Below please find our colloquium schedule for the current (or most recent) term of the academic year. Please note that the current schedule is subject to revisions and frequent updates. If you are interested in other linguistics colloquia in the greater Vancouver area, please check the SFU colloquium schedule.

Unless otherwise noted, all of our colloquia take place on Fridays at 3:30 pm, with refreshments available from 3:15 onwards. The regular location is Room 103 of the Linguistics department building at Totem Field Studios ("TFS 103"), located at 2613 West Mall (see contact page for directions).

September - December 2011

Click on title to view abstract of talk (if available).

Friday, September 23, 2011
Craig Corey (University of Alaska, Anchorage)
Title: Dnaghelt'ana Qut'ana K'eli Ahdelyax: Songs of the Inland Dena'ina of Southwest Alaska
Note Location: Gessler Hall, Room 116, 3:30 pm
Co-Sponsored with the UBC School of Music
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Friday, September 30, 2011
Claire Turner (University of British Columbia)
Title: Imperfective Aspect Use in Northern Straits Salish: Semantics and Form (Followed by a quick look at evidentiality)
TFS 103, 3:30 pm
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Friday, October 21, 2011
Shaylih Muehlmann (University of British Columbia, Department of Anthropology)
Title: Last words, last speakers: the ethnographic challenges of quantifying what is lost as languages obsolesce

Abstract: In this talk, I analyze how language ideologies linking language death to cultural extinction, recently re-popularized in efforts to save “endangered languages,” have been interpreted by a an indigenous community whose language is at an advanced stage of obsolescence. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Cucapá settlement in northern Mexico, I examine the effect of this language ideology in two related cases. First, the practice of identifying last speakers as they age and eventually pass away and second, in my own attempts to isolate what Cucapá vocabularies were still being learned by younger generations of primarily monolingual Spanish speaking youth. I argue that links made between language and culture were heard by local people as a challenge to their indigenous authenticity and I contextualize this sentiment within a history of colonial relations as well as more recent state-sponsored shifts towards policies of cultural recovery.

TFS 103, 3:30 pm
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Friday, October 28, 2011
Barbara Dancygier (University of British Columbia, Department of English)
Title: Viewpoint and intersubjectivity in constructions
TFS 103, 3:30 pm
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Friday, November 4, 2011
Candace Galla (University of British Columbia, Faculty of Education)
Title: Revitalizing Language and Culture in the Community: A Hawaiian Model
TFS 103, 3:30 pm

January - May 2012

Click on title to view abstract of talk (if available).

Friday, February 3, 2012
Karen Zagona (University of Washington, Department of Linguistics)
Title: TBA
TFS 103, 3:30 pm
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Friday, March 16, 2012
Valentine Hacquard (University of Maryland, Department of Linguistics)
Title: TBA
TFS 103, 3:30 pm
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