Seven FASS researchers launch new projects with SSHRC Insight Development Grants

The Austronesian language family has over 1200 languages, representing significant linguistic diversity. The overall goal of my research is to bring new empirical and theoretical insights drawn from Austronesian languages to advance cross-linguistic understanding of grammatical variation found with relating participants to events: the applicative construction. This project will focus on the understudied subgroup of Western Indonesian languages within Austronesian because these languages allow for more types of grammatical variation in relating participants to events compared to English-type languages. These languages thereby provide a window into more precisely modelling the structure (syntax) and meaning (semantics) across languages. In this project we will create an open-access comparative dataset of the syntax-semantic properties relevant to applicative constructions in 50 Western Indonesian languages using a novel questionnaire and analyze the dataset results to account for cross-linguistic trends and any gaps. We will also, in a focused case study on one Western Indonesian language (Javanese), study and model the grammatical variation within applicative constructions.

This project will contribute to the linguistics literature on Austronesian languages, and more broadly on the structure and meaning of applicative constructions. In addition to illuminating the linguistic diversity of the Indigenous language speaker communities of Indonesia, my proposed research will be of interest to scholars of Indigenous languages of Indonesia in domains beyond linguistics such as education or computer science, since the comparative database I create will be an open access resource that can be adapted for pedagogical or natural language processing uses.

This linguistics project focuses on the endangered language Hul’q’umi’num’, a Coast Salish language spoken by people who live along the Salish Sea in BC. In collaboration with this language community, I will examine Hul’q’umi’num’ lexical suffixes using an existing corpus of narrative texts in order to consider three aspects of the impact of these suffixes: (A) word structure, (B) word meaning, and (C) sentence and paragraph structure. I will analyze Hul’q’umi’num’ lexical suffixes in terms of (A) how they are used to construct words (i.e., where lexical suffixes stand in relation to other pieces of the word and what other word pieces commonly co-occur with lexical suffixes); (B) what kind of words usually contain lexical suffixes (i.e., which roots commonly take lexical suffixes, what do these roots have in common, and how does the addition of the lexical suffix change the meaning of the whole word); and (C) how lexical suffixes contribute to clause and oral paragraph structure (i.e., whether the lexical suffix co-occurs with any nouns with similar meaning and if the verb root that hosts a lexical suffix is used elsewhere in the same sentence or oral paragraph). Once complete, this work will enable me to create lexical suffix resources for the Hul’q’umi’num’ community to use in their language learning journey.

This project examines how Émilie du Châtelet understood scientific revolution from within a period of ongoing scientific change. While twentieth-century philosophy of science, especially after Thomas Kuhn, has made scientific revolutions a central topic, far less attention has been paid to how early modern thinkers understood such change as it unfolded. In the early 1740s, Du Châtelet described physics as having undergone, and as still undergoing, a “revolution.” Her use of the term is striking because she attributes this revolution not to Newton, as many of her contemporaries did, but to Descartes, despite her many substantive disagreements with Cartesian physics. This project argues that Du Châtelet’s attribution reflects her understanding of post-revolutionary inquiry: once scholastic physics had been undermined, the task was not simply to replace one system with another, but to rebuild physics by working through the conceptual possibilities opened by competing systems of thought. By reconstructing Du Châtelet’s view, the project contributes to the history and philosophy of science, early modern philosophy, and contemporary discussions of disagreement, theory choice, and scientific change.

This project investigates how changes in immigration policy and public sentiment shape identity development for immigrants and bicultural adults in Canada, and what helps people build an inclusive, integrated sense of self in an increasingly polarized society.

In the 2020 General Social Survey, 92% of Canadians agreed that ethnocultural diversity is a Canadian value. Yet in Canada and abroad, immigration has become a flashpoint for political polarization, and rising anti-immigrant sentiment may change how people experience belonging. Immigration involves profound acts of self-reconstruction. As people navigate multiple cultural identities, everyday experiences of inclusion, exclusion, and uncertainty can shape how they see themselves and where they feel they belong. At the same time, successfully integrating multiple cultural identities can foster creativity, empathy, cognitive flexibility, and stronger connections across communities.

The project will follow participants over several months using brief daily surveys to understand how everyday social interactions relate to identity, belonging, and well-being. It will experimentally test two interventions designed to support inclusive identity development, using guided narrative writing and collaborative role-playing, to help people integrate different aspects of their identities. This work aims to inform programs and policies that strengthen belonging, resilience, and social cohesion in multicultural Canada.

This research will investigate how older adults navigate an apparent paradox in later-life motivation: although aging is associated with a stronger avoidance orientation toward goals (e.g., prioritizing the prevention of losses such as functional decline), older adults nonetheless tend to maintain high emotional well-being. To explore this tension, the project will examine the motivational orientations (e.g., approaching gains versus avoiding losses) underlying the daily activities of 100 older adults in the Greater Vancouver area, using a daily-life assessment approach. Over ten days of their everyday routines, participants will complete short surveys about the activities they are engaged in. The study will test whether avoidance-oriented goals actually translate into avoidance-oriented daily activities, or whether a positivity bias and flexible goal adjustment lead them to pursue those goals through more approach-oriented, meaningful activities. Ultimately, the work aims to clarify how motivational orientation operates across different levels of the goal hierarchy and how it shapes day-to-day emotional well-being in later life. 

Canada is striving to be a global leader in advanced digital technologies. The $2 billion National Sovereign AI Compute Strategy lays out an ambitious plan to invest in both public and private initiatives to build out the compute infrastructure (including supercomputers and data centres) to power AI across the country. These infrastructures are dependent on Canada's rivers and watersheds, and the National Sovereign AI Compute Strategy thus presents a major potential threat to freshwater rights and the health of fish and watersheds across the country. This Insight Development Grant proposal is an urgently needed pilot study that will establish an Indigenous Elders Ethics Council of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis experts and knowledge holders that will guide an interdisciplinary team of Indigenous and allied researchers as we map the locations of existing and planned AI data centres and supercomputers, and identify their potential threats to water, freshwater fish, and culturally sensitive landscapes and species. This mapping work will be coupled with extensive research-creation and knowledge mobilization work, and the overall pilot study will serve as the grounding for future work to help the federal government and provincial, territorial, academic, and industrial parties in developing robust regulatory processes that honour Indigenous rights, uphold nation-to-nation responsibilities and the duty to consult, and will better protect culturally sensitive landscapes and species, including freshwater fish, as the country embarks on its stated plans to become a leader in Global AI.