Ziru Chen (she/her) is interested in phonetics and laboratory phonology, particularly topics in speech production and perception. She is from Zhejiang, China. She received her B.A. in Chinese Language and Literature from Peking University and her MSc in Phonetics from the University of Edinburgh. Her research has been focused on the variation and change in […]

This year’s colloquium speaker line-up is… We may have one addition in the fall, to be confirmed. As always, talks will take place Fridays from 3:30–5:00, with talk details announced before the talk. If you have any questions, you can reach out to this year’s new colloquium team: Hannah and Tony (student organizers) and Jessica […]

McGill Linguistics affiliates partnered with the grassroots Kanien’kéha language group Ionkwahrhonkha’onhátie’ to present three workshops in Akwesasne this summer. The first was on how to use linguistic elicitation as a second-language learner, the second was on transcribing language recordings with ELAN, and the third was on practices of archiving and Indigenous knowledge management. This workshop […]

Willie Myers and Brandon Chaperon (MA ’25) both have papers published in the new volume ‘Pamoja tena’ Together again: African linguistics after COVID, a volume including select presentations from the 54th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at University of Connecticut in June 2024. Congrats both!

June 24-29, LabPhon 20 was held in Montreal for the conference’s 40th anniversary, organized by McGill Linguistics members and colleagues in Ottawa. More than 300 people from around the world attended, including many current and former McGillians.

Edward Flemming (MIT) and Michael Wagner co-taught a class on Prosody at the The 7th Crete Summer School of Linguistics in Rethymno, Crete, July 18–31. Jessica Coon taught a class on Hierarchy Effects at the DGfS Summer School in Bielefeld, Germany, August 10–14th.

McLing is happy to welcome Samantha Prins, who is joining us for a two-year Canada Impact+ Research Training Award (CIRTA) postdoctoral fellowship, working with Jessica Coon. Sam’s research combines morphosyntactic theory, documentation, and (re)vitalization. Her theoretical work centers on formal models of inflection, agreement, and reference-tracking in Algonquian languages, particularly Blackfoot. Her documentary work focuses […]

Alex Zhai has accepted a two-year instructor position at the University of Manitoba –– congratulations Alex!

Several current and former McGill affiliates travelled to Argentina for Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 36, held July 29-31 at the University of Buenos Aires (https://saltconf.github.io/salt36/). Talks by current and former McGill affiliates included:

McGill linguists had a number of successful PhD defenses this summer. These included: Congratulations new doctors!

As the academic year wraps up, Jeanne and Morgan are stepping down as co-editors of McLing — thank you for your service! We’re happy to share that Sama’a will be joining as student co-editor in the fall, alongside Jessica, who will be returning as faculty editor. McLing will be on summer break starting this week. […]

Recent PhD graduate Irene Smith has accepted a one-year teaching position at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Department of Linguistics. Congratulations, Irene!

Jessica Coon’s paper “Invisible inanimates and the syntax of pronominal prefixes in Northern Iroquoian” was just accepted for publication in Language. A pre-print PDF is available here. Congratulations, Jessica!

McGillians attended the 18th Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal Semantics Workshop on May 22nd at l’Université de Montréal. Talks included:

McGill linguists of past and present attended the special joint meeting of SULA (Semantics of Underdocumented Languages of the Americas) and Triple-A (Semantics of Languages of Africa, Asia, Australia, and Oceania), held at the University of British Columbia. The conference included plenary talks by two McGill alums, Terrance Gatchalian (“Split tenselessness: tense, aspect, and counterfactuality in Kanien’kéha”) and Justin Royer (“Wh-predicates, […]

Laurestine Bradford presented a talk about Tlingit progressive aspect at the conference on Neglected Aspects of Motion Event Descriptions (NAMED) at the Université du Québec Trois-Rivières on May 21st. Her talk was titled “Motion Verbs Without Fact of Motion”.

Jeanne Brown gave an invited talk at the 190th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), held May 11–15 in Philadelphia. Her talk was titled, “Rethinking ‘young women’s creak’: Piecing together production, perception, and social evidence.” The talk received media coverage in the ASA 190th press release, Ars Technica and New Scientist! Abstract: Since […]