Colloquia & Events

Jan 12th 11am(ish) LNCO 2300

Welcome Back! Spring Social

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Feb 23rd 3:30-5PM LNCO 2110 & Zoom

Linguistics Colloquium- Dr. Benjamin Slade, University of Utah

Khā lo yā nikal jāo! “Eat up or get out!”: L2 acquisition of Hindi verb+verb collocations

Hindi V+V compounds, of the type exemplified by khā liyā “ate up” (lit. “eat took”), are a central part of idiomatic fluent Hindi speech. However, the rules governing not only possible combinations but also how the use of a V+V collocation affects other aspects of the clause, as well as the semantic contribution of the light verb, are all complex and involve idiosyncratic components; and thus pose a challenge to second language learners of Hindi. This is true not only for learners whose L1 is a non-Indo-Aryan language, but also for L1 speakers of other Indo-Aryan languages. Hindi V+V compounds, both in terms of their functions (e.g. aspect, speaker affect) and in terms of their idiomaticity are reminiscent of English verbal particle constructions (e.g. “eat up”), and L2 instructional techniques developed for the latter potentially relevant for Hindi V+Vs.

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Mar 2nd 3:30-5PM Virtual

Linguistics Career Pathways- Speech Language Pathology

Join us for a Q&A discussion with a panel of professional Speech Language Pathologists.

 

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Mar 30th 3:30-5PM Virtual

Linguistics Colloquium- Dr. Kelly E. Wright

Awareness, Objectification, & Equity

Linguistics in a Hostile Workplace

Metalinguistic awareness includes a language user’s knowledge about the relation of factors (like age, gender, or race) to linguistic usage, distribution, meaning, or context of occurrence variance (Wright 2022). Such embodied knowledge (Bucholtz & Hall 2016) is directly linked to the social meanings available to an individual across linguistic markets (Bourdieu 1977; Zhang 2005), and thus illuminates the ways in which linguistic markets (and the social meanings enacted through them) are simultaneously responsive both to personally held aspects of identity and the extant sociohistorical facts which afford identities their social power. 

Wright will begin this presentation with a discussion of how embodied perception–stretched over time–interacts with institutions to create the conditions for linguistic oppression. With this knowledge base, the consideration will shift to raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa 2015) and the extent to which they constrain one’s capability of exploiting the range of expectations available in a given context. Wright will then observe, in this light, the remarkable challenge of objectifying language data and present an innovative methodology–designed to elicit metalinguistic commentary and that stemmed from a desire to introduce representative and equitable models of data collection and experimentation: the metalinguistic method of sociolinguistic interview (Wright 2022). This talk will end with an active, large group discussion on this central issue of linguistic inquiry and the ways in which we–as a community of experts–can balance approaching empirical validity on one end and radical acceptance on the other.

 

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Apr 14th 9AM-5PM LNCO 2110 & 1100

University of Utah Student Conference In Linguistics (UUSCIL)

 

UUSCIL provides an opportunity for Linguistics students to present their research in a scholarly setting to members of the Linguistics community at the U. Come support your peers and learn about the cool things going on in Linguistics research!

 

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Apr 20th 4PM-6PM Cleone Peterson Eccles Alumni House Executive Boardroom and Patio

Open House for departing and retiring faculty.

 

We’d like to offer our many thanks and to congratulate our amazing faculty on thier new adventures. They will be greatly missed.

 

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Apr 25th 10AM-5PM LNCO 2300

Spring Finals Destress Activity

Take a study break and get those creative juices flowing. Join us for arts and crafts, of course food, drinks, and socializing. Some supplies will be provided for yarn and paper arts, origami, and coloring pages, but feel free to bring you're own or something to share! 

 

Sept 7th 

5-9pm Sunnyside Park Pavilion

Welcome (Back)! Department Picnic

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Sept 11th 

3-4:30pm LNCO 2945

Are you interested in learning more about Computational Linguistics?  Are you already enrolled in the Comp Ling certificate? Come meet others with similar interests, faculty mentors, and advisors!

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Sept 20th 

9-11:30am LNCO 2945

Brunch Open House

Miss the Dept. Picnic? No problem! Stop by before class to grab a bite and say hi to your favorite linguists!

 

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Oct 20th

10-11:30am Virtual

The Speech Acquisition Lab presents the Emerging Scholars in Language Science Series

Elijah Wilder, PhD student in Linguistics, University of Texas - Austin

Diachrony of stress change: A reconstruction of proto-Mayan stress parameters

The Mayan language family consists of roughly 30 languages spoken throughout Southern Mexico and Guatemala. Stress patterns in the family are under-studied, but what descriptions do exist show several different stress patterns that do not adhere to genetic relation and can differ dramatically between varieties of the same Mayan language. I propose that these differences in stress patterns can be broadly classified into two stress patterns, a quantity-sensitive pattern and a quantity-insensitive pattern.

By analyzing stress descriptions of languages belonging to either stress pattern, a set of parameters for stress assignment frequently appears. I propose that those parameters can be reconstructed to proto-Mayan. Additionally, by selecting for these parameters, it is possible to discern the ways in which Mayan languages changed to create the variety in stress patterns found in the modern languages.

 

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Oct 26th

3:30-5pm Hybrid LNCO 2945 & Virtual

Career Paths: Unified Languages

A panel of professionals discuss internships, employment options and their experience in the field.

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Nov 2nd

3:30-5pm Hybrid GC 2660 & Zoom 

Colloquium: Sonca Vo, Postdoctoral Scholar University of Utah

Investigation into the factor structure of a local English placement test of oral communication

This study describes the development process and examines the construct validity of an English placement test of oral communication (EPT OC) developed at a Midwestern university in the United States. This test includes a one-on-one oral interview and paired discussion task, and test performance is judged on an analytic rating scale. A confirmatory factor analysis conducted on the ratings of 338 students who took the initial fully operational EPT OC revealed the test structure was represented by a correlated four-factor model with interactional competence, fluency, pronunciation/comprehensibility, and grammar/vocabulary as sub-constructs, in line with its targeted theoretical framework. Both tasks were effective in measuring the targeted sub-constructs, but the sub-constructs were not sufficiently distinct from each other to completely justify a four-factor model. The findings provide some support for the proposed interpretations of the EPT OC test scores but indicate the need for some modifications to the assessment, such as more thorough rater training and/or revised rating scales to better distinguish the targeted sub-constructs

 

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Nov 9th

3:30-5pm Hybrid GC 2660 & Zoom 

CONTENT WARNING! Vulgar Language

Colloquium: Randall Eggert, Assistant Professor (Lecturer) University of Utah

Toward a Lexically Realistic Semantics of Taboo (and other) Words

Sadock (1994: 396) argues there are “simultaneous, independent, orthogonal communicative dimensions” to natural language. He then proposes three communicative aspects to acts of speech: informational, social, and emotional. Sadock’s focus is on speech acts and conversation; however, we can conclude that if these communicative functions exist, there must be conventional correlates in language proper. In other words, the same three aspects can be found in the meaning of words, i.e. lexical semantics. In this paper, I demonstrate the necessity for these three independent aspects of meaning in lexical semantics by closely examining the meaning of certain taboo words.

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Nov 16th

3:30-5pm Hybrid GC 2660 & Zoom 

Colloquium: Sopuruchi Aboh, Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Understanding and examining attitudes towards Nigerian Englishes
Research has shown the existence of localised or naturalised Englishes in Nigeria, primarily attributed to the impact of the first language (Nigerian indigenous language) on English language usage. From an ethnic perspective, the major localised Englishes are Hausa English (HE), Igbo English (IE) and Yoruba English (YE), spoken by the three major ethnolinguistic groups in Nigeria. From an attitude perspective, this talk will provide a background to language attitude research and Nigeria’s linguistic landscape, and present the findings of ongoing research on the attitudes of Nigerian students towards these Nigerian Englishes. The talk also summarises the findings on the association between ethnic categorisation and underlying reasons for categorising Nigerian Englishes. The talk highlights the contribution of the findings to the understanding of discrimination against language varieties and the sociopsychological processes that underlie accent recognition and ethnic categorisation of accents. This understanding can help in challenging stereotypes related to language varieties, promoting inclusivity, and fostering linguistic tolerance.

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Nov 17th

10-11:30am Virtual

The Speech Acquisition Lab presents the Emerging Scholars in Language Science Series

Yuka Tashiro, PhD student in Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Indiana University

The Roles of Canonical and Non-Canonical Vowels in Phonetic Context Effects

Despite of the lack of invariance problem in the acoustic signal (Liberman et al., 1967), listeners generally seem to be successful at retrieving speakers' intended phonemes. How do listeners parse coarticulated speech given the high nature of acoustic context-sensitivity? Earlier studies (e.g., Kunisaki & Fujisaki, 1977; Mann & Repp, 1980) have discovered that listeners' parsing behaviors reflect listeners' shifting the categorization of a target sound according to a preceding or following phonetic context (known as phonetic context effects, Repp, 1982). According to the literature, there are two types of phonetic context effects, which I refer to as dissimilative parsing (e.g., Kunisaki & Fujisaki, 1977; Mann & Repp, 1980) and assimilative parsing (e.g., Fujimura et al., 1978; Rysling et al., 2019) in the current study. In a dissimilative parsing, listeners parse two successive segments to identify one as more different from the other, while in an assimilative parsing, listeners parse two successive segments in a way that identifies one as more similar to the other. For example, an ambiguous target fricative noise between [s] and [ʃ] may be identified as [s] more often when its phonetic context is [u] than [i] for a dissimilative parsing, but the target sound may be identified as [ʃ] more often when its phonetic context is [u] than [i] for an assimilative parsing. When do listeners decide to use a dissimilative parsing over an assimilative parsing, and vice versa? More recently, Rysling et al. (2019) suggested that a dissimilative parsing is the default mechanism of parsing, but listeners do an assimilative parsing in particular when an ambiguous target is immediately followed by its phonetic context with smooth continuous spectral transitions. Hence, an assimilative parsing should not happen when a sibilant fricative noise is a preceding ambiguous target. My preliminary study using a sibilant fricative noise as an ambiguous target and canonical and non-canonical vowels as contexts, however, indicates that listeners may exhibit an assimilative parsing within-category. According to Lotto and Holt (2006) and Mitterer (2006), listeners may show an assimilative parsing when a non-speech context sound follows an ambiguous sibilant fricative target. Since the vowel stimuli used in the preliminary study did not have formant transitions and sound quality was not great, new stimuli sets with better quality were synthesized. The current study thus investigates the role of canonical and non-canonical vowels with and without formant transitions in phonetic context effects. The results showed that when the stimuli were CV syllables, the listeners exhibit a dissimilative parsing for the phonological vowel category ([u] vs. [i]). However, within the vowel category [u] (with and without formant transitions), the listeners exhibit an assimilative parsing. Within the vowel category [i], the listeners exhibited a dissimilative parsing only when the vowels do not have formant transitions. The results showed that when the stimuli were VC syllables, the listeners exhibit a dissimilative parsing for the phonological vowel category ([u] vs. [i]) but with smaller effects compared to the CV stimuli. The role of non-canonical vowels was similar but the effect diminished as well. The role of the [+round] feature and cognitive exemplar vowels will be further discussed.

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Nov 30th

3:30-5pm Hybrid GC 2660 & Zoom 

Colloquium: Caleb Belth, Assistant Professor, University of Utah

A Learning-Based Perspective on Abstract Representations

While phonological theory has often made use of the concept of the underlying form, debates have raged regarding their status: some have argued that phonology should abandon such representations altogether, and many feel that they should at least be justified on a case-by-case basis. Underlying forms are often characterized as hidden structure, which insinuates that they present an acquisition challenge. Yet a key motivation for such structures is to capture generalizations, which is of great use to a child facing the sparse statistical profile of the input. It seems then that the character of the input ought to be taken into account when considering the status of underlying forms. In this talk, we will consider an algorithmic, learning-based approach to the question. I propose a model that, by default, constructs concrete, surface-faithful representations of morphemes. When and only when these concrete representations make it challenging to generalize in the face of the sparse statistical profile of language—a tipping point that will be made precise—the proposed model constructs abstract underlying forms that allow for effective generalization. I consider the highly-agglutinative language, Turkish, and the heavily-studied Dutch noun voicing alternation as two case studies. The systemic character of Turkish vowel harmony drives the learner to collapse the allomorphs of some morphemes into an abstract, underlying category. This makes developmental predictions, which tentatively appear consistent with Turkish-learning children. This suggests the importance of some non-concrete forms to generalization. I then argue that the model provides a possible learning-based account of why Dutch-learning children do not productively extend voicing alternations: such alternations are not prevalent enough in a child’s input to prevent the construction of productive and accurate morphophonological generalizations from concrete representations.

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Dec 5th

11:00am-3:00pm LNCO 2945 

You've made it! Another semester has come and gone. Take a moment to appreciate this achievement.

Join us for pizza and puzzles.

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Dec 7th

3:30-5pm Hybrid GC 2660 & Zoom 

Colloquium: Matteo Fiorini, PhD Graduate Student, University of Utah

Deriving focus structures: a Minimalist exploration of Camuno

In this talk, I discuss the properties of focus structures in Camuno, an endangered Gallo-Romance variety spoken in the Italian Alps. In this language, foci generally appear right-adjacent to the lexical verb and align with the main sentence stress.

Focalization is attested across numerous language families, and it has been investigated from a variety perspectives. My discussion provides an overview of the main lines of analyses proposed to account for the distribution and interpretation of foci cross-linguistically and explore their applicability in accounting for the data from Camuno.  

I then propose a Minimalist derivation based on movement to satisfy interpretative requirements at the interfaces and pragmatically-informed constraints on the phonetic realization of the structure.

 

January 27, 2022

Linguistics Colloquium Virtual Talk -Dr. Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University

3:30 - 5:00 pm  MST (join 3:15 to socialize)

Researching Language Learning and Multilingualism: What's Social Justice Got to Do With it?

Our pandemic times continue to bring stress to our world through deterioration of solidarity for human diversity, a widening of economic inequalities, and the intensification of racial and religious conflict across the globe. Many multilinguals – even more so multilinguals in marginalized communities – are vulnerable in the present climate. Yet, disaffection for ethics, power, and ideologies has traditionally predominated the field of second language acquisition (SLA), which focuses on language learning by adults—people who learn a new language (formally or informally) during young, middle, or older adulthood, and therefore well outside primary socialization in the family. Should researchers who study adult language development, language learning, and multilingualism respond to these difficult times? If for some of us at least the answer is yes, then how can the field generate knowledge that can support social justice? I will propose several research strategies to respond to the needs that so many multilingual individuals, families, and communities are experiencing in our difficult times. I will also reflect on the barriers and possibilities for SLA scholars who wish to make their research useful for both elite and marginalized multilinguals.

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February 10, 2022

Guest Lecture - Dr. Michał B. Paradowski, University of Warsaw

In person and virtual
LNCO Room 1110
3:30 - 4:30 pm  MST (join 3:15 to socialize)

 

Language and Linguistics instruction during the pandemic: 
What made some teachers and students cope better than others?

We examine the transition to emergency remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic based on questionnaire responses from over 6,000 language learners and teachers and Linguistics instructors and students from 118 countries. Among others, we identify the influence of the stage of education taught, mode of delivery, economic classification of the country, perception of student coping, anxiety about the future, living conditions, self-acceptance, appraisal of situational impact, course optionality, and perceived effectiveness of virtual delivery. Compared with in-person classes, teachers felt that remote instruction depressed students’ language progress by around 64%; the future learning outcomes were the biggest cause for concern in beginner-level classes. The breakup of some constructs in clusters of naturally correlating variables in turn suggests that in crisis situations these may function differently than during ‘business as usual’, supporting the Strong Situation Hypothesis. We also demonstrate stability in respondents’ lives and instruction correlated with their multilingualism.

*Note*: Further data analyses are in progress; by February we hope to offer new findings including the impact on coping of stakeholders’ personality traits.

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February 17, 2022

Career Paths for Linguists - NSA and FBI

Virtual

3:30 - 5:00 pm  MST 

Join representatives from NSA (National Security Administration) and the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) to discuss how your Linguistics degree can benefit you in these fields.  They will discuss internship opportunities, employment options, and security clearance procedures.  Linguistics can be used in both organizations as a tool in a variety of careers including analyst and translation positions.

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February 24, 2022

Linguistics Colloquium Talk - Dr. Ryan Shosted, University of Illinois

Virtual

3:30 - 5:00 pm  MST (join 3:15 to socialize)

Are there traces of the cord-card merger in Deseret Alphabet texts?

The merger /ɔ/  /ɑ/ before /r/ is widely-documented in Utah English, particularly along the Wasatch Front.
The Deseret Alphabet was capable of rendering distinctions between pairs of back vowels that have since
merged in Standard American and Utah English varieties. As a means of phonetically rendering the distinction
between vowels that were perhaps already in the process of merging, Deseret Alphabet texts composed in the
1860s may present some clues as to the development of the cord–card merger in Utah. I present evidence from
the Deseret Alphabet printing of the Book of Mormon and the writings of Mormon diarist Marion J. Shelton.
These writings indeed preserve transcriptional evidence of variable vowel quality in pre-rhotic contexts,
suggestive of the merger. While this is not taken to be conclusive evidence of the timing or diffusion of the
merger, it does provide positive evidence of variability relating to the merger.

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March 24, 2022

Linguistics Colloquium Virtual Talk -Dr. Jessica Coon, McGill University

3:30 - 5:00 pm  MST (join 3:15 to socialize)

Ergativity and extraction in Mayan languages

There are about thirty Mayan languages spoken today, and all of these languages exhibit morphological ergativity: in terms of their verbal agreement, intransitive subjects pattern with transitive objects (=absolutive), and differently from transitive subjects (=ergative). However, Mayan languages differ in whether this morphological pattern also has a syntactic effect. Mayan languages are verb-initial, and require elements to appear in a preverbal position for wh-questions, focus, and relativization (A’-extraction). While Mayan languages like Ch’ol freely permit the extraction of both ergative and absolutive arguments, other Mayan languages, like Chuj, restrict extraction: absolutive arguments freely extract, while ergatives arguments may not. This pattern of syntactic ergativity is known as the Ergative Extraction Constraint (EEC; Aissen 2017). 

Building on recent work, I argue that the presence of absence of the EEC in Mayan languages is directly correlated with a major point of syntactic variation in the Mayan family: while objects in languages like Ch’ol remain low in the clause, objects in languages like Chuj consistently move to a position above the ergative subject, blocking the subject from extracting. I show how this single difference accounts for other points of variation between the two types of Mayan languages. More generally, I discuss how collaborative and comparative linguistic research on under-documented languages can contribute both to linguistic theory and to the goals of language communities

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March 31, 2022

Career Paths for Linguists - DOs and DON’Ts of a CV for the Tech Industry

Virtual

3:15 - 5:00 pm  MST 

Linguists gain a lot of skills during their majors. But how do you craft a CV that looks appealing to an industry recruiter? What kind of skills are actually useful for a career in tech? What things you should absolutely NOT do when submitting a CV?

If these questions appeal to you, join us for a Q&A period with Dr. Alëna Aksënova (Linguist at Google)!

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April 5, 2022

Undergraduate Research Symposium

In person and virtual

The Undergraduate Research Symposium provides an opportunity for University of Utah students to present their work in a scholarly setting to students, faculty and other members of the U community. Undergraduate students from all disciplines at the University of Utah are invited to present their research and creative work.

MORE INFO

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April 9-10, 2022

(F)ASAL-12 Conference

The (Formal) Approaches to South Asian Languages conference is the main venue in North America for discussion of theoretical and theory-driven research in South Asian linguistics.

MORE INFO

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April 15, 2022

University of Utah Student Conference in Linguistics (UUSCIL)

The University of Utah Student Conference in Linguistics provides an opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to present their research in a scholarly setting to students, faculty, and other members of our Linguistics Community. The conference is intended to celebrate the wide breadth of issues taken up in theoretical and applied linguistics, including interdisciplinary approaches.

MORE INFO

 

Thursday, Aug 25th

3:30pmVirtualWelcome (Back) to Linguistics! 

Join us on Zoom passcode 564847 for a virtual social. The first 30 min will be dedicated to introducing new students to what the department has to offer. The last 30 min will be an opportunity for everyone to get to know each other. 

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Thursday, Sept 8th

5pmSugarhouse ParkDepartment Picnic 

Sugar Beet Pavilion on the South East side of the park. UTA bus accessable from the Union on lines 21 (Bay C in front of the Union). Catering will be provided. Please join us with your friends and/or family!

Please RSVP by Sept. 2nd.

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Thursday, Sept 22nd

Linguistics Colloquium – Dr. Shannon Barrios , University of Utah  

3:30 - 5 pm LNCO 2110, Zoom will be available

The Social Weighting of Input Sources in Adult Lx Phonetic Learning

Input--the linguistic information available to language learners--is a necessary condition for language acquisition, whether native (L1) or subsequent (Lx). Infants make differential use of L1 input depending on social condition: they learn the phonetics of linguistic input through live-person interaction but not when it is presented by video or audio only (Conboy, Meltzoff and Kuhl 2015). Others have demonstrated that adult L2 learners are sensitive to the phonetics of L2 input, even in the absence of social interaction, leading to the question of whether adult L2 learners also “gate” their input such that some types will be more influential than others. The language classroom, where learners are exposed to phonetic input from an “authority” (the teacher) and also from fellow learners, provides an opportunity to explore the role that social dynamics play in the effects of input on L2 phonetic development. We conducted an experiment wherein English speakers heard auditory stimuli in an artificial language. During an exposure phase, in one condition the “teacher” produced tokens with 25 ms of VOT on initial segments and the students with 125 ms, and in another the VOT durations were reversed (in addition to control conditions where both students and teachers produced either long or short VOT). At test, participants judged as more target-like productions by a different speaker that matched the VOT durations of the teacher, but not the student, depending on their exposure condition, providing evidence for an influence of social factors in weighting input in L2 acquisition.

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Thursday, Oct 6th

3:30pmVirtualApplying to Grad School 

This virtual meeting will be hosted by Shannon Barrios, Aniellos De Santo, and Rachel Hayes-Harb and is intended for undergraduate students who are interested in learning more about graduate school application process.  Undergraduates at any point in their careers are welcome and encouraged to join. Please register to receive the zoom link.

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Thursday, Oct 20th

Linguistics Colloquium –Dr. Eihab Abu Rabiah, Visting Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Utah  

3:30 - 5 pm LNCO 2110, Zoom will be available

Registration required

Vocabulary development of Hebrew as L2 to young Arabic learners

This presentation will cover my dissertation research in which I examined the vocabulary development of young learners who learn Hebrew as a second language in a longitudinal study. In the study, three lexical measures were examined: lexical diversity (the range of different words used in a text: total types / total tokens) (Jarvis, 2002, 2017; Yu, 2010), lexical density (the proportion of "content" or "lexical" words in a text) (Berman, 2008; Johansson, 2009), and lexical sophistication (the proportion of "sophisticated" or "advanced" words in a text) (Malvern et al., 2004; Lindqvist et al., 2011). Twenty-three high school students completed two assignments in grades 11 and 12: 1. writing an argumentative essay and 2. writing word meanings of 28 words (passive vocabulary) and creating a sentence for each word (active vocabulary). In the first assignment, lexical diversity and lexical density were tested, while lexical sophistication was tested in the second. Unlike previous studies in which these measures were tested similar to the English language, which differs in many respects from Hebrew, in this study the various measures were adapted to the lexical, syntactic, and orthographic characteristics of Hebrew. The findings demonstrate that the development in the three measures was not statistically significant, but statistically significant differences were found between the proposed methods and the previous methods. Moreover, it was found that as the lexical sophistication level of a word increased, students' accuracy (the number of correct answers) decreased and that with the increase in acquisition time, learners were better able to use their passive vocabulary more actively.

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Thursday, Oct 27th

VirtualCareer Paths - Kenn Watts Foreign Service

3:30pm - 4:30pm Zoom

Learn about careers with the Foreign Service - from how to get started to language training to what it is like living with a family abroad. Kenn Watt joined the Foreign Service as a Management tracked officer in 2009. He has since served overseas in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico; Taipei; Beijing, China; and most recently as a General Services Officer in Tel Aviv, Israel. Kenn also served two years as an instructor of the General Services training course at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia. Kenn was born and raised in the Salt Lake City area and attended the University of Utah where he received a Master’s degree in Public Administration. 

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Thursday, Nov 17th

Dr. Karlos Arregi, University of Chicago

3:30pmVirtualColloquium

Registration Required

Head Movement as a Syntactic Operation

The theoretical status of head movement, illustrated by constructions such as subject-auxiliary inversion in English (e.g. Has the train arrived?), has been the subject of intense debate in the literature. One of the main points of contention is its relation to phrasal movement (relativization, passive, etc.) There are important differences between the two types of displacement, having to do both with the size of what's displaced (heads vs. phrases) and the locality conditions (head movement typically being subject to stricter locality conditions). The problem is compounded by the fact that head movement seems to violate certain hypothesized syntactic principles that phrasal movement has been claimed to follow, such as the Extension Condition. The response to this complex empirical picture has been varied. Some have argued that head movement is the same type of operation as phrasal movement (i.e. Move/Internal Merge; i.a. Roberts 2010, Preminger 2019), others, that it is not and should be an operation that applies in the postsyntactic component (PF; i.a. Harizanov & Gribanova 2020, Hein 2020), and yet others have claimed that what appears to be displacement of heads is in fact displacement of phrases (Koopman & Szabolcsi 2000, Myler 2017).

In recent work, Asia Pietraszko and I hypothesize that head movement is a syntactic operation that is distinct from phrasal movement (i.e. it's not Move/Internal Merge). In this talk, I discuss two related arguments for this view. The first is based on the properties of long verb movement in Breton, and in particular, how it affects the realization of verbs and verbal inflection. These properties show that long verb movement behaves like phrasal movement, and not like the type of head movement discussed above. What this investigation reveals then is that while long verb movement (more generally, long head movement) should be unified with phrasal movement, head movement should be kept as a distinct operation. The second argument has to do with remnant movement interactions, namely, constructions in which displacement of x out of phrase y is followed by phrasal movement of the containing phrase y to a higher position. The generalization, amply documented in the literature, is that x is pronounced only once (in its derived position) if its displacement is the result of phrasal movement, but twice (in both its base and derived positions) if its displacement is the result of head movement. Taken together, the facts provide a strong argument for the distinctness of head movement as a syntactic operation in its own right.

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Thursday, Dec 1st3:30pmLNCO 2110Honors meeting- students pursuing honors thesis in linguistics 

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Thursday, Dec 8th

10am-5pm LNCO 2300 Study Break Game Day

You've made it to the last day of classes! Need a study break? Come play games with us and meet the new Academic Advisor! Food and games provided. Stop by the main office anytime between your classes.

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Tuesday, Dec 13th

1-4pm LNCO 2110 Karen Marsh Schaeffer Open House

We’d like to offer our many thanks and to congratulate our amazing Student Support Specialist, Karen Marsh Schaeffer, on her new adventure with the College of Humanities as the Director of Student Success and Engagement. Karen has been in the Linguistics department for roughly 15 years. Not only has she spent the majority of her career here, but she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degree in our department. She will direct and oversee operations and strategic planning of student service functions and will act as the liaison for departments, faculty, staff, students and external entities to ensure continuity and quality of student services. After the transition period Karen’s office will be located in the new Humanities Student Success Center (opening in CTIHB in 2023).

Join us for an open house celebration.

 

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January 28, 2021

Linguistics Colloquium Talk - Dr. Anna Krulatz, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Professor

Using the DLC Framework to Examine Linguistic Identities of Transnational Multilinguals

A marked increase in international mobility, including forced relocation and voluntary migration, has resulted in a notable growth in the number of transnational individuals who have crossed “cultural, ideological, linguistic, and geopolitical borders and boundaries of all types” (Duff, 2015, p. 57). Modern societies are thus characterized by an unprecedented ethnic, cultural, and linguistic superdiversity, leading to new ways in which identities are constructed, experienced, and communicated (de Fina & Perrino, 2013). Experiences associated with moving to a new country and adding another language to one’s linguistic repertoire can cause shifts and changes in the way multilingual individuals define and perceive themselves. As transnational multilinguals grapple with questions of identity and belonging, the straightforward, one-to-one correspondence between identity, language, ethnicity and/or place of origin can no longer be taken for granted. In this paper, I examine identity of transnational multilinguals through a novel lens, namely Dominant Language Constellation (DLC) (Aronin, 2016; Aronin & Ó Laoire, 2004; Aronin & Singleton, 2012), which allows for an inclusion of psychosocial factors such as a person’s cognitive abilities, attitudes, emotions, educational profile, and cultural and ethnic origins, thus expanding the study of individual multilingualism beyond a strictly language-related framework. The data sample consists of ten personal narratives, language background questionnaires, and DLCs drawn by the participating transnational multilinguals. In the analysis, I examine the following a-priori themes: (1) complexity and variation within DLCs of transnational multilinguals; (2) effects of migration on language trajectories; (3) transnational multilinguals’ identity constructions; and (4) the role and status of English in DLCs of the participants. The study illustrates the intricate relationships between transnational multilinguals’ cultural and linguistic roots, their lived experiences, and language ideologies in how they construct their multilingual self-image.

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February 11, 2021

Building Resumes and Cover Letters

Join Megan Randall, Career Coach with the Career and Professional Development Center, University of Utah, and learn how to create eye catching resumes and cover letters.

In this workshop, you will learn:

• Explain basic formatting guidelines for resume writing
• Tailor a resume to the opportunity and audience
• Write accomplishment statements for transferable skills
• Indicate the basic structure for formatting a cover letter
• Articulate a specific reason for their interest in the position
• Identify top strengths (skills, knowledge, experience) which demonstrate fit for the particular position

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February 25, 2021

Linguistics Colloquium Talk - Dr. Ariel James, Macalester College, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Individual Differences in Syntactic Processing: A psycholinguist's "two-disciplines" problem

There remains little consensus about whether there exist meaningful individual differences in syntactic processing and, if so, what explains them.  In this talk, we will describe a study that we completed with our colleagues in which we replicated three major syntactic phenomena in the psycholinguistic literature: use of verb distributional statistics, difficulty of object- versus subject-extracted relative clauses, and resolution of relative clause attachment ambiguities. We examined whether any individual differences in these phenomena could be predicted by language experience or general cognitive abilities (phonological ability, verbal working memory capacity, inhibitory control, perceptual speed).  We found correlations between individual differences and offline, but not online, syntactic phenomena. Condition effects on reading time were not consistent within individuals, limiting their ability to correlate with other measures. We will discuss these findings in the context of Cronbach's "two disciplines" problem of combining experimental and correlational approaches. 

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March 4, 2021

Linguistics CareerPath Event

Time:3:15 - 5:00pm | Location: Virtual and recording available

Join us for virtual return visit from University of Utah alum Andrew Zupon, Eve Olson, and Rebecca Rivas. Learn how these three have leveraged their linguistics training, research experiences, internships, as they pursue their respective careers in Linguistics.

Andrew completed both his HBA and MA at the University of Utah and is currently pursuing a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Arizona. After completing his MA, Andrew worked as a contractor at Google. While pursuing his PhD, Andrew has done two summer internships (Chatbot Intern, Nextiva and Linguist Intern, Google), along with some other computational work at the university.

Eve Olson graduated with a HBA in Linguistics from the University of Utah and earned her MA in Translation from Kent State University. Following her MA she completed an internship at the UN in Austria. Eve is currently doing freelance translation and editing with the ultimate goal attaining a translation job with the government.

Rebecca Rivas completed her BA in Linguistics just this past Fall and has already begun working for LingoTek! Learn about the work she is doing with this local translation company, how she leveraged her coursework and other experiences as an undergraduate and connected with them so quickly

READ AND DOWNLOAD A FULL ARTICLE ON THIS TOPIC 

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March 25, 2021

Linguistics Colloquium Talk - Dr. Alayo Tripp, University of Minnesota, Postdoctoral Associate in Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences

Time: 3:30 - 5:00pm | Location: Virtual only (Join at 3:15 to socialize)

Infants represent differences between groups of talkers, and use this information to guide their social preferences.  Nevertheless, models of word learning often abstract away from social information.  The omission of social information from these models makes them unable to capture the way that children select which linguistic data to learn from based on their social and cultural experiences. In this talk I review two previous infant word learning experiments and show that their results can be better predicted by a model which incorporates infants’ beliefs about the relative value of informants.

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April 6, 2021

Undergraduate Research Symposium

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April 9, 2021

University of Utah Student Conference in Linguistics (UUSCIL)

We are pleased to announce that the University of Utah Student Conference in Linguistics (UUSCIL) 2021 will take place virtually on Friday, April 9th 2021 on our Department Canvas page.  As usual, the conference provides an opportunity for our students to present their research in a scholarly setting to students, faculty and other members of our Linguistics community.  All presentations will be given as poster presentations.

Undergraduate students who chose to present at UUSCIL are also strongly encouraged to present their work at the Undergraduate Research Symposium on April 6th.  The URS is a campus wide event.  As such, it offers an unprecedented opportunity for students to present their Linguistic research to a broader (non-specialized) audience.

University of Utah Linguistics undergraduates and graduate students interested in presenting their work will need to register by March 26th, 2021.

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April 16, 2021

Forum on Language and the Law

Time: 9:00 am - 12:00 pm

The theme for the 2021 Forum on Language and the Law is legal interpretation, and this includes an emphasis on corpus linguistic methods for determining original and ordinary meaning in statutes, contracts, trademark agreements, the Constitution, and other important documents. The speakers at the 2020 Forum include two linguists, a law professor, and a Utah Supreme Court Justice. The first linguist, Jesse Egbert (Northern Arizona University), will offer insights into best practices in corpus-based linguistic research dealing with questions of original and ordinary meaning. The law professor, Lawrence Solum (Georgetown University), will discuss original and ordinary meaning from a legal perspective, focusing particularly on constitutional law. The second linguist, Tammy Gales (Hofstra University), will highlight linguistic principles and methods while emphasizing her work on statutory interpretation in trademark cases. Finally, Associate Chief Justice Tom Lee (Utah Supreme Court) will discuss the empirical methods he has used and advocated for when dealing with questions of legal interpretation.

The information and methods presented in this symposium will help lawyers, linguists, and judges improve their abilities to analyze and evaluate linguistic evidence related to legal interpretation in multiple domains of civil and criminal law.

 

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August 26, 2021

Welcome (back) to Linguistics

The Department would like to welcome all to attend the Welcome (back) to Linguistics Virtual Event.  

Undergraduates, please join us virtually at 3:30, if you can, for a brief information session hosted by Shannon Barrios, the Department of Linguistics Director of Undergraduate Studies.  The session will be aimed at undergraduate students, especially those who are new to our community (we can't wait to meet you!), and will include details about departmental communication, department events, and other opportunities for rich experiences available to undergraduates students (internships, research, and club participation), as well as resources and support

Graduate students, Faculty, Instructors, Staff, and friends of Linguistics, please join at 4 pm for an opportunity to meet new faces and connect virtually with familiar ones.

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September 16, 2021

Linguistics Colloquium Virtual Talk - Dr. Joseph Farquharson, University of the West Indies, Mona

3:30 - 5:00 pm  MST (join 3:15 to socialize)

Reconstructing Akan Day-names:  Supporting Evidence from the Caribbean

Jamaican Creole and several other Atlantic English Creoles (AECs) share a set of day-names with Ákàn and several other geographically contiguous Kwa languages. The day-names, based on a seven-day week, are typically assigned to a baby based on the day of its birth and its biological sex. The day-name systems found in Jamaican Creole and several of the AECs are striking in that they have fewer gaps than the modern Kwa languages (other than Ákàn), and exhibit far greater similarity than the Kwa systems. These facts are taken as an indication that the systems in the other Kwa languages were borrowed from the Ákàn system (and hence are not cognate with it), and are potentially more recent than the Caribbean systems. In fact, the Caribbean side more than likely reflects a single system that was established in one territory, that was later diffused to other territories. Additionally, not only is the Caribbean system older than the non- Ákàn systems, it also appears to be cognate with the Ákàn system. This conclusion is based on a reconstruction of the Ákàn proto-system using the comparative method, as well as information on the diachronic lexicology of Ákàn. The talk will present the method used for the reconstruction, and then discuss the findings in light of the sociolinguistics of diaspora.

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September 23, 2021

Community Read and Discussion, 3:30 PM, MST

We are excited to announce a community read and discussion for the Department of Linguistics as part of on-going equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) efforts (Please see the Department of Linguistics antiracism (Links to an external site.) and diversity and inclusion (Links to an external site.) statements here.) For this community activity, we have chosen the book From Equity Talk to Equity Walk (2020) by Tia Brown McNair, Estela Mara Bensimon, and Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux.  All members of the department community are invited to participate.

Our community read discussion will take place virtually in Zoom on Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 3:30pm:

For undergraduate students, we have a special incentive: The first 20 to respond will receive a complimentary copy of the book. Sign up for your free copy of the book here (Links to an external site.): We will contact you when we have the books available in the department for pick up.

This book is also available electronically through the Marriott Library. You will need to login with your university ID and then you can either view or download (for 100 days). Click here (Links to an external site.) for library access.

As we are reading, feel free to join in (or start) discussions about the book on our department teams channel. Everyone in the department should be on our Microsoft teams account. You can learn how to activate it on your device here (Links to an external site.).

We hope you will join us for this community read to listen and learn, to share your thoughts, and to help us strengthen our antiracism and EDI efforts.

 

October 21, 2021

Applying to Graduate School Virtual Event, 3:30 - 5:00 pm  (join 3:15 to socialize)

This virtual meeting will be hosted by Shannon Barrios, Aniellos De Santo, and Rachel Hayes-Harb and is intended for undergraduate students who are interested in learning more about graduate school application process.  Undergraduates at any point in their careers are welcome and encouraged to join. 

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October 28, 2021

Linguistics Colloquium Talk - Dr. Joey Stanley, Brigham Young University

3:30 - 5:00 pm  MST (join 3:15 to socialize)

2110 LNCO (will also be available to watch via zoom)

What can vowel formant trajectories tell us about language change?

Most descriptions of English vowels are based on acoustic measurements taken at their midpoint. However, there are more to vowels than their midpoints. Advances in computational power and statistical modeling have made robust analyses of vowel trajectories now possible and sociophoneticians can now ask questions that, until recently, were impossible to answer. I present three case studies on vowel trajectories and their change over time. Front lax vowels in Washington reveal that changes in trajectory can accompany vowel shifts. However, back vowels in the American South show that vowel shifting does not imply changes in trajectory. Finally, prelateral vowels in Utah can enrich our understanding of vowel merger. These examples illustrate that as more studies incorporate vowel trajectories, we can greatly expand our descriptive, theoretical, and sociolinguistic understanding of language, even on vowels canonically considered monophthongs.

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November 18, 2021

Linguistics Colloquium Virtual Talk - Dr. Claire Moore-Cantwell, UCLA

3:30 - 5:00 pm  MST (join 3:15 to socialize)

Lexical idiosyncrasy and experience:  A grammatical-lexical model

This talk presents some predictions of Representational Strength Theory (RST), a constraint-based model incorporating both grammatical and lexical factors.  In RST, traditional faithfulness constraints are replaces by Phonological Form Constraints (PFC's), which
encode lexicalized properties of a word.  The key prediction of this model is that probabilistic grammar can be learned alongside lexically
specific behavior of individual words.  The talk will focus on the effects of lexical frequency: Empirically, the more experience a learner
has with a particular lexical item, the more that lexical item may diverge from the phonological grammar, and the more rigid its behavior
is (Morgan and Levy 2016, Smith and Moore-Cantwell 2017).  Iterated learning simulations demonstrate that this behavior is predicted by RST, but not by competitor models, such as a Faithfulness to listed exceptions, lexically-indexed constraints, or cophonologies.