Research Interests and Specialties
Popular vs. standard languages in the evolution of Romance, with special reference to French and Romanian
– The Quebec French and the evolution of popular French
– Isolated Frencha varieties in North America: The French of Frenchville

Linguistic variation and change in contact languages

  •   French in Ontario

Socio-cultural and linguistic contact and theory of linguistic variation and change 

  • Geolinguistic variation, linguistic distance (dialectometry) and socio-cultural contact
  •  Socio-cultural identity and linguistic change: Towards an historical model of phonological and morphophonemic change
  • Contact-induced discontinuity in the evolution of Romance languages at the level of phonological ‘form’

Dialect contact and mixing

  • Dialect mixing in an urban setting: Koinezation in the city of Arad, Crisana, Romania

Publications: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dorin_Uritescu/publications

Research Projects

I. The New Romanian Linguistic Atlas, Crisana, Vol. IV

Principal Investigator and Coordinator: Dorin Uritescu, York University, Glendon College Co-Investigators and Collaborators: Ionel Stan, Timisoara, and Gabriela Violeta Adam, Veronica Ana Vlasin (‘Sextil Puscariu’ Linguistics and Literary History Institute of the Romanian Academy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania), Lacramioara Oprea, Toronto Duration of project: on-going Description: This is a continuation of the production and publication of the Linguistic Atlas of the Northwestern Dialects of Daco- Romanian. The fourth volume continues the automatic production of the linguistic maps with the computer program elaborated by Dorin Uritescu (in collaboration with Andrei Oprea) and used in vol. III. (We note that this program is actually used by some other Romanian dialect atlases and is easy to adapt to any dialect atlas.) Volume IV will also analyze, on interpretive linguistic maps, aspects of linguistic variation, contact and transition based on data related to different semantic fields referring to ‘farm’ and ‘farming’. The New Romanian Linguistic Atlas. Crisana (NALR-Cr.) represents the result of ten years of field investigation in 120 localities of the historical region of Crisana, with a questionnaire of 2543 questions. It will finally consist of 6 volumes. The first volume, The Human Body, was awarded the Prize of the Romanian Academy in Linguistics, in 1998. Production of the fourth volume is partially funded by a SSHRCC grant (in Collaboration with Sheila Embleton and Eric Wheeler; see infra) and by the Romanian Academy. Publications: Uritescu, D. Forthcoming. “Graiul din Tara Oasului în perspective informatica” / The Dialect of Oas in a Computational Approach/. To appear in Festschrift I. Coteanu, Bucuresti: Editura Academiei. Uritescu, D. 2013. “Le conditionnement morphologique dans le changement phonologique et l’évolution historique du roumain populaire”. In Casanova Herrero, Emili / Calvo Rigual, Cesáreo (eds.), Actes del 26é Congrés de Lingüística i Filologia Romàniques, Berlin: W. de Gruyter, vol. VIII, pp. 813-824. Uritescu, D. 2011. Formel et naturel dans l’évolution phonologique et morphophonologique. Essais de linguistique générale et romane. University, Mississippi : Romance Monographs. Uritescu, D. (coord.) et al. 2011. Noul Atlas lingvistic român. Crişana /The New Romanian Linguistic Atlas. Crişana/. Vol. III. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei. Uritescu, D. 2008a. “Variantele dialectale ale limbii române în perioada 1780-1880. Note de lectură. Fonetica”. In Dacoromania (Cluj-Napoca), XIII, 2008, pp. 33-56 (online link: http://www.dacoromania.inst-puscariu.ro/). Uritescu, D. 2008b. “Pe marginea NALR-Crisana: O (alta) generalizare fara suport psihologic în teoria optimalitatii?”. In Fonetica si Dialectologie, XXIV-XXVI, 2005-2007 (Bucuresti: Romanian Academy Press), pp. 255-261. Uritescu, D. 2007a. Sincronie si diacronie. Fonetismul unor graiuri din nordul Banatului /Synchrony and Diachrony. The Phonetics of Some Dialects in Northern Banat/. Second edition, revised and enlarged. Cluj-Napoca: ‘Clusium’ (in Romanian, with a summary in English). Uritescu, D. 2007b. “Dans la perspective de l’atlas linguistique de Crisana (I). Le participe passé daco-roumain en –a : mythe roumain ou innovation d’une langue romane?”. In Sanda Reinheimer Rîpeanu, Ioana Vintila- Radulescu (eds.), Limba româna, limba romanica, Bucharest : Editura Academiei Române, 2007, pp. 555-566. Uritescu, D. 2006 “’Real’, though not ‘needed’? On a phonotactic constraint as reflected in NALR-Crisana”. In Aronson, I. Howard, et al. (eds.), The Bill Question, Bloomington: Slavica, pp. 207-214. Stan, I. et D. Uritescu. 2003. Noul Atlas lingvistic român. Crisana. Vol. II. Bucarest: Éditions de l’Académie roumaine. Saramandu, N. et D. Uritescu. 1997a. Tournesol, odsolnecnik/odsolnyx, sunflower, Sonnenblume, girosol, girasole. Cartes de motivations. Commentaire XXXV. Atlas linguarum Europae, vol. I, cinquième fascicule : Commentaires. Ed. Mario Alinei et al. Roma : istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato. Pp. 129- 139. Saramandu, N. et D. Uritescu. 1997b. Tournesol. Carte de motivation. Atlas linguarum Europae, vol. I, cinquième fascicule : Cartes. Ed. Mario Alinei et al. Roma : Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato. Carte 50. Stan, I. et D. Uritescu. 1996. Noul Atlas lingvistic român. Crisana . Vol. I. Bucarest: Éditions de l’Académie roumaine. Stan, I. et D. Uritescu. 1996. NALR-Crisana. I. Date despre localitati si informatori. Bucarest : Éditions de l’Académie roumaine. Uritescu, D. 1993. Atlas Linguistique Roman (ALIR) — Sur l’analyse phonologique et morphophonologique des parlers romans, in Actas do XIX Congresso Internacional de Lingüística e Filoloxía Románicas, vol. V, pp. 109-114. Coruña: Fundación “Pedro Barrié de la Maza, Conde de Fenosa”. Stan, I. et D. Uritescu. 1988. Sur la méthode indirecte d’enquêter pour le « Nouvel Atlas linguistique roumain. Crisana », in Contributii lingvistice, Timisoara: Les Presses de l’Université de Timisoara, 1988, pp. 135-142. Uritescu, D. 1984a. Subdialectul crisean [Le sous-dialecte de Crisana], in V. Rusu (dir.), Tratat de dialectologie româneasca, Craiova : Scrisul românesc, pp. 284-320, c. 81- 106. Uritescu, D. 1984b. Graiul din Oas [Le sous-dialecte d’Oas], in V. Rusu (dir.), Tratat de dialectologie româneasca, Craiova : Scrisul românesc, pp. 390-398, c. 171-174. Uritescu, D. 1983. Asupra repartitiei dialectale a graiurilor dacoromâne. Graiul din Oas [Sur la structure dialectale du roumain. Le sous-dialecte d’Oas], in Materiale si cercetari dialectale II, Cluj-Napoca: Les Presses de l’Université de Cluj-Napoca, pp. 231 – 246. Collaborations : Atlas linguarum Europae. A cura di Mario Alinei et al. Vol. I. Fasc. I-II, The Netherlands, Van Gorcum, 1983, 1986. Fasc. III, V, Roma: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1997. Atlas linguistique roman, vol. I. Sous la rédaction de Gaston Tuaillon et al. Roma: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1996. II. The nature of dialect: Exploring dialect relationships with an expanded online dialect atlas Investigators (in alphabetical order): Sheila Embleton, Dorin Uritescu and Eric Wheeler, York University Duration of project : on-going Description: Funded by a SSHRCC Insight Grant, 2012-2015 ($ 128,605; principal investigator Sheila Embleton), this research project continues at a different level the Romanian Online Dialect Atlas (RODA), funded by SSHRCC between 2003 and 2011. RODA is an audio-visual on line document whose aim is fourfold: a) to give researchers from around the world access to the data of the New Romanian Linguistic Atlas: Crisana, vol. I-II, and the possibility of interactively analyzing it, b) to provide audio clips illustrating phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical phenomena of the area(s), c) to provide a dialectometrical analysis of the geolinguistic variation based on multidimensional scaling, and 4) to establish and analyze the relation between dialectometrical results (linguistic distance) and geographical and socio-cultural induced variation. It can now be found at the following address (Scott Library): http://pi.library.yorku.ca/dspace/handle/10315/2803 The present research project (‘The nature of dialect…’) will contribute to several aspects of the field of dialectology, dialect geography and dialectometry:  It creates a model of an online linguistic atlas, with more sophisticated possibilities of researching, analyzing and presenting aspects of linguistic variation (GODA; see http://pi.library.yorku.ca/dspace/handle/10315/2803).  It extends the MDS analyses to more detailed lexical, phonetic, orphological, morphophonemic and syntactic data. This will reveal how specific the variation is at different linguistic levels, and also show the contribution of different levels of variation to dialect patterning.  MDS analyses of irregular and regular changes at levels other than phonetic will show whether or not these levels of variation have the same distinct behavior in dialect patterning as we found in the phonetic features (for the latter, see Embleton, Uritescu, Wheeler 2013a, b).  It allows us to evaluate the use in dialectology of the MDS method by comparing its results with the results of other statistical methods applied to the same data (such as cluster analysis).  It provides a much-needed larger data base for our analyses by adding the analytic and interpretive maps of vol. III, already digitized, and vol. IV, after digitization, with the meta-data that permits more detailed searching and counting. Publications: Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2013a. “Continuum et fragmentation géolinguistique d’après l’Atlas linguistique de la Crişana en ligne”. In Casanova Herrero, Emili / Calvo Rigual, Cesáreo (eds.), Actes del 26é Congrés de Lingüística i Filologia Romàniques, Berlin: W. de Gruyter, vol. VI, pp. 116-126. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2013b. “Defining Dialect Regions with Interpretations. Advancing the Multidimensional Scaling Approach”. In Literary and Linguistic Computing 28(1), pp. 13-22. (Special Issue ‘Dialectometry’, ed. by John Nerbonne & William A. Kretzschmar Jr; http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/) Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2012. “Effective Comparisons of Geographic and Linguistic Distances” (with Sheila Embleton and Eric Wheeler). In Gabriel Altman, Peter Grzybek, Sven Naumann, and Relja Vulanovic (eds.). Synergetic Linguistics. Text and Language as Dynamic Systems. Vienna: Praesens Verlag, pp. 225-232. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2010a. “Identifying dialect regions: specific features vs. overall measures using the Romanian Online Dialect Atlas and multidimensional scaling”. In Barry Heselwood and Clive Upton (eds.), Proceedings of Methods XIII, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 79-90. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2010b. “How do I know that I am right? Checking quantitative hypotheses”. In Grzybek, Peter, Emmerich Kelih & Ján Mačutek (eds.), Text and Language. Wien: Praesens Verlag, pp. 49-56. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2009a. “Data Management and Linguistic Analysis: MDS applied to RODA”. In Reinhard Köhler (ed.). Studies in Quantitative Linguistics. 5. Issues in Quantitative Linguistics. Lüdensheid: RAM-Verlag, pp 10-16. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2009b. “The Stability of Multidimensional Scaling over Large Data Sets: Evidence from the Digitized Atlas of Finnish”, in Du côté des langues romanes. Mélanges en l’honneur de Juhani Härmä, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki. LXXVII, ed. Eva Havu, Mervi Helkkula and Ulla Tuomarla, pp. 101-108. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2009c. “Lessons from Digitizing a Linguistic Atlas”. In Botosineanu, Luminita, Elena Dãnilã, Cecilia Holban and Ofelia Ichim (eds.), Distorsionări în comunicarea lingvistică, literară şi etnofolclorică românească şi contextul European, Iaşi : Alfa, pp. 137-145 (online link: http://www.academiaromana- is.ro/philippide/pages/distorsionari_2008.html) Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2008a. “Defining User Access to the Romanian Online Dialect Atlas”. In Dialectologia et Geolinguistica, vol. 16, pp. 27-33 (http://www.geo-linguistics.org/Journal.html). Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2008b. Digitalized Dialect Studies: North-Western Romanian, Bucharest: Romanian Academy Press (Romanian Academy Lecture Series). Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2007a. “Romanian online dialect atlas: Data capture and presentation”. In P. Grzybek and R. Köhler (eds.), Exact Methods in the Study of Langauge and Text, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter, pp. 87-96. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2007b. Romanian Online Dialect Atlas. http://pi.library.yorku.ca/dspace/handle/10315/2803 Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2006- 2007. “Data Capture and Presentation in the Romanian Online Dialect Atlas”. In Papers from Methods XII: 12th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology. Linguistica Atlantica 27-28, pp. 35-39. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2004. “Romanian Dialect Atlas. An exploration into the Management of High Volumes of Complex Knowledge in the Social Sciences and Humanities”. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 11/3, p. 183-192.