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The Department of Linguistics hosts regularly scheduled colloquia and special events each year. In addition to these events, the University of Victoria's visiting scholar programs allow us to bring renowned scholars to Victoria for a week or a term to deliver a series of lectures and participate in the life of the University.
The Department has also hosted various workshops and conferences over the years, including the Salish Morphosyntax Workshop, the International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages, and the TEAL Conference.
UVic Linguistics welcomes Dr. Lise Crevier-Buchman as a Lansdowne Lecturer September 17-20, 2014
Affiliation: Georges-Pompidou European Hospital (HEGP) and National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)
Dr. Lise Crevier-Buchman is a research professor of Phonetics as well as a medical doctor and laryngologist. Her research focuses on voice quality in normal and pathological speech; it aims to test the functional efficiency of certain surgical techniques, to understand compensation mechanisms used by speakers post-surgery, and to adapt voice rehabilitation protocols to improve quality of life. Her talk will provide an overview of her current research in this area, including her contributions to developing experimental protocols for perceptual, acoustic, and physiological evaluation of atypical voice behaviour.
Public lecture:
7-8:30pm, Wednesday September 17, David Turpin Building, room A110
Title: “Clinical phonetics: Atypical voice and speech”
http://web.uvic.ca/ling/pbbs/LING_04037_LL_Crevier-Buchnan_poster_V2.pdf
Plenary lecture at PBBS:
3:20-4:20pm, Saturday September 20, Cadboro Commons, Campus View room
Title: “Capturing vocal tract agility: Some phonetic, acoustic, and physiological features from normality to pathology”
UVic Linguistics hosts conference on the (Phonetic) Building Blocks of Speech, September 18-20, 2014
Don't miss this conference in honour of Professor John Esling, who will be retiring from UVic in 2014 after more than 32 years with the Linguistics Department.
Professor John Esling has had a distinguished and prolific career on the forefront of Articulatory Phonetics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, former editor of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, the former secretary and current President of the International Phonetic Association, and an internationally renowned leader in the field of Phonetic Sciences. (Phonetic) Building Blocks of Speech is intended to honour him and his immeasurable contributions to his field, his students, and his colleagues. It is also intended to reflect and carry forward his legacy of rigorous empirical and applied (phonetic) research.
Click here for all the details!
UVic Linguistics welcomes Dr. Alec Marantz as a Lansdowne Lecturer March 26-28
Alec Marantz is one of the world’s leading scholars in linguistics, producing significant research in three distinct areas—morphology, syntax, and neurolinguistics. He completed his Ph.D. at MIT at the age of 23, joining Harvard's illustrious Society of Fellows. After serving for several years on the faculty of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he moved to the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, where he eventually became a Distinguished Professor, and Director of what is now the KIT/MIT/NYU MEG Joint Research Laboratory. In 2006 Dr. Marantz moved to New York University as a Professor of Linguistics and Psychology. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology, and Principal Investigator of a second MEG lab, at NYU Abu Dhabi. In 2008 Dr. Marantz won the Sam Williamson Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Biomagnetic Research.
Dr. Marantz will be giving three talks during his visit to our campus:
Words and Rules Revisited: Construction and Memory in Language Representation and Processing Wednesday, March 26, 7:00-8:30
DTB A102
This public lecture discusses how the human mind stores and constructs complex words. It examines the Words and Rules model proposed by well-known cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker, which claims that irregular complex words (like better, the comparative form of good) are stored in memory, while regular complex words (like higher, the comparative form of high) are assembled from their parts by systematic rules. As it turns out, linguistic and experimental data point to the opposite conclusion: both regular and irregular complex linguistic objects are “memorized,” in a sense that has strong implications for understanding linguistic processing, but no consequences for linguistic representations. Instead, processing always involves full decomposition and recomposition of complex words and phrases, whether regular or irregular. This conclusion challenges Pinker’s claims, and the essence of the Words and Rules framework.
Taking Interpretive Semantics Seriously: Argument-Introducing Heads in the Syntax and Semantics (work with Jim Wood)
Thursday, March 27, 11:30-1:00
CLE D132
This talk explores the possibility that Voice, Applicative, and P are not categorically distinct syntactic heads, but contextual variants of a single argument-introducing head. Crucial to the analysis is the explanation of such phenomena as the Japanese adversative causative construction, which is syntactically transitive, yet involves an inchoative interpretation of the verb, and an obligatory possessive relationship between the subject and direct object. These constructions resemble certain expressions in English, including those with simple transitive possessive “have.” The linguistic system developed in this talk helps to answer certain mysteries, such as why Voice seems obligatory between Tense and a verb, but is not obligatory in general above a verb, and why canonical Applicative heads do not attach above Voice.
Competition and Prediction in Word Processing: MEG Studies of Visual and Auditory Word Recognition
Friday, March 28, 3:30-5:00
COR A228
Recent experimental evidence supports the view that brain responses in language processing are not driven by competition between mental representations consistent with the linguistic input, but rather by entropy (a measure of uncertainty) over these representations, and surprisal (a measure of improbability) of processed input relative to this entropy. Thus, for example, high cohort entropy (and thus high competition among members of a cohort) correlates with less neural activity, rather than more. Morphological structure interacts with morpheme-cohort effects, in ways consistent with a full-decomposition view of complex word recognition. The emerging picture allows us to use neurolinguistic evidence to test certain representational claims from the linguistics literature, for example the claim that all nouns and verbs are morphologically complex.
Come to the 7th Annual Applied Linguistics Fair
Everyone is welcome at our free Applied Linguistics Fair. The event takes place on March 20th, 2014, from 1:30 -3:30 p.m., at UVic, in the Upper Lounge of the Student Union Building. The Fair is a celebration of language learning and teaching in Victoria. Check out information tables from our Applied Linguistics program, language schools around Victoria, language departments at UVic, non-profit organizations, and more. There will also be digital research presentations from Applied Linguistics students, a scavenger hunt for language students, and lots of great door prizes.
To book a table, or for more information, contact Nick at alassist@uvic.ca
Dr Trish Rosborough coming on March 13
Dr Trish Rosborough,
Indigenous Education and Curriculum and Instruction, UVic, will give a talk on:
Kwak’wala Language Learning and Being Indigenous
As a Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw community member engaged in the revitalization of Kwak’wala, Trish uses story to illustrate the need for Kwak’wala revitalization efforts to employ multifaceted approaches that take into account the impacts of colonization. Trish will speak about the importance of sustaining the spirit of the language by maintaining the literal and symbolic meanings and constructs of Kwak’wala.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
11:30-12:45, CLE A207