Join us tomorrow (Fri) at 3pm in CHE 212 for the next event in the new Linguistics Brownbag Series, where we explore transdisciplinary connections with Linguistics. This week Prof. Dennis Storoshenko will talk with Engineering Prof. Benjamin Tan and PhD student & recent Meta intern Brooklyn Sheppard

Happy Halloween from A Higher Clause!

Reminder: please join us tomorrow (Friday) for the first talk of the 2025-2026 University of Calgary Linguistics Speaker Series: “What is that thing? Distributional Bootstrapping of Determiner Semantics” by University of Toronto Professor Ana T. Pérez-Leroux

Join us this Friday for the first talk in our speaker series in Fall 2025! What is that thing? Distributional Bootstrapping of Determiner Semantics Dr. Ana Pérez-Leroux' (University of Toronto) Friday, Oct 31 | 3:00 pm | CHE 212

Some of our amazing profs and students talking to potential students and their families about our programs at today’s Open House, which an estimated 11,000 will attend!

Join us this Friday at 3pm in CHE 212 for the next event in the new Linguistics Brownbag Series, where we explore transdisciplinary connections with Linguistics. This week Prof. Steve Winters will talk with Creative and Performing Arts Prof. Jane MacFarlane and Digital Projects Librarian Julia Guy!

Go @charysbrussell.bsky.social , @dusannikolic.bsky.social, @brooklynsheppard.bsky.social and @swinters.bsky.social!

The phonetics lab had a great time at Methods and Techniques in Phonetic Sciences this weekend! There’s some really neat research out there. We loved checking in on what techniques other labs are utilizing, and sharing how we’re using free classification at the UofC.

Join us this Friday at 3pm! This event is part of our new brownbag series, where we explore transdisciplinary connections with Linguistics. We’ll be exploring connections with Marketing this week, with Dr. Ruth Pogacar from our School of Business, and Dr. Svitlana Winters from the marketing industry

I'll be doing a workshop for Edmonton's LitFest that I've long wanted to put together! We'll be getting intimate with sentences, exploring the magic that can happen when you leverage language structure with skill and sensitivity. Saturday, Oct. 18, noon-2 pm. litfestalberta.org/event-1/work...

Phonology job at the other UofC: “The Department of Linguistics invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Phonology with an expected start date of July 1, 2026” apply.interfolio.com/174988

Congrats to PhD student Vincent Nwosu on being interviewed about his research by a major newspaper in Nigeria tribuneonlineng.com/nearly-300-n...

Charys Russell, my TA extraordinaire for LING 227 (rap linguistics), just gave an excellent lecture on rhyme strengthening (Komaniecki 2020) and pitch rhyming — Charys’s own discovery, which she promises to write up soon enough. Students loved it, and one told Charys that she should teach full-time!

Jobs: Phonetics: Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Pomona College

“The Dept. of Foreign Literatures & Linguistics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel, invites applications for a tenure track position (rank open) in linguistics, incl. but not limited to PHONOLOGY, generative syntax, and computational ling.” linguistlist.org/issues/36/27...

Welcome back, graduate students! We're kicking off the semester with a good ol' Meet & Greet. Pop by the grad lounge (CHC 212) between 12pm and 3pm to meet (or reunite with) your peers, grab some snacks, and stick around for some card games.

Congratulations to Dr. Mahyar Nakhaei who just received his PhD in Linguistics after a great virtual defence of his thesis, “A psycholinguistic approach toward an instance of a language change: The case of -esh in Persian”

List of linguistics and language podcasts compiled by Lauren Gawne www.superlinguo.com/post/7940729...

“University of Calgary PhD student Francisco Ongay González takes the prize for best student poster presentation at this year's Canadian Linguistic Association Conference” news.ucalgary.ca/news/linguis...

cf. these @ucalgaryling.bsky.social PhD theses: “Conflict resolution in the Spanish SLA of Yucatec ejectives” by Antonio González-Poot ’11 hdl.handle.net/1880/105228 “Adult acquisition of Kaqchikel (Mayan) plain and glottalized stop consonants” by @brettc.bsky.social ’23 hdl.handle.net/1880/117817

Congratulations indeed! Everyone should also read Dr. Bacanlı’s 2021 book by the same publisher, “Irregularities in Turkic languages” doi.org/10.2307/j.ct...

Congratulations to Adjunct Associate Professor Dr. Eyüp Bacanlı on his latest article, “Stem allomorphy in Southwestern Turkish dialects” (with Prof. Flynn) www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/Turkic_Langu...

Big congratulations to Cheryl Iwanchuk on successfully defending her MA thesis, “Do you get what I mean? Contrastive inference and comprehension in children”!!

When I asked for this at the post office, the clerk said, “Yup, that’s the one that everyone wants!” Glad to see Bruce Starlight honoured in this way. He’s a larger-than-life figure in these parts who says that his UofC training in linguistics informs his epic work on his beloved Tsúūt’ínà language

Congratulations!!

Quinn Goddard, MA (Linguistics), MSc (Epidemiology) — co-author in Nature (!) last month www.nature.com/articles/s41... and in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association this month doi.org/10.1017/S002... Here’s a profile of her when she was an undergrad arts.ucalgary.ca/news/class-2...

New article by Prof. Athanasopoulou, Quinn Goddard (MA, Linguistics; MSc, Epidemiology), and Prof. Flynn: “Plains Cree word prosody revisited” doi.org/10.1017/S002...

“Two UCalgary linguists walk into an epidemiology lab …” www.ucalgary.ca/news/two-uca...

MA student Rowan Sali, Prof. Dimitrios Skordos and Concordia Prof. Alan Bale presenting “Weak or strong distributivity with disjunction under the universal quantifier” at the Canadian Linguistic Association annual conference in Montreal, June 3–5, 2025

MA student Cheryl Iwanchuk presenting “Contrastive inference comprehension in children” with Prof. Dimitrios Skordos at the Canadian Linguistic Association ( annual conference in Montreal, June 3–5, 2025 cla-acl.ca/pdfs/resumes...

Postdoctoral researcher Mathieu Paillé discussing “Semi-weakness in sign predicates” at the Canadian Linguistic Association annual conference in Montreal, June 3–5, 2025 cla-acl.ca/pdfs/resumes...

Excellent! Here is PhD student Jesse Weir’s abstract: cla-acl.ca/pdfs/resumes...

Good stuff! Here’s Xinyuan Xia’s abstract: cla-acl.ca/pdfs/resumes...

Wonderful! Here is PhD candidate Francisco Ongay González’s abstract: cla-acl.ca/pdfs/resumes...

Good stuff! Here’s Xinyuan Xia’s abstract: cla-acl.ca/pdfs/resumes...

PhD student Brooklyn Sheppard @brooklynsheppard.bsky.social presenting on “Agreement in coordinated nominals in English: Evidence from acceptability ratings and reaction time” at the Canadian Linguistic Association @cla-acl.bsky.social annual conference in Montreal, June 3–5, 2025

PhD candidate Syed Alam presenting “The Bengali DP: NP Movement, Adjective–Classifier Combination, and Acoustic Evidence for Focus” at the Canadian Linguistic Association @cla-acl.bsky.social annual conference in Montreal, June 3–5, 2025

PhD candidate Vincent Nwosu presenting “The Productivity of the Rhythm Rule in Western Canadian English” (with Prof. Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social‬ at the Canadian Linguistic Association @cla-acl.bsky.social annual conference in Montreal, June 3–5, 2025

Prof. Dennis Storoshenko (@exolinguist.bsky.social) presenting on “Reflexive Interpretation under Coordinate and Subordinate Ellipsis in English” at the Canadian Linguistic Association (@cla-acl.bsky.social) annual conference in Montreal, June 3–5, 2025

Jesse and Dr. Storoshenko are part of the team presenting "Processing of Resumptive Pronouns in Relative Clauses by English Speakers".

...and Francisco's poster "Prepositional and prepositionless durative adverbials in Spanish".

The first poster session! Jesse's poster "Getting PRO back under control: Searching for phonetic evidence of a null pronominal"...

First up: Xinyuan's paper "Chinese Relative Clause Processing: Insights into Prenominal and Postnominal Structures".

Today PhD candidate Vincent Nwosu presented “Rhythmic Constraints on Vowel Coalescence in Igbo: Evidence from Children’s Song” with his amazing co-supervisor Harvard prof. Katie Franich (@kfran.bsky.social) at the 56th Annual Conference on African Linguistics in Minneapolis, MN #ACAL

Today PhD student Brooklyn Sheppard (@brooklynsheppard.bsky.social) presented “Tonal repulsion in Kinyarwanda nominals: The phonetic expression of tone within and across phonological phrases” with Kevin Ishimwe and Annette Kiiza at the 56th Annual Conference on African Linguistics in Minneapolis, MN

“Tonal adaptations in Igbo infant-directed speech” by @ucalgaryling.bsky.social PhD candidate Vincent Nwosu, Nkechi M. Ukaegbu, and Samuel Akinbo (May ’25) #ACAL docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Good to see Dr. Keffyalew Gebregziabher presenting “Bare nouns and the morpho-syntax and semantics of number in Tigrinya” at the 56th Annual Conference on African Linguistics in Minneapolis. Here’s a link to Keffy’s (2013) UCalgary Linguistics doctoral thesis: hdl.handle.net/11023/741

Enjoy! A couple of our PhD students — Vincent Nwosu and Brooklyn Sheppard — are giving a few talks there :)

RIP Haj Ross, a brilliant linguist. He also pioneered the area of pragmatics-meets-syntax, laying the groundwork for subsequent (also brilliant!) work by our own Prof. Ritter and UPF-Barcelona Prof. Wiltschko and by their/our students! www.facebook.com/share/p/15Zs...

!!!