MA Classes finished

My course work for my MA is now finished. All that's left is to finish up some papers and my thesis.

Here's a list of courses and the papers I've written this year.

1. Adv. Phonology I: Markedness in phonology
Instructor: Keren Rice
Paper: Generalizations about sound change and the constrastive hierarchy: Evidence from West Scandinavian and Inuktitut.

In this paper I attempt to capture some generalizations about phonological changes given the framework of phonology known as "The Toronto School of Contrast." I examined data from Icelandic, Faroese, and Inuktitut.

2. Adv. Syntax I: Agreement
Instructor: Susana Béjar
Paper: Buckie, markedness & rewriting PHI.

Using an idea discussed in Béjar and Hall (1999), in which markedness in morphosyntax is measured by feature geometric shape and a non-connected rule ordering approach, I reexamine data on was/were variation in Buckie English, presented in Adger & Smith (2005, inter alia).

3. Analysis & Argumentation in Linguistics
Instructor: Elan Dresher
Paper: The nature of features in phonology: Arguments from vowel height.

I reexamine the arguments surrounding the binary nature of features contrasting SPE & work by the Prague School with criticisms from McCawley, Schane and Clements & Hume. I argue for a strict binary character in the spirit of Trubetzkoy's "privative oppositions".

4. Adv. Phonology II: Inductive learning
Instructor: Yoonjung Kang
Paper: An empirical test of the gradual learning algorithm: Learning sociolinguistic variation.

Using traditional variationist methodology to examine the distribution of t/d deletion in three generations of a single family, I test the predictive ability of the Gradual Learning Algorithm of Boersma & Hayes (2001) in learning sociolinguistic variation. I suggest that the GLA can not capture significant external factors containing variation and must be thought of a narrow grammar embedded in a broader system akin to Adger's (2007) schema.

5. Seminar on Socio-Syntax
Instructor: Sali Tagliamonte
Paper: Sociosyntactic approaches to variation in agreement: The case of verbal-s.

This paper outlines a framework for working at the sociolinguistic-syntax interface. Using tools of qunatitative variationist linguistics I propose a noval modification to Adger & Smith's (2005) approach to studying intra-speaker variation within the Minimalist Program.

6. Master's forum paper
Advisor: Sali Tagliamonte
Paper: Transmission and diffusion above the level of phonology in Thunder Bay.

Following work by Tagliamonte & Denis (2008) I adapt Labov's (2007) distinction between transmission of change and diffusion of change at the level of morphosyntax. I examine the variation within the deontic modality and quotative systems in a corpus of vernacular speech collected in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

I've also done a number of presentations this year.

1. A framework for sociosyntax.
Presented at Language Variation and Change Research Group, University of Toronto

2. From community to community: Transmission and diffusion in Canadian English. Presented at NWAV 37, Rice University, with Sali Tagliamonte

3. So eh is still Canadian you know?
Presented at 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Dialect Society, San Francisco

4. Lol for real.
Invited lecture HUM199, Language and the Internet, (instructed by Sali Tagliamonte)