VTLx

Dr. Joe Eska (ENGL) is featured in today's VTx for his *GUGGENHEIM*:

“In English, the verb agrees with the subject,” he said. “In a Celtic language, the verb agrees with the subject, but it also agrees with the object. Prepositions are conjugated, meaning a single word can convey different relationships like ‘to me’ or ‘to you.’ And, at least in languages like Irish and Welsh, the verb is the first word of the sentence and there aren’t any other European languages that do that. So part of what I’m interested in is how did these languages get that way?”

More at the link:

Professor seeks a modern understanding of ancient inscriptions An innovative approach merges historical and theoretical linguistics to provide new insights into the mysterious evolution of early Celtic syntax. Supported by a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, Joseph Eska, professor in the Department of English, is revolutionizing the study of ancient Celtic lan...

We just heard that the Department of Statistics gave graduating senior Joe Harrison the 2024 Undergraduate Research Award! Joe started his UG research journey in the Speech Lab (pictured here on the left), working with Dr. Walker (ENGL) and Dr. Teo (MCLL). Joe's heading off to NCSU this Fall to earn a PhD in Statistics. Congrats Joe!

Joe Harrison and Will Heltzel presenting a collaborative project with Dr. Abby Walker and Dr. Ming Chew Teo.

We lied, one more piece of great news today: The Professional and Technical Writing committee in the Department of English just named English major and Language Sciences minor Riley Vinluan as the 2024 recipient of the "Armstrong Family Foundation Award for Communication Design".

Riley got this award for work outside of Language Sciences, but we weren't surprised - if you've noticed recent upscaling in VTLx-related posters, graphics and logos, this is Riley's influence/creative work! I mean, look at this logo for the Speech Lab:

Finishing off the last week of classes with the great news that Dr. Katie Carmichael (ENGL)) did not just win a college teaching award, but got one of only two university-wide teaching excellence awards!!!!

"Her teaching and research both prioritize mentoring of undergraduates with interests in linguistics as she seeks to empower them to pursue their inherent curiosity about language, mobilizing their linguistic intuitions and critical thinking skills in the process. She co-created the language sciences Pathways minor, which culminates in a capstone class called Research in the Language Sciences that features innovative cross-college collaboration with the Department of Statistics. Carmichael is currently the principal investigator of a National Science Foundation-funded project on sociolinguistic variation in New Orleans English through which she has co-developed a dialect awareness curriculum targeted at improving literacy rates in New Orleans elementary schools"

CONGRATS DR. CARMICHAEL!!

https://news.vt.edu/awards/facstaff2024/bio-pages.html -excellence-teaching

This year's winner of the VTLx Award for Excellence in Language Sciences is Andrés López. López served this year as Wug Club president and also works as a research assistant in the VT Speech Lab. This year, Andrés completed a prestigious Fralin Undergraduate Research Fellowship investigating pre-lateral FOOT and STRUT with mentor Dr. Abby Walker. Andrés has presented his work in linguistics at multiple conferences around the country, including SECOL in Georgia and NWAV in New York, and presented not one but two posters at the Dennis Dean Undergraduate Research Conference. Bravo, Andrés, on this well deserved award!

Huge congrats to our graduating seniors in language sciences! Last night they received their cords ('wug' blue, of course) and gathered for a reception to celebrate their accomplishments within the language sciences minor. We are so proud of our awesome students!

Yesterday, Language Sciences students, VTLx professors, and friends gathered for our annual Language Sciences Research Showcase. Students shared the amazing research projects they have been working on and got to hear from VTLx professors and invited speakers Aarnes Gudmestad and Stefon Flego about their work. The showcase is organized by the Undergraduate Linguistics Club, affectionately called the Wug Club, and we had a stellar turnout this year thanks to their hard work. Great job everyone!

Congratulations to Language Sciences Minor (and Virginia Tech Human Development & Family Science major) Caleigh Hampton, who has been selected to participate in the competitive 2024-25 Fralin Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program!

The award is to support her independent research looking at linguistic variation in Southwest Virginia, and was inspired by her research project for the LS Minor capstone course ENGL 4084: Conducting Research in the Language Sciences!

Bravo to our Language Sciences students who presented today at the Dennis Dean Undergraduate Research And Creative Scholarship Conference - we had TEN posters across six sessions today. That’s a lot of linguistics!! 🤩🤩

ENGL 4144: Phonology is featured in the English Department's Fall 2024 Look Book!

This course will be taught in Fall by Dr. Stefon Flego, and counts for Pathways Computational Thinking credit!

The Dennis Dean Undergraduate Research Conference is this Friday (April 26), and we have SO MANY amazing posters throughout the day from VTLx affiliated students. Pop by Squires Ballroom B to hear our students present their work!

(X) indicates poster number.

**8-850am
(12) Investigating merger of marginally contrastive conditioned vowels: Perception and production of pre-lateral FOOT and STRUT class words. - Andrés López

(28) Bidialectal Brains: Profiles of event related potentials in a cross-dialectal listening task in Southern US English speakers - Walker Wood & Caleigh Hampton

**905-955am
(17) Formalizing Coronal Nasal-Obstruent Cluster Reduction in American English - Andrés López

(15) Copula Absence Variation in New Orleans English - Brittany James

**1010-11am
(20) A American English Variant: Indefinite determiner variation in American Englishes - Alyssa Nazigian

(16) Supportive Factors for Language Learning in the Ecology of Toddlers - Kalista Luzanta, Kennetria Torain, Angela Wilson, Ashtyn Hall & Madeline Netto

**125-215pm
(11) “I would like a diet Sprite” /ay/ monophthongization in Southwest Virginia - Caleigh Hampton

**230-320pm
(16) The Impact of Voice Assistant Accent on User Experience - Katelyn Morris and Christopher Odom

**335-425pm
(7) Phonological Stability of /r/ in Namdeutsch: A Corpus-Based Study
John Hajdo

(28) Temperament Predicts Receptive and Expressive Language Skills in Two-Year-Olds in Different Ways Depending on Gender
Kennetria Torain, Sarah Nadasy, Ashtyn Hall, Ivy Osafo, & Madeline Netto

(4/4) Also on Friday, Dr. Katie Carmichael (ENGL) received her CLAHS Certificate of Teaching Excellence, recognizing her as one of the best teachers in the whole college!

The next two weeks will be just as busy and celebratory! Watch this space!

(3/4) On Friday, at the English Undergraduate Excellence Conference, four undergraduates - Anjali Pamulapati, Divine Tsasa Nzita, Alyssa Nazigian, Brittany James - presented excellent papers they wrote as part of their coursework for ENGL 3144: Language and Ethnicity in the United States (all taught by Dr. Katie Carmichael or Dr. Charlie Farrington).

Special congratulations to Alyssa Nazigian, whose paper "Language Revitalization, Views of Success, and Culture in a Language Curriculum" won the best paper in Language Sciences at the conference (pictured with her award & her professor Dr. Farrington).

(2/4) On Thursday evening, undergraduate Andrés López presented his work on the pre-lateral FOOT-STRUT merger at Fralin Undergraduate Research Fellowship Celebration.

He's pictured here with his faculty mentors, Dr. Stefon Flego & Dr. Abby Walker.

Last week was B-U-S-Y for VTLxers! 1/4

THE BEST LANGUAGE SCIENCES EVENT OF THE YEAR IS MONDAY, APRIL 29th, 4-730, in and around Shanks 370/380.

The Annual Language Research Showcase features talks by two faculty and 16 posters (across 2 poster sessions) by undergraduate researchers! The event ends with a wee graduation ceremony for our graduating minors!

All are welcome!

The Virginia Tech English's 2024 English Undergraduate Excellence Conference will be held on Friday 18-19th in Shanks Hall.

The Language Sciences session is at 2-3:30pm on Friday 19th in Shanks 370/380 (chaired by Dr. Stefon Flego), and features these four student talks, based on papers they wrote for ENGL Language Science courses:

Anjali Pamulapati, "Finders, Keepers: The Appropriation of
African American Vernacular English in Gen Z Slang"

Divine Tsasa Nzita, "Preserving Heritage Languages and
Fostering Cultural Diversity: Practices and Strategies of
African Immigrant Communities in the United States"

Alyssa Nazigian, "Language Revitalization, Views of Success,
and Culture in a Language Curriculum"

Brittany James, "Appalachian AAE: What Makes it Special?"

The broader event, featuring contributions from students all over the English department, will be great! Full program at the link below!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e2342UdCYAIHifd8Ey91LI4TYYpf1ABFIA3EZUX9hpU/edit

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Joe Eska (ENGL) has been awarded a very prestigious Guggenheim fellowship for the 2024-2025 academic year!

Watch this space for more information on his project!

Announcements – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation… Wale Adebanwi, Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies, Department of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Fort Washington, PA.

Day 3 of VT at SECOL!

Day 2 at SECOL/LAVIS (Southeastern Conference on Linguistics/Language Variety in the South) and VT has a great showing of linguists presenting! Talks by VTLx-ers include:

Investigating mergers without minimal pairs: The pre-lateral FOOT/STRUT distinction (Andres Lopez)

The Impact of Voice Assistant Accent on User Experience (Abby Walker, Eliza Quesenberry, Koeun Choi, Mahmut Gurdal, Myounghoon Jeon, Benjamin Katz, Leelie Kebede, Katelyn Morris, Christopher Odom, & Shuqi Yu)

Indefinite article variation in Appalachian and African American Englishes (Charlie Farrington, Paul Reed, & Alyssa Nazigian)

What do you do with a Southerner who doesn't sound Southern?: Personae and unmet linguistic expectations (Katie Carmichael & Annette D'Onofrio)

How different are complex segments and sound sequences? Evidence from place of articulation asymmetries in consonant-glide-vowel sequences (Stefon Flego)

Bidialectal Brains: Profiles of event related potentials in a cross-dialectal listening task in Southern US English speakers (Abby Walker, Caleigh Hampton, Adriana Miller, Walker Wood, Holly Zaharchuk, & Janet Van Hell)

If you're on Instagram, follow vt.english to follow Eliza's takeover today and tomorrow as she, four other VT undergrads, and four VTLx faculty present at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics!

Special Takeover Alert! 🚀 This Friday, join us for an adventure with Eliza, our very own junior from the professional and technical writing program, who's also minoring in English Literature and shining in the Honors College. As she heads to Georgia for the prestigious Southeastern Conference on Linguistics and the Language Variety in the South conference, she's inviting us all to come along! From exclusive conference insights to exploring the beautiful state of Georgia, Eliza will be sharing her journey. https://www.instagram.com/vt.english/

A group from The Speech Lab came an honorable 5th in the Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences trivia night today.

Hoping for a section on language next year...

Dr. Abby Walker (ENGL) has been given a University of Canterbury Visiting Erskine Fellowship to teach (and learn!) at the UC Linguistics department during Summer 2024!

Course request is closing soon! Consider enrolling in one of these classes!

On Friday, Language Sciences Minor Andres Lopez presented his research on "The perception and production of pre-lateral FOOT and STRUT class words" at PSUXLING, the annual undergraduate language research conference at Penn State.

Andres will be taking this work to SECOL in a fewweeks, watch this space!

**PARTICIPANTS NEEDED FOR VT SPEECH LAB STUDY**

We're looking for participants who grew up in NOVA, SWVA or NC, TN, SC, GA, AL, TX, AR, LA, WV, KY, MS to do an in-person study called "User Testing Voice Assistants". The study takes an hour, and you participants are compensated with a $15 Kroger/Amazon voucher.

For more information, email [email protected]

Returning after Spring Break will be easier with this cool talk to look forward to!!

VTLx Speaker Series
Dr. Sarah Phillips (Georgetown University Medical Center)
**Prosody: What may lie between composition and control**
Friday March 15th, 3pm.
Shanks 370-380

We hope you can make this event!

VTLx Speaker Series: Dr. Eugenia Rho (Computer Science, VT)

**Words Matter: How language choices predict societal trends and outcomes in media, health and policing**

Friday February 23rd, 3pm.
Shanks 370-380

VTLx member Natasha Staley (Theatre Studies) was featured on VT news this morning, talking about the travelling multimedia installation - "Shakespeare's Garden" - that she's a part of! Watch below!

‘Shakespeare’s Garden’ comes to Northern Virginia “Shakespeare’s Garden: An Immersive Sound Stroll Through His Sonnets, Soliloquies, and Scenes,” is now open at the Torpedo Factory Art Center’s Target Gallery in Alexandria. The exhibit is presented by Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) and the City of Al...

Congratulations to Dr. Katie Carmichael (ENGL) who has received a 2024 Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Certificate of Teaching Excellence!