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The Linguistics Department has a long history of research on languages of the Pacific Rim, including languages of Canada, the USA, Mexico, Australia, and Japan, Korea, and China. Our researchers produce descriptive work in the form of grammars and dictionaries, contribute to current theoretical debates on grammar and language learning and teaching and work closely with communities in carrying out our research and developing language programs and materials.

Watch the videos below to hear about some of the research our faculty is doing:









Applied Linguistics

Click here for additional information on Applied Linguistics.

Asian Languages

Chinese: Since the early 1990s, the department has been very active in research in Chinese linguistics. Currently, the department is one of the key departments for Chinese linguistics studies in North America and the only linguistics department in Canadian universities that has a Chinese Linguistics teaching and research component.
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Japanese: The Department has long had interests in Japanese linguistics, as well as Japanese psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. The first two of these research areas have been the subject of numerous research thrusts by the collaboration of Joseph F. Kess and Tadao Miyamoto over the past decade and more. Articles, book chapters, proceedings contributions, and conference presentations have explored various aspects of Japanese linguistics and psycholinguistics, and two books have summarized their findings on Japanese psycholinguistics and the Japanese mental lexicon.
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Indigenous Languages of the Americas

The Linguistics Department has a long history of really excellent work on Indigenous Languages of the Americas. This work has taken two forms: the first is linguistic research on the languages themselves and the second is working with Indigenous communities to facilitate their efforts to preserve and teach their own languages. Almost every member of the department has done at least some research on languages from the Americas and many of our graduate students have also produced scholarly work that contributes to the study of these languages. Faculty and students have worked on languages of the Plains (Dakota), the territories (Dogrib), British Columbia (Salish, Wakashan, Haida, Tsimshian, Chinook Jargon), the Western U.S. (Salish, Kalapuyan), and Mexico (Mayan).
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Phonetics - Speech Research

The Phonetics Laboratory in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Victoria was established by Jean-Paul Vinay and has operated in its present location since 1971 under the successive direction of Henry Warkentyne, Craig Dickson and John Esling. Undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty and visiting researchers work in the lab on a variety of speech production and perception projects.

The Speech Research Laboratory was established by Dr. Sonya Bird and Dr. John Esling in 2008. This lab houses some very sophisticated equipment used for advanced research, including a Kay Pentax Laryngoscope, a GE Logic E Ultrasound, a sound room, and more. Like the Phonetics Lab, undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty and visiting researchers work in the lab on a variety of speech production and perception projects.

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In all four areas our work explores theoretical questions and is at the same time informed by a commitment to careful descriptive work and to addressing practical concerns. Our work has been funded by research grants from such agencies as CFI, SSHRC, the Volkswagen Foundation, The Jacobs Research Funds, The Shastri Foundation, and The Japan Foundation.