News & Announcements

The Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics is honored to have received an anonymous gift of $25,000 in 2023 to aid the program in engaged collaboration with Native Nations for Language Revival, assisting in ongoing collaborations and making possible future research and curricular development.

Congratulations to Dr. Lise Dobrin and Dr. Mark Sicoli of Department of Anthropology and Interdepartment Linguistics programs on the acquisition of the Language Documentation and Description (LDD) journal! Adding to Aperio, UVA's open-access press, students near and far are sure to benefit from the availability of this new resource and leadership. Read on for the full and official announcement, plus information about the LDD.

The editors of Language Documentation and Description are delighted to announce that the journal has moved to Aperio, the University of Virginia Library’s open-access press.

LDD publishes research articles on the theory and practice of language documentation, language description, sociocultural aspects of language use and linguistic research, language policy, language revitalization, and related topics. The journal has a focus on small, minority, and endangered languages. LDD articles are published under a Creative Commons license, with articles made freely accessible online once they have gone through production. Support is provided for linked multimedia.

The move coincides with new editorial leadership. Lise Dobrin and Mark Sicoli, both of UVA’s Department of Anthropology and Interdepartmental Linguistics Program, are joining as editors, with Dobrin serving as the new Managing Editor. 

LDD was founded in 2003 as a print journal published at SOAS in London under the editorship of Peter Austin. In 2014 the journal moved online to the EL Publishing platform established by Austin together with colleagues David Nathan and Julia Sallabank. All the current editors are staying on with the journal under the new arrangement.

UVA Library established Aperio in order to provide open-access journals led by UVA faculty with a stable and committed institutional home. It is an ideal host for LDD, which aims to make the results of documentary linguistic research freely accessible by all who might benefit, now and in the future.

Thematic and geographical listings of papers published in LDD will continue to be made available at EL Publishing, especially for LDD’s Language Snapshots and Language Contexts series. EL Publishing will continue publishing books, edited collections, and multimedia.

Save the date March 4, 1:30-3:00 for a hybrid Linguistic Anthropology Seminar hosting visiting scholar Dr. Jeremy Kuhn of the Sign Language Group at the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris. This event will be Live Captioned through Zoom. For Zoom invitation link, please contact UVA Linguistics Director, Mark Sicoli.

Linguistics Anthropology Seminar: Friday, March 4th 2022, 1:30-3:30pm. Online, via Zoom.

Presenter: Jeremy Kuhn is part of the Sign Language Group at the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris. His PhD is from NYU is on the semantics of sign language. He is currently working on French Sign Language on topics of pronouns, plurality, negation, and tense. The Institut Jean Nicod is affiliated with the EHESS, which has an exchange program with UVA. Dr Jeremy Kuhn will be visiting UVA Feb. 26 - Mar. 27.

Title: Iconic representations of logical meaning

Abstract:
In this talk, I contend that looking at iconic signs and gestures can shed light on the cognitive representation of abstract logical meaning. If pre-linguistic cognitive pressures influence semantic typology (i.e. what is attested and what is not), the same pressures should appear in other, extra-linguistic communicative settings, and, in particular, in the interpretation of iconic signs and gestures. We can thus get insights into these cognitive biases by looking at the semantic and iconic typology of sign languages, as well as by looking at the production and interpretation of gestures by non-signers. I explore this hypothesis in two case studies. First, I look at the case of quantification in sign languages. Sign languages, like spoken languages, show semantic variation, but, surprisingly, this variation populates a specific corner of the full typological landscape: distributive concord is common, but negative concord is rare. I argue that these preferences arise from iconic biases — the sign language typology is explained based on what is easy and hard to represent in space. Second, I look at boundarihood of events and objects. Boundarihood has been shown to be involved in a motivated mapping in sign language: telic verbs are associated with gestural boundaries. In a series of experiments, I show that non-signing subjects, too, show an abstract, iconic bias to associate bounded forms with bounded meanings.

The Linguistics department is pleased to be a part of the Majors Fair this fall! Come to the Newcomb Ballroom and the Commonwealth Room on October 18th, from 1:00-4:00pm, to learn more about getting a major or minor in Linguistics. Students will be given a map to the many majors' tables after they arrive and check in.

We look forward to seeing you there!

On September 11th, 2021, Mint Springs Park in Crozet was the site of a welcome social for linguistics and anthropology students and faculty to mingle outdoors, eat tamales, and hike in the surrounding foothills.

This meeting was among the first program-organized social gatherings for many students who joined the linguistics and anthropology programs during the pandemic of 2020, when all classes were held online and many new students had not yet met their cohort or instructors in person.

It was a pleasure to enjoy each other's company outside of the realm of Zoom and the academic walls of the University, and we can thank the Linguistics Program Director, Dr. Mark Sicoli, for organizing the event.

We look forward to seeing you at our next linguistics program social event!

UVA Today's installment of "On Words" features Corin Fox, an assistant professor of philosohy. Discussing his new January and Spring term course PHIL 2400 Slurs, Bad Words, and Unruly Language, "‘Bad’ Words and Why We Should Study Them" explores how Fox came to be interested in 'improper' words early in his undergraduate experience at VCU. Relating his eye-opening experience about the power of words, he says "That class meeting was the first time that someone genuinely invited me to talk about language and power. I will never forget this invitation, because I learned the value of studying those words that are sanctioned, those that do harm, those that feel gross. Years later, as a philosopher studying language and logic, I remain in awe of what we can use language to do. I now study and teach students about bad words myself."

Read more here: https://news.virginia.edu/content/words-bad-words-and-why-we-should-study-them?utm_source=DailyReport&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news

See below for details on the scheduled Linguistic Anthropology Seminar, upcoming on Nov 13. The seminar will be a virtual event, with access link to be circulated separately.

Linguistic Anthropology Seminar: Friday Nov 13 2020, 2 pm

Presenter: Joseph Brooks, Post-doctoral research associate, Anthropology Department, U. of Virginia*

Title: The Fruits of the Intellectual Low Ground: Immersion, Relationality, and Linguistic Analysis in a Chini Village (Papua New Guinea)

Abstract: Our understanding of how languages work has benefited increasingly from methods and technological innovation in documentary linguistics (Himmelmann 1998; Woodbury 2011, inter alia). One development that has occurred along the way is an intensive valorization of scientific principles, where documenting languages is seen as "part of a much broader concern for putting linguistics on a proper empirical footing" (Himmelmann 2012). However, attention has also been drawn to problems arising from basing knowledge production on what Dobrin & Schwartz (ms) argue are tacit but fundamentally asocial principles of objectivity in linguistics. In this talk I seek to add to the epistemological position in linguistic fieldwork practice that values learning the local language(s) and building close relationships through locally desired means. Doing so is not only important from an ethical standpoint, but also results in deeper knowledge about some areas of grammar than our so-called best practices and efforts toward scientific rigor are assumed to be capable of accomplishing. I focus my discussion on a frequent clause chaining construction in Chini, a language of Papua New Guinea. The realis chain linker ndaka codes temporal succession ('and then') and on occasion occurs in a distinct but nearly identical form, ndakɨ, together with a prosodic difference. Hundreds of recorded examples in the documentation originally left me convinced of a straightforward (and in my view, uninteresting) analysis.  It was only after about 10 months of fieldwork that my experiential knowledge of this construction, as gained in unrecorded social interactions, revealed a subtle but crucial difference in the possible pragmatic implicatures of using ndaka versus ndakɨ. The pragmatic difference relates to Melanesian ways of speaking that avoid direct coercion in efforts to influence the behavior of one's listener(s). I explain how my realization about the pragmatic and cultural dimensions of this area of Chini grammar was embedded in my relationships with two people in Andamang, Frank Manna and Paul Guku.

*Funding for this research was generously provided by the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP)

See below for details on the scheduled Linguistic Anthropology Seminar, upcoming on Oct 23. The seminar will be a virtual event, with access link to be circulated separately.

Linguistic Anthropology Seminar: Oct 23 2020, 2 pm

Presenter: Grace East, PhD candidate, Linguistic Anthropology, U. of Virginia

Title: Language in the Elephant’s Stomach: Emerging Codes and Language Ecologies in Nima, Accra

Abstract: This chapter focuses on language ideologies and linguistic practices of community members in Nima, one of Accra, Ghana’s largest and most diverse immigrant communities. Residents often affectionately call Nima tombin giwa (the elephant’s stomach) in the local Hausa variety in reference to the fact that anything you could possibly need or want can be found inside. While this is often in reference to material items, such as spices, provisions, housewares, and more, Nima is also host to a pluralistic population that encompasses various languages, cultural backgrounds, and points of geographic origin. My broader project focuses on mutually reinforcing themes of language maintenance/emergence and place-making as well as how immigrants from across West Africa who used Hausa language have shaped and been shaped by the linguistic ecology of present-day Accra. In Nima, the community-wide use of a local Hausa variety and practice of Islam promote values of hospitality and unity that allow for a diversity of immigrants to feel a sense of belonging. In this chapter, I examine the ways in which multilingual users of Hausa engage with code-switching, language mixing, and creation of emergent codes in a linguistically pluralistic setting. Based on intensive participant observation, semi-structured interview, and engagements with local social media content, I compare knowledge from Newman’s (2000) Hausa grammar as well as Sadat’s (2016) overview of Ghanaian Hausa to argue that this emerging Hausa mixed language draws from Ghanaian Englishes, Akan Twi varieties, and more. This results in patterns of linguistic blending that manifest lexically, morphologically, and phonologically as well as pragmatically in conventional discourse patterns. Additionally, I examine the ways in which language ideologies manifest in language choice and contexts of use for residents who live in and contribute to these complex and multilayered language ecologies. My research engages with Makoni and Pennycook’s (2005) notion of language “disinvention,” which urges critical reexamination and deconstruction of the colonial presupposition that languages are distinct, bounded, and isomorphically tied to one people and one territory. In Nima, the local Hausa variety is one of fluidity and adaptability, which changes in response to the linguistically complex people who use it as well as the language ecologies in which it thrives.

Linguistic interaction includes more than just words; the gestures, gaze, and bodily orientations that accompany speech all help us to understand one another. And just like speech, these ‘multimodal’ aspects of communication differ across cultures. Danziger joins a series of international conversations among specialists in the Indigenous languages of Mesoamerica, to investigate what spontaneous speech-accompanying gestures can tell us about cultural commonalities and differences in unconscious mental models of spatial cognition. The project is housed at Mexico’s Center for Multidisciplinary Investigations on Chiapas and the Southern Border (CIMSUR), and funded by both UC-Mexus (University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States) and CONACYT (Mexican National Counsel for Science and Technology).

In contrast to computer algorithms, humans are able to comprehend speech in challenging acoustical conditions like cocktail parties. To understand this remarkable ability, Meliza's research examines a perceptual illusion called auditory restoration, in which the brain fills in words and other sounds that have been interrupted by brief, loud noises. The project combines methods of measuring behavior and brain activity to probe the neural circuits underlying auditory restoration in finches. By identifying these circuits and how they are wired, this research will give insight into fundamental perceptual processes that allow humans to communicate through speech, and more broadly, that enable the brain to construct coherent experiences from sensory information that is often incomplete and unreliable.

For more reading on this topic, please visit: http://as.virginia.edu/news/birdsong-study-leads-nsf-career-award-uva-neuroscientist.

In fall 2019, the Linguistics Program welcomes two postdoctoral researchers, Sam Beer (Ph.D. University of Colorado, Boulder, 2017) and Joseph Brooks (Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara, 2018).

Beer will be digitizing, annotating, and analyzing legacy recordings that document two endangered languages of northeastern Uganda, Nyang'i and Soo; he will also conduct new fieldwork with current speakers.

Joseph Brooks will be conducting documentary linguistic research in the western part of the Papua New Guinea Sepik where Yawuno Teneyo ('uphill people's talk') is spoken. His project will incorporate ethnographic, linguistic, and documentary methods to understand Yawuno grammar and ways of speaking.

Mark Sicoli, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics published a paper “Differential coding of perception in the world’s languages” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where it is demonstrated that, contrary to longstanding assumptions of western science, languages do not universally encode a hierarchy of the senses with sight and hearing privileged over touch, taste, and smell. Working with 20 world languages including 3 sign languages the research found that languages differ widely in what senses are lexically elaborated with differences best explained through cultural preoccupations rather than appeal to biological universals. The article is available here: http://www.pnas.org/content/115/45/11369

With deep sadness we announce the death of our colleague John Bonvillian. John was a developmental psycholinguist who retired from the UVa Psychology Department in 2016. He was influential in founding UVa's ASL program, and he served for several years as director of the Linguistics Program.

John will be remembered for teaching many generations of college students, collaborating enthusiastically with grad students, and delighting everyone who knew him with the colorful stories (about everything!) that he so loved to share. 

At the time of his passing John was still actively at work on a three-volume dictionary of simplified signs, which he had been developing toward the end of his career. His research showed that speech-accompanying manual signs, especially iconic signs, could be immensely helpful for those acquiring language. He was dedicated to this project because he was convinced it could enhance the quality of life for those who have a limited ability to speak, such as children with autism, Down Syndrome, or cerebral palsy. He hoped to extend the use of simplified signs to learning foreign-language vocabulary items as well. You can read more about John's work in the obituary that ran in the Charlottesville Daily Progress on May 13, 2018.

A memorial service is planned for early fall.

On Friday, March 16, Dr. Anna Marie Trester will run a workshop on bringing linguistics skills to the workplace. Bringing Linguistics to Work is designed to get students of Linguistics thinking about the transferable skills they are currently acquiring and how these apply outside the academy. The world of work needs critical thinkers who deal in abstractions and ambiguity. It needs cross-cultural competency and lack of prescriptivism, flexibility and adaptability, and readiness to embrace change and complexity. Perhaps more than anything, the world of work needs people who are trained to think in systems – people who see puzzles and can find the underlying patterns and processes that structure visible and apparently chaotic surface representations in any domain. We can take our skills and training anywhere, but only to the extent that we recognize them ourselves and make them understood.

Participants in this workshop will be given the tools to bring a linguistic perspective to the texts and interactions that structure their job search. They will hear about people who are bringing linguistics to work in non-academic settings. They will be given the opportunity to practice attending to the language they use in their professional self-presentation in resumes, cover letters, job interviews, and networking interactions. They will leave with a clearer sense of the many ways in which the skills they are cultivating in school may be applied to settings both known and not yet imagined.

Dr. Anna Marie Trester is an interactional sociolinguist who has worked as a trainer at the FrameWorks Institute, a social change communications firm, and served as director of the Language and Communication MA program at Georgetown University. She has published in venues such as Text and Talk, Language and Society, and The Journal of Sociolinguistics. She is co-editor (with Deborah Tannen) of Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media (2013) and author of Bringing Linguistics to Work (2017). She received her MA in linguistics from NYU in 2002 and her PhD from Georgetown in 2008.

The workshop will be held on Friday, March 16, from 1:00 to 3:00 pm in Brooks Hall Commons, with a reception to follow.

Lise Dobrin, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics Program Director, and Mark Sicoli, Assistant Professor of Anthropology & Linguistics, have been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to partner with tribal colleges serving Dakota communities in South Dakota and Nebraska on language preservation. The multi-year grant will allow the University of Virginia and Sisseton Wahpeton Tribal College (SWC) and other institutions in South Dakota and Nebraska to collaborate on language preservation and revitalization, focused on Dakota, an endangered Siouan language, as well as capacity-building at tribal colleges and universities.

Mark Sicoli, Assistant Professor of Anthropology & Linguistics, presented his research on linguistic evidence for the Beringia "standstill hypothesis" at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Boston over the past weekend. Mark and his work with Anna Berge (University of Alaska) and Gary Holton (University of Hawaii) are featured in this UVA Today article. Coverage of Mark's work is also featured in The Economist, New Historian, Laboratory Equipment, and Phys.org.

Mark Sicoli, Assistant Professor of Anthropology & Linguistics, was interviewed in UVA Today about his work on Chinantec whistled speech in San Pedro Sochiapam, Mexico.

Peter Baker (English Department) has translated Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland into Old English. The translation, published by Evertype, will be released later this year. Congratulations to Prof. Baker! 

Here's an article in UVA Today that includes an audio clip of Prof. Baker reciting Alice/Æðelgýðe in Old English.

Full citation: Hlóðwíg Carroll [Lewis Carroll], Æðelgýðe Ellendaéda on Wundorlande. Translated into Old English by Peter S. Baker. Illustrated by Byron W. Sewell. Forthcoming, Portlaoise: Evertype, 2015.

UVA students have the exciting opportunity to learn about Maya K'iche' (KICH 5010) this Fall 2015 through the Duke-UVa-Vanderbilt Consortium for Less Commonly Taught Languages. Students will learn the scripts, syntax, material cultures and literary forms of Maya K'iche'. Maya K'iche' is the language of more than 1 million people in Guatemala, the language used by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú in her critique against the Guatemalan state, and the language of the Mesoamerican cosmology, the Popol Vuh. Contact Allison Bigelow in Spanish, Italian, & Portuguese for more information.