Welcome!

Language is one of the basic elements of our humanity, as it is involved in nearly every aspect of our life. Linguistics concerns itself with discovering the universal principles of human language and applying these principles to provide systematic descriptions of individual languages. As a student in the Linguistics program, you'll investigate sound and word patterns, sentence structure, language usage and change, the acquisition of first and second languages, as well as the relationship between language and the mind, and language and society.

Linguistics is a relatively small program and the small class size gives students the opportunity to get to know their peers and to build scholarly relationships with classmates and professors.

You will develop a solid undergraduate liberal arts education by using theoretical analyses of cross-linguistic data to develop analytical skills, critical thinking, argumentation and expository writing. We lay the groundwork for graduate studies and provide the linguistics background necessary for studies in related areas such as speech-language pathology, communication sciences and education.

The Linguistics program also offers courses that support undergraduates in a variety of other programs, such as Cognitive Science, Psychology, English, Law and Society and the TESOL Certificate.

Katy Shum, a student in the Linguistics program, won the Dean's Award for Academic Excellence for Second Year Students. The Dean's Awards for Academic Excellence are awarded to the students with the highest sessional grade point average based on a course load of at least 30 credits in each of all four years in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies. Congratulations Katy!

Professor Sheila Embleton has been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, created to mark the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty's accession to the throne.

Recipients are recognized for their dedicated service to their peers, their community, and our nation. Sheila's citation refers to her significant contributions via Mitacs and the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute. The medal will be presented at an awards reception in Ottawa on November 28.

• 2013-2014 Linguistics Calendar is now available. (pdf)
• 2013-2014 DLLL Calendar is now available. (pdf)

Monday April 1, 2013, 5:00pm - "Coda (r) in the sociolinguistic landscape of São Paulo"

The Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics invites you to attend a talk by

Livia Oushiro
Universidade de São Paulo/New York University

"Coda (r) in the sociolinguistic landscape of São Paulo"

Monday, 1 April, 5:00 PM
Ross South 562
York University, Keele Campus

Abstract:

The city of São Paulo, home to some 11 million people (IBGE 2010), is the largest city in South America and the seventh largest in the world. Its population, half of which is not native to the city (IPEA 2011), is highly diverse not only as to their geographical origin, but also as to their socioeconomic class and cultural background.

This talk examines the variable realization of coda (r), as in porta 'door,' which is one of the main linguistic cues for dialectal and socioeconomic differentiation in Brazilian Portuguese. I discuss the social embedding of its multiple variants (voiced and unvoiced velar and glottal fricative, retroflex approximant, tap, trill, and deletion) in São Paulo's landscape of intense dialect contact and sharp social stratification. After showing that younger speakers of different social groups are moving to opposite directions — the upper middle class towards the tap and the working class towards the retroflex— I argue that migrants have played an important role in shifting variants' statuses in the city.

A reception will be held after the lecture in the DLLL Lounge. All are welcome.

More information on the DLLL Lecture Series is available here.