7th February 2024 12:20 PM

PhonDAWG - Phonetics Lab Data Analysis Working Group

Fengyue will present her forced alignment work.

8th February 2024 04:30 PM

Linguistics Colloquium And ASL Linguistics Lecture Series Speaker: Cindy Office to speak on Acculturating into Deaf Communities as Adults

The Cornell Linguistics Department proudly presents Linguistics Colloquium and ASL Linguistics Lecture Series Speaker Dr. Cindy Officer, Senior Lecturer at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf,  Rochester Institute of Technology.. 

Dr. Officer's talk is titled:  Acculturating into Deaf Communities as Adults

ASL/English interpretation will be provided.

Abstract:

Dr. Officer will share her phenomenological study on the lived experiences of Deaf and Hard of Hearing adults with hearing loss who, in adulthood, acculturated into Deaf communities that use ASL. Officer will discuss a structure that revealed acculturation started when the participants interacted with other members of the Deaf community while learning some signs.

For ten participants, the desire to access communication and to connect with others like themselves eventually made acculturation an intrinsic investment. Acculturation stabilized when the participants were able to adeptly moderate interaction within and outside a Deaf community.  

A descriptive phenomenological structure revealed seven essential constituents for acculturation:

• (a) DECODE-VISUAL,
• (b) GHOST,
• (c) UPROOT,
• (d) CONFUSE DEAF ME,
• (e) PERCEIVE SIMILAR,
• (f) LONG ACCESS,
•  (g) MANAGE DEAF AND HEARING SPHERES.  

Each essential constituent will be described as a composite and within a structure.

Bio:

Cindy Officer is a senior lecturer who teaches writing to deaf and hard of hearing students at the National Technical Institute of the Deaf at RIT. She comes from a family with many members who have some form of hearing loss.

In a broad sense, she has lived in a geographically defined Deaf community for more than 36 years. For added context, she spent these years at Gallaudet University - a liberal arts college for deaf and hard of hearing people - first as a student then as an educator and administrator.  

She frequently wondered why some adults with a hearing loss found their way to a Deaf community while others did not, akin to Barbie wondering why some women in the Real World did not ascribe to the ways of Barbieland. Her dissertation work identifies a foundation that an adult with a hearing loss may need to transition.  

Cindy holds a doctorate in postsecondary and adult education and a master’s in administration. When not teaching, Cindy enjoys reading, playing card and board games, traveling, and spending time with her family.

9th February 2024 01:00 PM

Dr. Edith Aldridge to speak on Indigenous (Austronesian) Language Endangerment and Revitalization in Taiwan

The Cornell East Asia Program & the Cornell Department of Linguistics proudly present Dr. Edith Aldridge,  Research Fellow at  Academia Sinica, Taiwan. 

Dr. Aldridge will give a talk on  Indigenous (Austronesian) Language Endangerment and Revitalization in Taiwan, with an introduction by Dr. John Whitman of Cornell's Department of Linguistics 

Abstract:

Taiwan is the homeland of the Austronesian language family, speakers of Proto-Austronesian having migrated there from southeastern China roughly 6,000 years ago before proceeding to populate the Philippines, Indonesia/Malaysia, Madagascar, and the Pacific islands.

As many as twenty distinct languages were spoken in Taiwan at the beginning of foreign contact in the 17th century. Now a third of these are extinct, and the rest are endangered.

The first of these to decline were languages spoken in lowland areas in contact first with the small Dutch presence in southern Taiwan in the mid-17th century and subsequently with waves of Chinese migration in the 18th and 19th centuries. Intensive contact with highland Austronesians began with Japanese colonization during the first half the 20th century and continued under the Nationalist government from 1945 until the lifting of martial law in 1987.

In 2001, the government inaugurated a revitalization program with the hope of invigorating the by then already endangered Austronesian languages, for example by introducing ethnic language education into local school curriculums.

This presentation sketches the history of foreign contact, government language policies (particularly in the 20th century), revitalization efforts, and some outcomes of these policies and programs.

Bio:

Dr. Aldridge is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica in Taiwan.  Her research focuses mainly on comparative and diachronic syntax, with language concentrations in Austronesian, Chinese, and Japanese.

12th February 2024 12:20 PM

Phonetics Lab Meeting

Chloe will lead a discussion of Articulatory and acoustic studies on domain-initial strengthening in Korean, by Taehong Cho and Patricia A. Keating - make sure you have read it.