Hmongic Onsets", on June 12, 2012.
PhD student Aysun Kunduraci who was awarded the Safiya Fathi Graduate Scholarship.
PhD student Danica MacDonald who was awarded the following:
- SSHRC funding award to study abroad
- Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding volunteer support and service to the Graduate Students' Association
- Alberta Graduate Citizenship Award
Alumni PhD student Dr. Yuri Yerastov (graduated from the UofC in November, 2010), who has been offered a position as Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the English Department at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.
Faculty Recognition:
The Department of Linguistics would like to recognize Drs. Suzanne Curtin and Amanda Pounder who were both nominated by their graduate students for a GSA "Supervisory Excellence Award", and also Dr. Elizabeth Ritter who was nominated for an award in "Exemplary Administrative Support". For a list of the winners, please visit the GSA page.
Linguists in the News:
Assistant Professor, Dr. Darin Flynn has been interviewed and quoted in numerous articles and interviews, most recently regarding the latest Canadian Census, and what it had to say about Indigenous languages:
- CBC News, October 24, 2012: "Once-vibrant aboriginal languages struggle for survival"
- Calgary Herald, October 25, 2012: "Movement aims to keep aboriginal languages alive"
Alumni MA student Joan Lee's 2011 MA thesis research has been featured as follows:
- BBC Radio 4, March 27, 2012: "Word of Mouth: Textspeak" Interview with Michael Rosen (Joan's interview is at 16-19 mins).
- Calgary Herald, February 18, 2012: "OMG! Text language is not flexible. Texters are fussy, U of C finds."
- Calgary Sun, February 17, 2012: "Not-so-smart-phones: Texting spelling the end of large vocabularies."
Adjunct Professor, Dr. Jürgen Meisel's research has recently been featured as follows:
- CBC's Eyeopener, January 19, 2012: "Babies and language" - New research out of the U of C suggests families
that can speak multiple languages should speak more than one language to their babies - because the babies can understand and comprehend the differences.
- Article: "Research shows children can learn multiple languages simultaneously".
Publication(s):
Dr. Jürgen Meisel has a new book out in the Cambridge University Textbooks in Linguistics series.
Infants and very young children develop almost miraculously the ability of speech, without apparent effort, without even being taught – as opposed to the teenager or the adult struggling without, it seems, ever being able to reach the same level of proficiency as five year olds in their first language. This useful textbook serves as a guide to different types of language acquisition: monolingual and bilingual first language development and child and adult second language acquisition. Unlike other books, it systematically compares first and second language acquisition, drawing on data from several languages. Research questions and findings from various subfields are helpfully summarized to show students how they are related and how they often complement each other. The essential guide to studying first and second language acquisition, it will be used on courses in linguistics, modern languages and developmental psychology.
Click here for a link to the publisher’s website.
Additions to the Department:
We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Florentine Strzelczyk has joined the Department as Interim Department Head, while Dr. Elizabeth Ritter is away on a Research Leave.
Dr. Julie Sedivy has joined the Department as Adjunct Associate Professor. She is the lead author of a new book exploring the ways in which language is harvested for its persuasive power, and will be teaching courses in Linguistics and Psychology. You can follow Julie's blog at Psychology Today, and you can also read an interesting article with her regarding political talk, here, or check out her commentary in the Globe and Mail, here.