Fall Lectures 2010

Sharon Lapkin (OISE/UT)
Thursday 11 November, 2010 at 5 p.m. – Room 153 York Hall – Glendon
Languaging: University students learn the grammatical concept of voice in French

Susan Ingram (Humanities – York University)
Thursday 18 November, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. – Room 219 Glendon Hall – Glendon
Translating Autobiography Visually and Spatially: A Transdisciplinary Perspective’
Emmanuel Nikiema (UT at Mississauga)
Wednesday 24 November, 2010 at 6 p.m. – BMO Center, Glendon Hall – Glendon
A chacun sa particularité: les français ont le schwa, les créoles ont l’/R/
Co-organized with Glendon Linguistics Club William Greaves & al. (Glendon) Wednesday 1 December, 2010 at 6 p.m. – BMO Center, Glendon Hall – Glendon Campus Bonobo Human Discourse 

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Sharon Lapkin (OISE/UT) Languaging: University students learn the grammatical concept of voice in French Languaging is a form of verbalization involving “making meaning and shaping knowledge and experience through language” (Swain, 2006, p. 89). In this paper, I explore the process and product of languaging as it concerns the learning of the grammatical concept of voice (active, passive, and middle) in French. I examine and analyze the amount and type of languaging produced by a small sample of university students as they struggle to understand the concept of voice. Students who are high languagers learn about the grammatical concept of voice in French with greater depth of understanding than low languagers. I demonstrate that there is a relationship between the quality and quantity of languaging and performance as measured by immediate and delayed posttests. The findings suggest that languaging is a key component in the internalization process of second language grammatical concepts. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the implications of this study for pedagogy. Sharon Lapkin is Professor Emerita in the Second Language Education program of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her research projects centre on French second language education in Canada and range from program evaluations of core French and immersion to qualitative studies of language learning in progress through detailed analysis of transcribed learner dialogues. From 1995 to 2004 she was co-editor of the Canadian Modern Language Review. She served as co-President of the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics in 2004-06. In 2006 she was awarded the Prix Robert Roy for outstanding contributions to second language teaching and learning in Canada by the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers, and since 2007 she has been a member of the Board of Directors of that Association.

Susan Ingram (Humanities – York University) ‘Translating Autobiography Visually and Spatially: A Transdisciplinary Perspective’ This lecture explores the geo-aesthetic implications of translating, across disciplinary divides, the autobiographical work of an eccentric aristocratic beauty from Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) who imprinted herself in the global cultural imaginary as the world’s first supermodel. While the category of the “posthuman” would at first appear to be even more antithetical to autobiography than even the poststructuralist “death of the author,” the lecture demonstrates how Veruschka’s autobiographical corpus of self-portraits productively opens up new avenues for rethinking subjectivity and visibility. The ideological and ethical relevance of these theoretical investigations for subjects often problematized as invisible will also be considered. Susan Ingram is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities at York University, where she is affiliated with the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies (CCGES) and the Research Group on Translation and Transcultural Contact (RGTTC), and is a member of the Graduate Programs in Humanities, Translation Studies and Communication and Culture. Publications such as Zarathustra’s Sisters: Women’s Autobiography and the Shaping of Cultural History and the forthcoming Berliner Chic: A Locational History of Berlin Fashion, which she co-authored with Katrina Sark, as well as a series of co-edited volumes on mutually constitutive cross-cultural constructions of Central Europe and North America reflect her interest in the institutions of cultural modernity. Emmanuel Nikiema (UT at Mississauga) A chacun sa particularité: les français ont le schwa, les créoles ont l’/R/ Les variations phonétiques affectant la consonne /r/ sont l’une des caractéristiques principales de la phonologie des créoles à base française (CBLF). En fait, /r/ est la consonne la plus instable du système consonantique des CBLF et elle affiche un comportement similaire, à plusieurs égards, à celui du schwa en français. Nous examinons, dans cette présentation, la distribution et le comportement de la consonne /r/ dans le système phonologique du créole haïtien: elle est attestée et toujours prononcée ([r], [g] ou [w]) en position prévocalique ([gete] “arrêter”, [wut] “route”), mais jamais observée après une voyelle (/fle/ “fleur”), ou après une consonne ([vãt] “ventre”) même lorsque la forme française correspondante comporte /r/. Autrement dit, /r/ a plusieurs variantes, apparaît dans certains contextes et disparaît dans certains autres, ce qui nous fait dire que /r/ est à la phonologie des créoles, ce que le schwa est à la phonologie du français. Toutefois, l’absence systématique de /r/ en position post-vocalique interagit avec la règle de nasalisation (régressive). Autrement dit, sa non-réalisation dans la forme de base d’un mot a le pouvoir de bloquer la nasalisation automatique de la voyelle comme c’est le cas dans des mots du type [òam] “charm” vs. [òãm] “chambre” ou [mÉn] “montagne” vs. [mõn] “monde”. Nous suggérons que /r/ est une consonne à structure interne pauvre et que son occurrence dans la chaîne sonore ainsi que les variations phonétiques qui l’affectent découlent de sa representation segmentale et de son affiliation syllabique. Nous tenterons, pour terminer, de montrer qu’il y a une continuité de faits phonologiques entre certaines variétés du français populaire, du français québécois et des créoles à base française. Although the phonological system of French-Lexifier Creoles share many similarities, they exhibit subtle and yet consistent differences that point to an analysis in terms of language variation and change. This paper examines the distribution and behavior of /r/, the consonant considered as the most unstable within the segmental phonology of French-lexifier Creoles: it is always realized as a consonant ([r]) in prevocalic position, but in other contexts the consonant may be reduced, transformed into [w] or be deleted depending on the Creole under consideration. In Haitian Creole for example, /r/ is obligatorily realized in prevocalic position as [r], [g] or [w] in words such as [gete]  “to stop”, /wut/ “road” and /rivje/ “river”, but systematically deleted in postvocalic or post-consonantal position as in /fle/ “flower” or [vãt] “belly”. Interestingly, the behavior of postvocalic Rs interacts with the patterns of vowel nasalization as it blocks nasalization in all varieties. The question we address in the paper is to account for this particular interaction between nasalization and the distribution of postvocalic Rs. We first suggest that both the distribution and the variability of /r/ can be derived from its underspecified segmental structure, then we show that the differences in behavior are related to its syllabic position within the word. NB This talk will be given in French.  The discussion can be in both French or English. Emmanuel Nikiema est Professeur agrégé au département d’études langagières de l’Université de Toronto, campus de Mississauga. Il est specialisé en phonologie et la plupart de ses publications ont porté sur la phonologie des langues romanes et des langues de l’Afrique de l’Ouest. Ses travaux de recherche actuels portent principalement sur la structure syllabique et les questions de sa modélisation dans l’analyse des créoles à base lexicale française.  Il a été successivement chercheur invité à l’Université de Chicago et au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), puis professeur invité à l’Institut des études créoles de l’Université de Provence. Il est présentement Directeur adjoint du département d’études langagières de l’Université de Toronto, secrétaire-trésorier de l’Association des Professeur-e-s de Français des Universités et Collèges Canadiens (APFUCC) et co-éditeur de la revue Mosaic. William Greaves & al. (Glendon), Bonobo Human Discourse, Co-organized with Glendon Linguistics Club Progress report from the Bonobo-Human Discourse Research Group Bill Greaves will outline the importance of RAY funding in achieving Glendon’s goal of involving our undergraduate students in research. Glendon student will show and discuss brief clips of interactions between humans and bonobo apes.  These clips are contained in an archive of material made available to the group by the Great Ape Trust of Iowa for research purposes. The purpose of the discussion is to explain why it is reasonable to pursue the systematic investigation of ape-human conversations, which is in progress during this academic year. The students will also talk about their experience meeting the apes in DesMoines, and about their recent meeting with Sara Gruen, author of Ape House, a novel based on the bonobos at the Great Ape Trust. Emeritus Professors Jim Benson and Bill Greaves published Functional Dimensions of Ape – Human Discourse.  The students are linguistics majors at Glendon.

Winter Lectures 2011

Reine Meylaerts (CETRA, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) January 12, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. – Room 317 (Senior Common Room), York Hall, Glendon Campus “Multilingualism and Translation Studies”

Philip Comeau and Rick Grimm (DLLL, York University) January 27, 2011 at 5 p.m. – Room 317 (Senior Common Room), York Hall, Glendon Campus The periphrastic and inflected futures: a comparative study of Laurentian and Acadian varieties Louis-Jean Calvet, Institut de la Francophonie (Université d’Aix-en-Provence) February 8, 2011 at 5 p.m. – Room 317 (Senior Common Room), York Hall, Glendon Campus Le baromètre des langues Theresa Hyun (Humanities, York University, RGTTC) April 13, 2011 at 2 p.m. – Glendon Hall 102 –  Glendon Campus “Translating in the Workers’ Paradise: The Perception of Foreign Literature in North Korea from the Late 1940s to the 1960s” Wladyslaw Cichocki (UNB/Fredericton) March 24, 2011 at 5 p.,m. – Room 562 Ross Building St – Keele Campus Retention of traditional phonetic features in Acadian French Co-organized with York University’s Department of Literatures, Languages and Linguistics Francis Mus de l’Université Lille 3 (FR) – KU Leuven (BE) May 24, 2011 at 6 p.m. – Room 317 (York Hall, Senior Commun Room) – Glendon Campus Les foyers d »Un Canadien errant » : L’écriture de Leonard Cohen tiraillée entre particularisme et universalisme

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Reine Meylaerts (CETRA, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)“Multilingualism and Translation Studies”  Multilingualism, commonly defined as « the co-presence of two or more languages (in a society, text or individual) » (Grutman 2009a: 182) is inextricably linked with translation. Translation is not taking place in between monolingual realities but rather within multilingual realities. In multilingual cultures (assuming there are such things as monolingual cultures), translation contributes to creating culture, in mutual exchange, resistance, interpenetration. However, it’s only recently that the complex connections between multilingualism and translation have gained attention from Translation Studies. In my lecture, I will reflect upon the complex but fundamental relations between translation and multilingualism at the level of texts, people, institutions and societies and on the implications for Translation Studies. At the level of texts, I will show how functional descriptive analyses of multilingualism in translation may improve our understanding of identity construction and of cultural dynamics in past and present multilingual and multicultural contexts. At the level of people, I will focus on multilingual writing and self-translation and their implications for Translation Studies. In multilingual institutions, written and oral communication processes are for the largest part multilingual and the object of multidirectional translation. We thus need open definitions of translation for the description and explanation of these and other processes of translation in multilingual institutions. These definitions can lead us to an understanding of the basic but often hidden decisions in multilingual institutions concerning translation, language policy, identity and ideology. Finally, translation and multilingualism are also inextricably connected at the societal level. What strategies national, regional or local authorities deploy for communicating with their citizens is a question of key importance for both the authorities and the citizens. The elaboration of fair linguistic and translational policies remains an unexplored research domain with important challenges for translation studies. It raises the need for a further exploration of the link between translation and political, ethnic and ethic questions within today’s multilingual societies. It places Translation Studies in front of its ethical responsibilities, responsibilities which are shared with political and social sciences, anthropology, sociolinguistics etc. Reine Meylaerts is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) and Director of the Center for Translation Studies (CETRA). Her research interests include the theory, methodology and historiography of intercultural relationships in multilingual societies. She is the author of L’Aventure flamande de la Revue Belge. Langues, littératures et cultures dans l’entre-deux-guerres (2004, P.I.E.-Peter Lang) and the co-author of Littératures en Belgique / Literaturen in België. Diversités culturelles et dynamiques littéraires / Culturele diversiteit en literaire dynamiek (2004, P.I.E.-Peter Lang). Dr. Meylaerts also guest-edited a special issue of Target (18 :1, 2006) on Heterolingualism in/and Translation. She is member of the International Advisory Board of Target, member of the EST Board (European Society for Translation Studies), and member of the editorial board of “Repräsentationen, Representations, Représentations. Translating across Cultures and Societies” (LIT Book Series). ****** Philip Comeau and Rick Grimm (DLLL, York University) The periphrastic and inflected futures: a comparative study of Laurentian and Acadian varieties This presentation offers a comparison of the expression of future temporal reference in two distinct varieties of spoken Canadian French. Using apparent-time data, we examine the variation between two main forms, namely the periphrastic future (1) and the inflected future (2): Il va y en avoir qui vont lui parler en anglais. (H2-50) ‘There are some who are going to speak to him in English’. Je viendrai te voir demain avant-midi. (GC-18) ‘I’ll come see you tomorrow afternoon’. Our analysis is based on data from a variety of spoken Laurentian French (Hawkesbury, Ontario) and a variety of spoken Acadian French (Baie Sainte-Marie, Nova Scotia). These varieties, both in contact with English, are spoken in communities where French is a majority language, despite its status as a minority language in each province. Our presentation will begin with an introduction of the two future forms followed by an overview of previous studies on future temporal reference conducted in Ontario, Québec, and Acadie. For each community we then present the results of the quantitative analyses, which assess the contribution of a number of linguistic factors (e.g. sentential polarity, adverbial specification) and social factors (e.g. age, sex) to variant selection. By way of conclusion, we discuss our findings more generally and also highlight the similarities and differences identified in the data analysis. For instance, we note that sentential polarity, the most robust linguistic factor in Laurentian varieties of French, has no significant effect in Acadian French, whereas other factors, such as grammatical person, have similar effects in both varieties. Moreover, in Baie Sainte-Marie the inflected future is favoured nearly three times more (38%) than in Hawkesbury (14%), a finding that is consistent with previous work. Philip Comeau is a 4th year PhD student in the Linguistics & Applied Linguistics program of York University. His research focuses on morphosyntactic variation and linguistic change in spoken Acadian French. He presented papers at several colloquia and published articles in the Canadian Journal of Linguistics (with Ruth King) and the University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics . Rick Grimm is a 3rd PhD candidate in Linguistics & Applied Linguistics program of York University. His research focus is in the field of sociolinguistics, with particular emphasis on grammatical variation and change in spoken Ontarian French. He presented papers at several colloqui and published a paper on future temporal reference in the Journal of French Language Studies (with Terry Nadasdi) as well as in the University of Pennsylvania Working Paper in Linguistics.

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Louis-Jean Calvet,  Institut de la Francophonie (Université d’Aix-en-Provence) Le baromètre des langues Lorsque l’on s’interroge sur l’importance relative des langues du monde on pense toujours au même critère, celui du nombre de leurs locuteurs: quelle est la langue la plus parlée au monde? Combien de gens parlent cette langue?, etc. Mais cette approche pose un double problème. D’une part, le décompte des locuteurs n’est pas une science exacte et les différentes sources disponibles donnent des chiffres différents et ne parviennent pas toujours aux mêmes classements. D’autre part, de nombreux autres facteurs jouent un rôle dans la détermination du « poids » des langues : leur présence sur Internet, leurs fonctions officielles, le poids économique et culturel des pays dans lesquels elles sont parlées, etc. C’est à partir de ces interrogations qu’a été conçu le baromètre des langues du monde : une classification des langues (pour l’instant celles qui ont plus de 5 millions de locuteurs) à partir du traitement statistique de leur comportement vis à vis de dix facteurs. Dans la version mise en ligne, il est attribué par défaut à chacun de ces facteurs la même valeur, mais les utilisateurs peuvent établir leur propre classement en modulant cette valeur grâce à un curseur de pondération. Parmi les usages possibles du baromètre, il faut souligner sa fonction heuristique, l’observation des changements dans les rapports entre les langues et  son utilisation comme aide à la décision en matière de politique linguistique. Né en Tunisie, Louis-Jean Calvet est professeur à l’Université de Provence. Détenteur d’un doctorat en linguistique de la Sorbonne et d’un doctorat ès lettres et sciences humaines de l’Université de Paris V, il a acquis une grande notoriété par ses nombreux travaux en sociologie du langage et sociolinguistique. Il a enseigné dans de nombreuses universités de par le monde, notamment en Afrique francophone (Algérie, Maroc, Niger, Congo et Mali), aux Etats-Unis, en Argentine et en Espagne. Il est l’auteur de plus de vingt livres traduits dans une vingtaine de langues, dont Etudes sur Roland Barthes et les Symboles (Payot, 1973), Pour et contre Saussure (Payot, 1975), Les Politiques Linguistiques (Payot, 1987), Histoires des Mots: Etymologies Européennes (Payot, 1993), Georges Brassens (Payot, 1993), Sociolinguistique Urbaine (Payot, 1994), Histoire de l’Ecriture (Plon, 1996), L’Ecologie des Langues Mondiales (Plon, 1999), et Linguistique et Colonialisme (Payot, 2002). NB. Professor Louis-Jean Calvet will be giving a talk on related topics: ‘Le poids des langues à l’heure de la mondialisation’ at Alliance française de Toronto, (Gallerie Pierre Léon), on Wednesday the 9th at 6h30 PM.

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Theresa Hyun (Humanities, York University, RGTTC) “Translating in the Workers’ Paradise: The Perception of Foreign Literature in North Korea from the Late 1940s to the 1960s” The period form the late 1940s through the mid 1960s saw the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the struggles for political and social control. This was a time of relative openness in the literary world when translation was emphasized both as a means of communication with foreign cultures and as a way of enriching the national language and culture. This paper focuses on an area unexplored by scholars, the translation and reception of Western European literary works, particularly from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s. The early 1960s saw the publication of the first volumes of Sergye Munhak Sonjip (Anthology of World Literature), which focused on translations of writers such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron. The situation of North Korean translators is illustrated by Im Hak-Su, a scholar of English literature who published literary translations, as well as poetry, during the Japanese colonial period in the 1930s and 40s. In the early 1950s he went to North Korea where he wrote literary criticism and translated English authors including Shakespeare. While there is widespread acknowledgement of the importance of Soviet literature during the formative phase of DPRK culture, this paper provides a preliminary exploration of the role of translations of Western European works by examining some examples of the translation of Im Hak-Su and other translators. This research is part of a project which studies the constraints governing the work of translators and the roles they played in forming the cultural policies of the emerging socialist society.   Theresa Hyun lived for many years in South Korea, where she taught at Kyung Hee University. She has been teaching Korean studies at York University since 1992. She has numerous publications on Korean literature and culture including Writing Women in Korea: Translation and Feminism in the Colonial Period (University of Hawaii Press).

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Wladyslaw Cichocki (UNB/Fredericton) Retention of traditional phonetic features in Acadian French Co-organized with York University’s Department of Literatures, Languages and Linguistics

Retention of traditional phonetic features in Acadian French

Acadian French has a number of unique traditional features.  Sociolinguistic studies carried out at the community level have shown that external factors such as social network and speaker attitudes play a significant role in the retention of these forms.  This paper studies the retention of these features across a large geographic space, in localities that are spread across the three Maritime Provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island).  The traditional phonetic features analyzed include aspirate /h/, ouisme, palatalization and vowel diphthongizations.  The paper describes the geographic distribution of these features and discusses socio-historical and demographic factors that explain, at least in part, the considerable variability that they display.   Wladyslaw Cichocki is professor of French and linguistics at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton NB.  His research interests include dialectology, variationist sociolinguistics and quantitative methods in linguistics.  He is co-author of Atlas linguistique du vocabulaire maritime acadien (Presses de l’Université Laval).

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Francis Mus de l’Université Lille 3 (FR) – KU Leuven (BE) Les foyers d' »Un Canadien errant » : L’écriture de Leonard Cohen tiraillée entre particularisme et universalisme Comme hypothèse, je pose que l’œuvre littéraire et musicale de Leonard Cohen est fondamentalement déterminée par une tension entre un attachement local (p. ex. canadien, juif, etc.) et une aspiration internationaliste (américaine, européenne, voire bouddhiste). Dans mon exposé, je tenterai d’illustrer et d’explorer cette piste par le biais de quelques analyses textuelles, afin de montrer comment (l’écriture de) Cohen se cherche un espace intermédiaire, sorte d’entre-deux. Ainsi, une manifestation concrète de cette tension générale est le statut des langues. J’aborderai notamment la question du plurilinguisme à l’intérieur de l’œuvre cohénienne, tout comme l’histoire fascinante des traductions françaises (destinées à la France et au Québec) de quelques-uns de ses livres. Francis Mus a obtenu son doctorat en littérature à l’Université catholique de Leuven. Sa thèse de doctorat porte sur le statut de la littérature et de l’internationalisme dans un corpus de revues belges d’avant-garde pendant l’entre-deux-guerres. Il s’intéresse également à la littérature francophone contemporaine et à des questions de traduction et de plurilinguisme.

Lectures 2010-2011

Glendon Linguistics Club Meetings of the GLC (2010-11) (Note that several of the meetings of GLC will feature talks related to Language Contact Studies) Special events Five stages in a linguistics career Bonobo Human Discourse Research Group Bonobo research press release

Colloquia

Second Interdisciplinary conference on translation studies

5 February 2011