MONTHLY ROUNDUP

October Monthly Roundup

November 01, 2019

Convocation

The Department of Linguistics celebrated its most recent graduating class at the fall convocation reception on October 10. The Department also took this opportunity to recognize four undergraduate students and two graduate students for their outstanding academic achievements.

> FALL 2019 OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

  • Trevor Block, MA
  • Regena Seward-Wilson, MA 
  • Lucas Chambers, BA
  • Susanna Firley, BA 
  • Kevin Kong, BA
  • Holly Wilbee, BA

Awards

Professor MARIANNE IGNACE is being recognized for her achievements in knowledge mobilization and Indigenous language revitalization with the SSHRC Impact - Partnership Award. Ignace will be honoured at an award ceremony at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa later in December this year. 

> SFU NEWS: PARTNERSHIPS TO HELP SAVE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES LAUDED WITH HUMANITIES RESEARCH AWARD

Cormack Teaching Symposium

The 2019 Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) Autumn Reception and Cormack Teaching Symposium took place on October 17 at the Diamond Alumni Centre, SFU Burnaby Campus.  

Associate professor PANAYIOTIS PAPPAS and professor MARIANNE IGNACE received the Cormack Teaching Award in recognition of their accomplishments and dedication to excellence in teaching. Both later presented a lightning talk on the theme 'Why Care? Teaching and the Ethic of Care'. 

Alumni

S  VASUNDHARA GAUTAM graduated in Spring 2019 from the Computing Science and Linguistics joint major program. Now, she is being featured on one of five advertisements launched by SFU Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

The advertisement is being displayed at transit shelters across the Lower Mainland, in the Surrey NOW newspaper, and on a multi-platform digital ad campaign. 

"After being accepted to Simon Fraser University, Vasundhara gained valuable experience with SFU's Discourse Processing Lab and Phonological Processing Lab and is now employed to her dream career as a computational linguist. 

Apply to SFU's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences for the program, choices and opportunities you need to seize your career."

> FASS NEWS: LOVE OF LANGUAGES LEADS TO SILICON VALLEY JOB

Community Engagement

S  Language Development is back in Science World! For the third time, students in LING 350 are visiting the Wonder Gallery, a children's exhibit in Science World, to share what they're learning with local families, and to learn more about real-life research with children.

This experiential learning project, run by LANGDEV LAB and assistant professor HENNY YEUNG, was launched with support from the Institute for the Study of Teaching and Learning in the Disciplines.  Ten groups of students (~35 students in total) are visiting Science World from late September until late November. 

Look out for this poster in the Wonder Gallery during their remaining visits this month: Saturday mornings on November 2 and November 23. 

Publications

S  Associate professor D. MELLOW and PhD student DASHA GLUHAREVA published an article in The Conversation titled "Canada's ethics watchdog may have misinterpreted a key SNC-Lavalin conversation". 

Mellow and Gluhareva described their research analyzing the SNC-Lavalin phone conversation between former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould and Michael Wernick, a former clerk of the Privy Council. The article received over 24,000 views leading up to the federal election, and prompted one of the most influential online French news sources in Canada, La Presse, to reach out to Mellow for an interview. 

> SNC-LAVALIN: JUSTIN TRUDEAU'S BLAME BASED ON A MISUNDERSTANDING? (FR)

S Associate professor PANAYIOTIS PAPPAS, professor MAITE TABOADA and DR. KATHRYN ALEXANDER  published an article in the Teaching in Linguistics section of the journal Language. The article discusses how the teaching of written argumentation in an introductory linguistics course can improve both writing skills and content retention.

Pappas, Panayiotis A., Maite Taboada and Kathryn Alexander. 2019. Teaching linguistic argumentation through a writing-intensive approach. Language (online, Teaching in Linguistics section), 95.3: e339-e363.    

S  The University of Kansas (KU) reported on professor YUE WANG and LABLAB's NSERC project "Communicating Pitch in Clear Speech" in one of its new releases. The study is an inter-disciplinary research project done collaboratively with faculty members in other SFU departments as well as two KU professors of linguistics. 

Having difficulty understanding someone speaking Mandarin? Look at their eyebrows 

That's because parts of Mandarin Chinese speakers’ faces – their eyebrows and lips – mimic the rising and falling pitch that distinguishes one Mandarin word from another with the same spelling. In other words, speakers' eyebrows follow the sounds their throat is making. Surprised? You shouldn't be. The majority of speakers in the world are tone-language speakers, researchers say.

> STUDY SHOWS FACIAL FEATURES TRACK WITH INTONATION OF WORDS  

S  Lecturer HEATHER BLISS is one of the chapter contributors to the newly released Routledge Handbook of North American Languages. A copy of the book will soon be available at the SFU Library. Bliss is one of the authors for the book's eighth chapter, "Inverse Systems and Person Hierarchy Effects".

> THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF NORTH AMERICAN LANGUAGES 

Presentations

S  Associate professor PANAYIOTIS PAPPAS presented at the 48th New Ways of Analyzing Variation Conference (NWAV48) held at the University of Oregon, October 10-12, 2019. Pappas presented evidence from a variety of sources (lay commentary, films, TV ads and internet memes) about the negative stigmatization of unstressed high vowel deletion and unstressed middle vowel raising in the variety of Northern Greek. They also explored how this stereotype plays out in the speech of first generation Greek Canadians.

Pappas, Panayiotis and Symeon Tsolakidis. 2019. Exploring the history of a linguistic stereotype in Modern Greek. Paper presented at the 48th New Ways of Analyzing Variation Conference, University of Oregon, Eugene OR, October 10-12 2019

S  On November 2, lecturer HEATHER BLISS will be presenting in the showcase at the ‘Celebrating Indigenous Languages in Alberta’ event at the University of Calgary. Bliss' presentation is co-authored with Siksika student Charm Breaker and her grandmother, Siksika Elder Ikino’motstaan Noreen Breaker. The title of the presentation is Siksikáípowahsin Áítsinikiyo’p (“Blackfoot Storytelling”). 

Upcoming Events

S  LINGUISTICS NOW COLLOQUIUM
- NOV 1 
HC 1600, 4:30 - 6:00 pm
CNRS senior researcher Dr. Anne Christophe will present on "Bootstrapping the Syntactic Bootstrapper": http://at.sfu.ca/rnWCWv

S  CO-OP 101 INFO SESSION - NOV 6
Saywell 10061, 12:30 - 1:20 pm

S  FIELD SCHOOLS INFO SESSION - NOV 6
K 9500, 5:30 - 6:30 pm 

S  REMEMBRANCE DAY - NOV 11
All campuses and offices closed. 

S  LSU CAREER NIGHT - NOV 13
AQ 3150, 5:30 - 8:30 pm
Find out what you can do with a linguistics degree and network with individuals who have careers in the field. 

S  COLLOQUIA - NOV 14
Visiting scholar Dr. Takahito Shinya from Otsuma Women's University will present at RCB 7402 on Thursday, November 14, 12:30 - 1:30 pm.

S  DEMOFEST - NOV 19
Diamond Alumni Centre, 10 am - 3:45 pm
Lecturer Claudia Wong will be presenting at this year's DEMOfest. The event is a place for members of the SFU academic community to share and discuss technology-supported learning and teaching practices. 

S  UNITED WAY BOOK SALE - NOV 19 - 21

S  DEFENCE AND SECURITY ADVISORY NETWORK WORKSHOP - NOV 20
Harbour Centre 7000, 9:00 am - 1:30 pm
Professor Maite Taboada will be speaking on toxic comments and ways to promote healthier online conversations. 
https://bit.ly/2JysyOP

S  CANADIAN UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE
The Cognitive Science Student Society is welcoming submissions from linguistics undergraduate students. Submission deadline is December 15: cujcs.ca/submissions