Just back from NWAV51 in Queens, where I presented some work examining the use of classic New York City English features by native New Yorkers who’ve been living in Toronto. The larger point of the talk was that the way we assess second dialect acquisition - taking the (rate of) use of “D2” forms as a straightforward indication of acquisition - is flawed, and that it’s important to consider the positive reasons why mobile speakers might continue to use D1 forms even after they’ve acquired D2 variants.
ICPhS 2023 talk
This month I gave a talk at ICPhS 2023 in Prague, on the cot/caught distinction in the speech of native New Yorkers living in Toronto and native Torontonians living in New York City. Here’s the proceedings paper!
Praha, glimpsed through the trees of Petřín Hill
NSF Doctoral Dissertation Award: Yoojin Kang
Congratulations to my doctoral student Yoojin Kang, who has officially been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to support her dissertation research! Yoojin will study the production and perception of dialect features by two groups in South Korea: natives of Kyungsang province who have been living in Seoul, and natives of Seoul who have been living in Kyungsang.
Seoul is urban and its dialect is considered prestigious and "standard", while Kyungsang is more rural and its dialect is relatively stigmatized. So probably everybody from Kyungsang who moves to Seoul just abandons their home dialect for the standard while Seoul migrants to Kyungsang maintain their native variety, right? In fact, Yoojin's previous work has suggested more complex patterns of behavior depending on the specific dialect feature involved, the attitude of the speaker, and how these and other factors interact with more global notions of (non)standardness. Her dissertation will expand and broaden this work, significantly contributing to knowledge about how people vary and change their dialects as a result of mobility and new dialect input.
Penn Speaker Series talk
Ladies Engaged in Scholarly Activities. Qing dynasty, late 18th century. Black ink and colors on silk; photo taken at the excellent Barnes Foundation, which I visited the day after my talk
Last week I visited Penn Linguistics to give a talk as part of their Speaker Series. My talk, Differences without distinctions, and distinctions with little difference: COT/CAUGHT vowels among mobile speakers in New York City and Toronto, presented some BRAND NEW (albeit preliminary, as I still have more data to work through) findings about low back vowel realizations among native New Yorkers in Toronto and native Torontonians in New York. I also got to talk to/hang out with a bunch of socio PhD students and hear about their exciting research projects. A great trip all around!