Spotlight: PhD Degrees Awarded
The linguistics department welcomes four graduate students who received their PhDs on April 28, 2013. Congratulations!
Spotlight: Visiting Scholars
The linguistics department welcomes four visiting scholars this year: Liya Xue, Dr. Iskra Iskrova, Dr. Robert Lawson, and Dr. Baoguo Zhou (from left to right).
Spotlight: Henderson Award
TESOL Certificate program students Jaimie Minnicks (Department of Instruction and Learning) and Hillary Schepps (Department of Linguistics) received the 2013 Robert T. Henderson Endowment Fund Award.
Spotlight: Undergrad Internships
Linguistics undergraduate students, faculty and sponsors (M*Modal, Semantic Compaction Systems, LTI, and ELI) gathered to celebrate the successful completion of the first linguistics internship course.
Spotlight: NWAV Presentation
Many of our faculty and students participated in NWAV 41 conference held in Bloomington, IN. In this photo, Dr. Scott Kiesling and Spencer Onuffer, an undergrad major, present their research.
News & Events
• Check this Calendar for upcoming events.
• Current Weekly Colloquium Series schedule can be found on this page.
Undergrad Wins Pickering Fellowship
(May 8, 2013) Congratulations to LaVonda Baldwin, a linguistics minor and ASL certificate student, on her winning Pickering Fellowship. The nationally competitive Pickering Fellowship awards 20 rising college seniors undergraduate and graduate school funding, mentorship, and internship experiences as they prepare academically and professionally to enter the United States Department of State Foreign Service.
ELI Faculty Elected for TESOL Offices
(April 23, 2013) Heather McNaught, a member of the ELI administrative faculty, is now president of Three Rivers TESOL, the local TESOL International Association affiliate. Dr. Dawn E. McCormick, a lecturer in the department and a member of the ELI administrative faculty, is now chair of the Professional Development Committee, a standing committee of TESOL International Association.
Robert T. Henderson Endowment Fund Award
(April 22, 2013) Congratulations to TESOL Certificate program students Jaimie Minnicks (Department of Instruction and Learning) and Hillary Schepps (Department of Linguistics), recipients of the 2013 Robert T. Henderson Endowment Fund Award. Each student will receive $2500 to help with expenditures related to their degrees, certificate program, and/or their TESOL career plans.
PhD Student Awarded FLAS Fellowship
(April 3, 2013) Congratulations to PhD student Holman Tse, who has been awarded a 2013-2014 FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) fellowship through the Global Studies Center. He will be using the award to continue his study of Swahili. Hongera, Holman!
Faculty Receives a Mentoring Award
(March 25, 2013) Congratulations to Dr. Alan Juffs for being selected as one of four faculty members across the University to be awarded the Provost's Award for Excellence in Mentoring. The award recognizes Pitt faculty members who demonstrate outstanding mentoring of graduate students seeking a research doctorate degree.
A Presentation at AAAL
(March 25, 2013) Dr. Alan Juffs gave a presentation at the 2013 annual meeting of AAAL (American Association for Applied Linguistics), entitled "Tracking the development of lexical diversity in intensive English program students in the US". The research was done in collaboration with Joseph Petrich, a linguistics undergrad, and Dr. Na-Rae Han.
Five PhD Students Presenting at Grad Expo
(March 21, 2013) Five of our PhD students presented papers at this year's Grad Expo, sponsored by the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. They are as follows:
- Jody Garcia: Rabaul Creole German: A Mixed Language Approach
- Nausica Marcos Miguel: Productive and Receptive Morphological Awareness: How Related are these Two Constructs to Vocabulary Size in Adult Learners?
- Holman Tse: A Socio-historical Account of Language Contact and Maintenance in Somali Bantu Kizigua
- Adrienne Washington: “They don’t say ‘my nigga’ like the people in my community”: Language and the Politics of Race, Place and Space
- Zhaohong Wu: Task and SOA in Cross-language Priming in Chinese ESL learners
The full program is available at http://www.pitt.edu/~gradexpo/
A Presentation at GURT
(Mar 13, 2013) PhD student Holman Tse presented a paper on March 10 at the annual Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics (GURT). This year's conference was held jointly with the 44th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL). His talk was entitled "The Diachronic Emergence of Retroflexion in Pre-nasalized Stops in Somali Bantu Kizigua: : Internal Motivation or Contact-induced Change?".
Irish Gaelic in the News
(Mar 8, 2013) Pittsburgh Tribune Review published an article on Irish Gaelic, taught by Marie Young and offered by LCTL. It's entitled "Traditional language of Ireland experiences revival".
Upcoming Yinzling Events
(Feb 27, 2013) Yinzling, the undergrad club for the linguistics department, is hosting the following upcoming events. Everyone interested in linguistics is welcome!
- Fri, March 1 - 4th Annual Language Fair at WPU Assembly Room (2:30 - 5pm)
- Tue, March 5 - Mini Lecture by Rob Lawson at G17 Cathedral (8:30pm -)
- Thu, March 28 - Movie Night (Title and location TBD) (8:30pm -)
- Fri, April 12 to Sat, April 13 - Relay for Life (6pm - 8pm)
Presentations by a Ph.D Student
(Feb 26, 2013) Ph.D student Jody Garcia is giving a conference presentation at Oklahoma State on Mar 2 called, "Indexing Identity and Negotiating Face in New Media". She is also giving an invited talk at the Asia Over Lunch Conference Series. The talk will take place Mar 27 and is called, "Reassessing Language Contact in the South Pacific: Taking a Second Look at the Linguistic Outcomes of Imperialism in Austronesia".
Undergrad Wins Critical Language Scholarship (CLS)
(Feb 26, 2013) Congratulations to Steve Sloto, Linguistics junior, for being selected for the Turkish Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program. The CLS Program is part of a larger U.S. government effort to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages.
PhD Candidate Featured in Teaching Times
(Feb 8, 2013) Lauren Collister, PhD candidate in the Linguistics Department, is featured in this month’s issue of Pitt’s “Teaching Times” for her use of Prezi (an online presentation tool). Congratulations, Lauren! You can read the entire article here.
UG Major Recognized for Outstanding Community Engagement
(Feb 4, 2013) Congratulations to Tara Nair, an undergraduate linguistics major, who was profiled on the Honors College's webpage. She was one of the students who were recognized by Pitt's Honors College for having engaged their learning in the community and using their educations to effect positive social change.
Upcoming Yinzling Events
(Jan 29, 2013) Yinzling, the undergrad club for the linguistics department, is hosting the following upcoming events. Everyone interested in linguistics is welcome!
- Movie Night - Jan. 31 at 8:30 PM - Cathedral, Room 324 - We will be screening "After Life," a Japanese movie. Snacks and drinks provided.
- Mini-lecture by Holman Tse - Feb. 7 at 8:30 PM - Cathedral, Room G-17 (PC Lab) - Holman is a grad student in the linguistics department at Pitt. He will talk about his research with Kizigua.
- Annual Language Fair - March 1 from 2:30 to 5:00 PM - William Pitt Union Assembly Room - Come learn about the language and culture programs offered here at Pitt and try out our scavenger hunt for the chance to compete to win an iPod Shuffle and gift card.
A Presentation at LSA
(January 22, 2013) On January 4th, Dr. Helen Stickney gave a talk entitled, "L1 acquisition and AAC use: What is known and what questions arise?" at the Linguistic Society of America's Annual Meeting. The symposium in which Dr. Stickney presented was entitled, "Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC): What can AAC speakers teach us about human language and the intersection between grammar and modality?" It was the first ever symposium about AAC at the LSA.
Upcoming Yinzling Events
(Nov 9, 2012) Yinzling, the undergrad club for the linguistics department, is hosting the following upcoming events (see flyer). Everyone interested in linguistics is welcome!
- Tues., Nov. 13 - Linguistics Writing Workshop with Jodi Garcia @ 8PM, Location TBA
- Wed., Nov. 14 - Yinzling Coffee Hour @ 1-3 PM, at Panera Bread VIP Room - COFFEE ON THE LING DEPT!
- Thurs., Nov. 15 - The History of "Yinz" with guest speaker Barbara Johnstone @ 7:30 PM, Language Media Center(Cathedral of Learning G-17 - PC Lab)
- Thurs., Nov. 29 - Movie Night "Love is Not Blind" (Chinese film) @ 8:30 PM, Location TBA, Snacks provided
Article Published in Morphology
(November 6, 2012) Recent Ph.D. Mary Lou Vercellotti and Dr. David Mortensen published an article in Morphology entitled "A classification of compounds in American Sign Language: an evaluation of the Bisetto and Scalise framework". It can be accessed on the publisher's site.
Presentation at Hispanic Linguistics Symposium
(October 25, 2012) Ph.D. Candidate Mike Olsen will present his paper entitled "The Influence of English Phonetics and Phonology on L2 Spanish Rhotics" on Saturday, October 27 at the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium in Gainesville, FL.
