Department of Linguistics and Languages at McMaster University
1280 Main Street West L8S 4M2 Hamilton, ON, Canada

The stories about the career paths of our graduates continue. Let me introduce Will Heikoop, McMaster 2007 graduate. I am currently the Online Learning Coordinator, working in the Online Learning Strategies portfolio on University of Toronto eLearning initiatives, including online and hybrid course (re)design, open education and awareness as well as our Massive Open Online Courses. I bring expertise in online course (re)design and work closely with teams on learning resource...Continue reading

https://linguistics.humanities.mcmaster.ca//the-cognitive/

We would like to invite you to the second talk of the Cognitive Science of Language lecture series organized by McMaster’s Department of Linguistics and Languages. The lecture will be delivered online by Professor Susana Béjar. Dr. Susana Béjar is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto. She specializes in nominal features and the syntax of agreement and licensing. Her publications have appeared in Journal of Linguistics, Language, Linguistic Inquir...y, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, and Syntax. Who : Dr. Susana Béjar (University of Toronto) What : Thirty years of feature theory (the poster is attached) When : Monday November 2, 2020; 2:30-4:20 pm Where: Zoom Abstract: Thirty years of feature theory This talk addresses successes and challenges of feature theory in syntax - specifically theory of phi-features. In recent decades, feature-theory has had wide-ranging consequences for such topics as the modeling of syntactic dependencies, the mapping from syntax to morphological exponence, and the ontology of functional categories. Case studies illustrating a convergence of findings across domains will be contrasted with ones that suggest limitations to feature-theoretic approaches. The talk is free but participants must register. Registration link can be found here: https://mcmaster.zoom.us//tJ0uf--tqz0pHtInAZo2_xG_jOHpm1V_ We are looking forward to seeing you at the event!

The end of the summer and the beginning of the new academic year were a busy time for our graduate students. Five MSc students presented their dissertations in virtual defences. Here are our newest graduates and a selection of screen shots from their defences. Congratulations Everyone! Best wishes! Sean McCarron (Victor Kuperman): Aug 13, "Post-secondary reading development and print exposure in L1 and L2 speakers of English Tess Hudson (Ivona Kuerová): Aug 26, Is A-mo...vement a movement? An eye-tracking and self-paced reading investigation Erin DeBorba (Lili Service): Aug 31, "The Investigation of Serial Order in Language Processing" Angie Lopez (Lili Service): Sep 1, "Serial Order in Language Processing in Bilinguals" Hector Li (John Colarusso): Oct 14, The Methodology and Ontology in Biolinguistics: An Application of Kant’s Philosophy See more

Our Graduate Lecture Series in the Cognitive Science of Language continues this year, albeit in a virtual format. https://linguistics.humanities.mcmaster.ca//the-cognitive/ Unfortunately, at this point, it is not open to everyone.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone! Enjoy the long holiday weekend and the Fall Break (Oct 14-16), recharge your batteries, and STAY SAFE! We look forward to seeing all of you again on October 19.

We are continuing with the stories from our graduates. Today, we would like to introduce to you Andra (Cimpello) Willits, 2000 McMaster graduate: I have always been intrigued and passionate about languages and after deciding to switch from Political Science to a degree in Modern Languages and Linguistics after my first year at McMaster, I knew that I found my home! I spent my undergraduate years exploring all aspects of linguistics while improving my French and German as we...ll as adding Italian, my father’s native language, to my repertoire. Upon graduation, I decided to pursue my interest in natural language processing and was proudly accepted to the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in their MSc. in Speech and Language Processing program for their 2002 academic year, one of only two schools in the world that offered that degree at the time! My husband and I, only married a year, packed up and moved to Edinburgh for a year while I embarked on the most intense academic year of my life. I completed my degree with a four-month dissertation in which I built a low-resource speaker identification system. This project allowed me to explore the field of biometrics using speech patterns to identify the speaker. During our year abroad, while I was quite focused on my course work, we managed to travel both to Paris and northern Italy where I was able to discover that my years of language study have served me well! I even had the opportunity to explore the very towns of Italy where my father was born and spent his first four years of childhood and even meet many of the extended family that still lives there. Upon graduation, we returned to Canada where I spent 12 years working for a company called IntelliResponse (now [24]7.ai) as a Software Developer and Linguistic Specialist. The company builds virtual agent technology and I was involved in not only the core application development but also adding analytic tools including response relevance and collocation analysis. During this time, I was also honoured to be asked by Dr. Stroinska to teach a Computational Linguistics course at McMaster. I found myself working alongside my former professors and mentors who I now call friends. Four years ago, I left my position at IntelliResponse to raise my three amazing daughters. Taking the time to watch them grow and blossom has been as rewarding as my years in my software career. Now that they are all school age, I have once again returned to the working world and work as a Freelance Linguist, providing services that include editing, transcription and proofreading. While very different from my former life in the software industry, this allows me the flexibility to be home for my family at the same time as returning to my love of languages! I am proud to be a McMaster alumnus and know that it set me on the path to the incredible adventures I have had over the past 20 years since graduation, simply because I am intrigued by words and language! See more