History

On July 1, 1968, C.I.J.M. Stuart (Ian) was appointed Professor and Head of a new Linguistics Program at the University of Alberta, which was then part of the Department of Germanic Languages and General Linguistics in the Faculty of Arts and was housed in the Old Arts Building. At Stuart's initiative, this Linguistics Program became established as the Department of Linguistics within the Faculty of Science in 1969, given that it would adopt an overall experimental orientation, addressing the need for the empirical study of the psychology of language and the production and perception of speech, which was a quite novel idea for linguistics departments at the time.

In addition to Stuart, the original academic staff consisted of:

• Ann Crawford (Assistant Professor)
• Lois Marckworth [later Stanford] (Assistant Professor)
• Gary Prideaux (Assistant Professor)
• Bill Baker (Associate Professor)
• Bruce Derwing (Assistant Professor)
• John Hogan (Assistant Professor) added in 1970
• Anton Rozsypal (Assistant Professor) with Zinny Bond in 1971

A picture of eight of this early "Group of Nine" is available for viewing in Assinboia Hall 4-51. This early complement of nine faculty members remained largely unchanged for the next several years until Stuart left in 1976 after having been replaced by Gary Prideaux as Chair in 1975.

The Department was first housed on the 7th floor of the General Services Building, which it shared with the Department of Slavic Languages. A very advantageous feature of this location was the presence of a large lunchroom area at the eastern end, where students and staff could conveniently meet with one another at any time, day or night. It was also a great convenience at the time that the University Computing Services were located on the first floor of this same building. At that time, all mainframe computer programs were run from stacks of punched cards, rather than from commands sent on line, and it was a blessing not to have to lug these carefully ordered stacks of cards across icy campus streets to drop them off, like most other departments.

Academic Staff Changes

Loss: Zinny Bond (1974)

Graduate Alumni

MSc (5): 

• P. Lynkowsky (1970)
• P. Harris (1970)
• W. Russell (1973)
• A. Whitehurst (1974)
• S. Innes (1974)

PhD (7):

• D. Watkins (1970)
• F-H. Wong (1970)
• D.G. Frantz (1970)
• J.K. Chambers (1970)
• P.J. Fletcher (1973)
• P.G. Patel (1974)
• C.M. Andrew (1974)

E.-D. Cook was the first recipient of a PhD degree in Linguistics from the University of Alberta, but this was in 1968, when the program was still part of the Department of Germanic Languages and General Linguistics.

Major Accomplishments

• A new curriculum was established, with 17 undergraduate and 9 graduate-level courses
• Degrees in both Arts and Science were created:
  • BA: core training in descriptive and theoretical linguistics
  • BSc: basic scientific orientation with a concentration in linguistics
• Total number of undergraduate "majors" in BA/BSc programs: 10-20 per year
• Approximately 300-500 student registrations per year
• Collaborative graduate program implemented, with students seen as "junior colleagues"
• New laboratories and facilities were created:
  • Phonetics Laboratory
  • Psycholinguistics Laboratory
  • Sound Recording Laboratory
  • Computer Laboratory
  • Electronics Workshop
  • Department Reading Room

Major Grants

1972 Derwing (PI) and Baker
Canada Council Research Grant (>$3,000)
Rule Learning and the English Inflections

1974 Derwing (PI) and Baker
Canada Council Research Grant (>$4,000)
On the learning of English morphological rules

For a number of complicated, but appropriate and ultimately beneficial, reasons, the Department elected to moved back to the Faculty of Arts in 1985, and this was made official in 1987. The decision was based on having a closer association with related disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.

Academic Staff Changes

Gains:

• Terry Nearey (1976 [Assistant Professor])
• Matthew Dryer (1979 [Visiting Assistant Professor])
• James Patrie (1979 [Assistant Professor])
• Leo Mos (1985 [Assistant Professor], Joint Appointment w/Psychology)

Losses:

• Ian Stuart (1976)
• Ann Crawford (1976)
• James Patrie (1980)

Graduate Alumni

MSc (26):

• K. McCarthy (1975)
• B.F. Millar (1976)
• G.T. Rowe (1977)
• R.H. Smyth (1977)
• J.F. Pelletier (1978)
• C. Fletcher (1978)
• B-H. Choi (1978)
• B.F. Doherty (1978)
• T. Derwing (1979)
• P. Assmann (1979)
• M. Ehrensberger-Dow (1981)
• P. Hunter (1981)
• B. Connell (1982)
• T. Welz (1982)
• M. Kolic (1983)
• G. Krishnan (1983)
• J. Schwegel (1984)
• K. Look-Howery (1984)
• G.C. Laurell (1984)
• T. Reeve (1984)
• C. Riches (1984)
• R.A. Harris (1985)
• S-L. Cheung-Denning (1986)
• K. Tiede (1986)
• M.L. Smith (1987)
• M.J. Munro (1987)

PhD (19):

• J.C.L. Ingram (1975)
• R.M. Cena (1976)
• J.R. Reed (1977)
• T. Hull (1978)
• J-S. Lin (1979)
• D. Stevenson (1979)
• P. Lynkowsky (1980)
• M. Gante (1981)
• G. Magnera (1982)
• N. Itagaki (1984)
• R.H. Smyth (1985)
• P. Assmann (1985)
• S.W. Cho (1985)
• D.P. Fearon (1985)
• S.E. Shammass (1985)
• H-S. Wang (1985)
• T. Derwing (1987)
• M. Kawashima (1987)
• M. Ehrensberger-Dow (1987)

Post-Doctoral Fellows

• Brian Joseph (1978-1979)
• Izaak Walton Killam Fellowship

Major Accomplishments

• Increase in the number of student registrations per year (late 1970's = 550-750)
• Course offerings expanded to approximately 50 courses offered on a regular basis
• Creation of Special Session courses (evening, Spring, and Summer courses), as well as Off-Campus courses offered through Red Deer College
• Four graduate student scholarships awarded in 1980/81:
  • SSHRC Fellowship
  • Izaak Walton Killam graduate Fellowship
  • Province of Alberta Scholarship
  • Commonwealth Fellowship
• Detailed design of newly acquired office space in Assiniboia Hall (majority of fourth floor) in 1979-1981 with the move official in 1983
• Conference on Perspectives in Experimental Linguistics, October 1978 [n = 70+]
• Western Conference on Linguistics held in 1982

Major Grants

1976 Derwing
SSHRC Leave Fellowship (>$4,000)

1977 Derwing
National Science Council of the ROC (>$4,000 US)
Project on English for students of science & technology in the ROC

1977-79 Hogan (PI), Nearey and Rozsypal
SSHRC Grant (>$15,000)
Normative study on English initial consonants

1978 Prideaux
SSHRC Conference Grant ($1,000)
Perspectives in Experimental Linguistics

1980 Stanford
SSHRC Grant ($2,500)
Lexico-semantic structure in anterior & posterior aphasic patients

1981 Prideaux (PI) and Baker
SSHRC Grant (>$8,000)
Perceptual Strategies & Relative Clause Processing

Stanford (1988-1990 and 1997-2001)
Libben (1993-1997 and 2001-2003)
[AC: John Hogan 1990-1993]

Academic Staff Changes

Gains:

• Sally Rice (1990 [Assistant Professor])
• Gary Libben (1993 [Associate Professor])
• Joseph Pater (1998 [Assistant Professor])
• Johanne Paradis (2000 [Assistant Professor])
• David Beck (2000 [Assistant Professor])
• Robert Kirchner (2002 [Assistant Professor])
• Bernard Rochet (Joint Appointment with MLCS),
• Kyril T. Holden (Joint Appointment with MLCS),
• Grace Wiebe (Visiting Assistant Professor),
• John and Manjari Ohala (Visiting Professors), 1991-1993

Losses:

• Matthew Dryer (1991)
• Bill Baker (1991)
• Anton Rozsypal (1995)
• Bruce Derwing (1997)
• Bernard L. Rochet (1997)
• Kyril Holden (1998)
• Gary Prideaux (2000)
• Lois Stanford (2001)
• Joseph Pater (2002)

Graduate Alumni

MSc (36):

• D.J. Dennis (1988)
• J.L. Adlington (1988)
• S. Bellan (1989)
• P.L. Bergen (1989)
• K. Yjosvold-Duncan (1989)
• J.E. Andruski (1990)
• S. Currah (1990)
• S.R. Merino (1990)
• L. van Ryk (1991)
• K. Dolinsky (1992)
• K. Hayden (1992)
• B. Karpinski (1992)
• S. Storoschuk (1992)
• K.S. Watson (1992)
• R.A. Dyck (1993)
• A. Kross (1993)
• R. Appiah-Padi (1994)
• D. Williams (1994)
• K. Kabata (1995)
• M. Kiefte (1996)
• G. Skrypiczajko (1997)
• K. Sato (1998)
• H. Zhu (1998)
• S. McEwen (1998)
• L. Sabourin (1998)
• D. Elliot (1999)
• W. Wikeley (1999)
• J. Peters (1999)
• I. Wallace (1999)
• M. Manegre (2001)
• H. Yin (2001)
• C-L. Zhang (2001)
• R. Akiyama (2002)
• A. Akamoto (2002)
• C. Suyal (2002)
• Y. Meldrum (2003)

PhD (20):

• B. Jacennik (1990)
• M-M.Pu (1991)
• M.J. Munro (1992)
• G. Wiebe (1992)
• Y-H. Wang (1994)
• E.K. Abraham (1995)
• Y.B. Yoon (1995)
• W-D. Li (1996)
• F. Chen (1997)
• M. Gibson (1998)
• P. Lesetar (1998)
• M. Blekher (2000)
• K. Kabata (2000)
• D. Williams (2000)
• M. Kiefte (2000)
• G. Thomson (2000)
• Sh-J. Ji (2001)
• S. Currah (2002)
• X. Zhang (2002)
• C. Guilbault (2002)

Post-Doctoral Fellows

• Roberto G. de Almeida (1997-1999, under Gary Libben), MCRI funded
• Hotze Rullman (1997-1999), Izaak Walton Killam Fellowship
• Andrea Krott (2001-2002, under Gary Libben)

Major Accomplishments

• Expanded graduate and undergraduate course offerings
• The Canadian Indigenous Languages and Literacy Development Institute (CILLDI) started in 2000, as a joint initiative between the Faculties of Arts, Education, and Native Studies. Sally Rice was a founding member of this institute.
• CFI funding led the development of the Centre for Comparative Psycholinguistics (CCP), which consisted of an on-campus laboratory and a mobile lab. Renovations began in 2002, and opened in 2003.
• International Conference on Speech and Language Processing, Banff Convention Centre, 1992 [n=200+]
• The Department of Linguistics' 25th Anniversary Conference in October 1994 [30+ alumni]
• Athapaskan/Dene Languages Conference held in June 1996 [50+ participants]
• Inaugural 1st International Conference on the Mental Lexicon in 1998, and the 3rd International Conference on the Mental Lexicon in 2002, both held in Banff
• 7th Workshop on Structure and Constituency in the Languages of the Americas, held in March 2002 [n=100+]
• Research Revelations in March 1995
• Department Working Papers 1994
• Prideaux, Derwing, and Nearey all held McCalla Professorships
• Prideaux and Libben received undergraduate teaching awards
• Stanford awarded M3 Teaching Fellowship
• In 1998, two graduate students received SSHRC scholarships, two held provincial fellowships, and two held University of Alberta fellowships

Major Grants

1988-90 Derwing
SSHRC Research Grant (>$40,000)
A cross-linguistic experimental investigation of syllable structure

1991-94 Derwing and Nearey
SSHRC Research Grant (>$150,000)
The structure and organization of the mental lexicon: A cross-linguistic experimental study

1993-96 Nearey
SSHRC Research Grant (>$70,000)
Phonetic, phonological and lexical context effects in speech perception

1993-96 Prideaux and Hogan
SSHRC Research Grant ($80,000)
Cognitive and social factors in the organization of discourse

1994 Derwing
Ministry of Education of the ROC (Taiwan) ($5,000 US)
Phonological units in Taiwanese (Minnan)

1994-96 Derwing (PI), Libben and Nearey
SSHRC Research Grant (>$70,000)
Structural aspects of lexical representations: A cross-linguistic experimental study

1994-97 Derwing, Libben and Nearey
SSHRC Research Grant (>$70,000)
Morphology and the mental lexicon

1995-01 Libben (PI) and Derwing
SSHRC MCRI (>$1,000,000)
A cross-linguistic study of the architecture of the mental lexicon: Issues of representation and access

1996-99 Nearey and Rochet
SSHRC Research Grant (>$100,000)
A pattern recognition approach to phonetic and phonological effects in speech recognition

1996-99 Prideaux
SSHRC Research Grant (>$70,000)
Organization and change in narrative discourse representations

1998-01 Derwing and Nearey
SSHRC Research Grant (>$60,000)
Testing the psychological status of phonological units

1998-01 Pater
SSHRC Research Grant (>$60,000)
Lexical representations in phonological acquisition & phonological theory

1999-05 Rice
SSHRC CURA (>$900,000)
The Daghida Project: Language Research and Revitalization in a First Nations Community

1995-97 Rice
University of Antwerp (>$100,000)
The Representation of Prepositional Semantics

2000-02 Derwing
Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation (Taiwan) ($40,000 US)
In search of the fundamental units of Chinese: Testing non-literate speakers of Taiwanese and Mandarin

2001-04 Beck
SSHRC Research Grant (>$100,000)
Upper Nexaca Field Project: The Documentation of an Endangered Indigenous Language

2002 Beck
Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Individual Research Grant (>$25,000)
Upper Necaxa Field Project

2002-05 Paradis
SSHRC Research Grant (>$200,000)
Differentiating between the Language of Children with SLI and Children Learning a L2

2002-05 Paradis
Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Establishment ($180,000)
Normal and Impaired Expressive and Receptive Language Development in First and Second Language Learning Children

2002 Libben
CFI (>$500,000)
Centre for Comparative Psycholinguistics

2002-08 Libben
SSHRC MCRI ($2,500,000)
Words in the Mind, Words in the Brain

Academic Staff Changes

Gains:

• John Newman (2003 [Professor])
• Marina Bekher (2007 [Faculty Lecturer])
• R. Harald Baayen (2008 [Professor])
• Patrick Bolger (2008 [Assistant Professor])
• Terry Nadasdi (2008 [Professor])
• Anne-Michelle Tessier (2008 [Assistant Professor])
• Benjamin Tucker (2007 [Assistant Professor])
• Antti Arppe (2012 [Assistant Professor])
• Juhani Järvikivi (2013 [Associate Professor])
• Herbert Colston (2013 [Professor])

Losses:

• Leo Mos (2008)
• John Hogan (2008)
• Gary Libben (2010)
• R. Harald Baayen (2012)
• Patrick Bolger (2013)

Graduate Alumni

MSc (32):

• A. Popescu (2004)
• J. De la Mora (2004)
• D. Haber (2004)
• S. Shulist (2004)
• P. Kukanu (2005)
• F. Hudu (2005)
• L. Teddiman (2006)
• J. Holden (2006)
• A. Ivanova (2006)
• J-X. Lin (2006)
• I. Madeira (2007)
• D. Pawlina-Pinto (2008)
• C. Cox (2008)
• M. Krauss (2008)
• T. Kryuchkova (2009)
• J. Bouchard-Cross (2009)
• Zhen (Mark) Chen (2009)
• V. Varela (2009)
• R-T. Jia (2010)
• A. Vickerman (2010)
• K. Geeraert (2010)
• J-L. Mao (2010)
• M. Sims (2010)
• T. Sorenson-Duncan (2010)
• A. Mardhani-Bayne (2011)
• E. Braun (2012)
• A. Mateu-Martin (2012)
• Sz-M. Yiu (2012)
• G. Aiton (2012)
• K. Danielson (2012)
• Ch-Ch. Sun (2012)
• R. Yanaky (2013)

PhD (19):

• M. Schirmeier (2004)
• G.S. Morrison (2006)
• M. Sinor (2006)
• S. Navarro-Ortega (2007)
• M. Thiering (2007)
• R. Thomson (2007)
• A. Tremblay (2009)
• K. Nault (2010)
• J. Peters (2010)
• H. Yin (2010)
• T. Zdorenko (2011)
• F. Foroodi-Nejad (2011)
• G. Columbus (2012)
• S. Kanu (2012)
• L. Teddiman (2012)
• D. Abdulrahim (2013)
• S. Barreda (2013)
• J. Dilts (2013)
• K. Miwa (2013)

Post-Doctoral Fellows

• Rachel Kemps (2004-2005, under Gary Libben)
• Andrea Wilhelm (2004-2005, under Sally Rice)
• Susanne Borgwaldt (2004-2006, under Gary Libben)
• Patrick Bolger (2005-2007, under Gary Libben)
• Alessandra Riccardi (2007, under Gary Libben)
• Elma Blom (2008-2011, under Johanne Paradis), Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellow
• Antti Arppe (2011-2012, under Harald Baayen & John Newman),
• Kara Hawthorne (2013-2015, under Juhani Järvikivi & Benjamin Tucker)

Major Accomplishments

• Increase in student enrolments: 900+ undergraduate student enrolments per term
• Development of online learning resources for introductory linguistics classes
• Expansion to the southern half of the third floor in Assiniboia Hall in 2008
• Development of additional laboratories and research space in 2008:
  • Alberta Phonetics Lab
  • Language Documentation Research Cluster
• Contracted license and space for Linguistics Abstracts Online, an online resource for over 63,000 abstracts from 600+ journals
• Collaboration with the Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR), and the creation of multiple corpora
• Acquisition of ICE-Canada (the International Corpus of English, Canadian component), which was briefly housed in HUB Mall
• Introduction of the Community Linguist Certificate in 2008 offered through CILLDI
• CILLDI Office became housed in the Linguistics Department in 2009
• Online SONA system for participant booking implemented in 2008
• Sold the CCP Mobile Lab in 2009
• Blekher received the Kathleen W. Klawe Prize for Excellence in Teaching of Large Classes in 2005
• Rice received a Landrex Distinguished Professorship (2007-2011)
• Rice received a McCalla Professorship in 2008
• Paradis received a Faculty of Arts Research Award in 2009
• Linguistics' Graduate Students Association (LGSA) founded in 2009
• Graduate Student Teaching Awards:
  • Dorothy Pawlina Pinto in 2007
  • Vincent Porretta in 2012
• 7th Conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse, & Language, hosted in October 2004 [n=200+]
• Athapaskan/Dene Languages Conference (held at Cold Lake First Nation) in July 2008 [n=100+]
• 6th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, held in Banff in 2008
• Department of Linguistics' 40th Anniversary Conference in 2009
• We All Have Holes in Our Stories: Dene Migration Symposium I, held at the Tsuut'ina Nation and University of Alberta Calgary Centre in September 2009 [n=75+]
• 9th American Association of Corpus Linguistics, hosted in October 2009 [n=150+]
• 12th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, hosted in June 2013 [n=500+]
• Athapaskan/Dene Languages Conference, held at Tsuut'ina Nation in June 2013 [n=150+]

Major Grants

2004-08 Beck
SSHRC Standard Research Grant (>$200,000)
Structure and Acquisition of Upper Nexaca Totonac

2003-05 Derwing and Libben
Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation (Taiwan) ($32,000 US)
The parameters of compound processing in Chinese

2004-07 Kirchner
SSHRC Standard Research Grant (>$40,000)
How we learn to speak: A phonological exemplar-based model of learning

2006-09 Paradis
SSHRC Standard Research Grant (>$100,000)
The role of input in language acquisition: Evidence from French-English bilingual children

2006-09 Paradis
CLLRNet ($150,000)
A resource database of English language measures from minority children learning English as a second language

2006-11 Rice
Landrex Distinguished Professorship Award ($250,000)

2007-10 Rice
Canadian Heritage (>$400,000)
Community Linguist Certificate

2007-10 Newman
SSHRC Standard Research Grant ($90,000)
ICE Canada and English Collostructions

2008-10 Libben and Derwing
SSHRC Standard Research Grant (>$70,000)
The role of lexical subunits in the processing of complex words

2008-12 Beck
SSHRC General Research Grant (>$125,00)
The Upper Necaxa Field Project: Documenting the oral traditions and acquisition of an endangered indigenous language

2008-12 Beck
SSHRC General Research Grant (>$450,000)
Upper Necaxa Totonac in context: Exploring the past, present, and future of Northern Totonac

2009-11 Paradis
ACCFCR (>$90,000)
Developing Resources for Language Assessment with ESL Children

2009-16 Paradis
Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Health Scholar Award ($35,000)
Oral language characteristics of ESL children: Developing resources for language assessment in a multilingual context

2009-11 Rice
National Science Foundation (>$200,000 US)
An Interactive Speech Atlas of Dene-Speaking Communities in the Mackenzie Basin

2010-13 Paradis
SSHRC Standard Research Grant (>$100,000)
Longitudinal Perspectives on Child English Second Language Acquisition

2011-14 Tucker
National Science Foundation (>$200,000 US)
Speech reduction across languages and dialects

2011-14 Tucker
SSHRC Insight Grant (>$60,000)
The role of phonetic reduction in spoken word recognition

2012-13 Paradis
CIHR (>$90,000)
Islands and Peninsulas: Speech and Language Skills of 4-year-old Children in Official Language Minority Communities

2013-16 Tucker
Teaching Learning Enhancement Fund, UofA (>$50,000)
Developing Interactive Online Lab Activities and an Online Course for Phonetics (LING 205)

Academic Staff Changes

Gains:

• Jordan Lachler (2015 [Assistant Professor])
• Anja Arnhold (2016 [Assistant Professor])
• Evangelia Daskalaki (2016 [Assistant Professor])
• Stephanie Archer (2017 [Assistant Professor])
• Melvatha Chee (2017 [Assistant Professor])
• Martín Guardado (2020 [Professor])

Losses:

• Robert Kirchner (2014)
• John Newman (2015)
• Terry Nearey (2015)
• Anne-Michelle Tessier (2017)
• Melvatha Chee (2019 [Assistant Professor])

Graduate Alumni

MSc (21):

• D. Aberra (2014)
• R. Podlubny (2014)
• Y. Tulpar (2014)
• K. Shantz (2014)
• D. Reisinger (2015)
• E. Kinney (2016)
• D. Thunder (2016)
• G. Feeny (2017)
• M. Keiley (2017)
• K. Morrow (2017)
• C. Ford (2018)
• K. Hernandez (2018)
• A. Toth (2018)
• F. Karaca (2018)
• M. Winters Difani (2019)
• K. Day (2019)
• P. Labonte (2020)
• W. Bao (2020)
• D. Cristerna Roman (2020)
• A. Barise (2021)
• S. Hedges (2021)

PhD (29):

• Ts-Y. Chen (2014)
• H. Pham (2014)
• G-T. Wang (2014)
• C. Cox (2015)
• D. Inglis (2015)
• V. Porretta (2015)
• C. Snoek (2015)
• K. Geeraert (2016)
• R-T. Jia (2016)
• M. Sims (2016)
• A. Phillips (2017)
• T. Sorenson Duncan (2017)
• C. Marrville (2017)
• L. Vasilyeva (2017)
• K. Lõo (2018)
• S. Shittu (2019)
• K. Penner (2019)
• O. Sammons (2019)
• K. Penner (2019)
• O. Sammons (2019)
• S. Shittu (2019)
• R. Puderbaugh (2019)
• A. Alarifi (2020)
• J. Hinnell (2020)
• I. Hubert Lyall (2020)
• Y. Mukai (2020)
• F. Nenadic (2020)
• K. Govinda Rajan (2021)
• B. Rusk (2021)

Post-Doctoral Fellows

• Dustin Bowers (2015-2017, under Antti Arppe)
• Daniel Brenner (2015-2017, under Benjamin Tucker)
• Vincent Porretta (2015-2017, under Juhani Järvikivi)
• Conor Snoek (2015-2017, under David Beck)
• Liam Blything (2018-2020, under Juhani Järvikivi)
• Adriana Soto-Corominas (2018-2020, under Johanne Paradis)
• Annika Nijveld, (2019-2020, under Benjamin Tucker)
• Ryan Podlubny (2019-2020, under Benjamin Tucker)

Major Accomplishments

• Development of online courses for introductory linguistics classes
• In 2017, Linguistics expanded into the north wing of the first floor in Assiniboia Hall
• Development of additional laboratories and research space:
  • Alberta Language Technology Lab in 2014
  • Heritage Languages Lab in 2019
  • Lab for Infant Language Learning in 2019
• Creation of the Spring Training in Experimental Psycholinguistics (STEP) in 2014, an annual week-long training program (with approx. 50+ student per year)
• Daskalaki received a Faculty of Arts' Undergraduate Teaching Award 2016
• Ianson received a Faculty of Arts' Outstanding Staff Award for 2016-2017
• Tucker received a Faculty of Arts' Research Excellence Award in 2017
• Paradis received a Faculty of Arts' Research Award in 2017
• Arnhold received a Faculty of Arts' Undergraduate Teaching Award 2018
• Järvikivi received a Faculty of Arts' Seminal Great Supervisor Award in 2018
• Beck received an Annual Killam Professorship, 2018-2019
• Paradis received a Faculty of Arts' Great Supervisor Award in 2019
• Discourse Expectations: Theoretical, Experimental, and Computational Approaches, held in 2015
• A National Vision for Indigenous Language Sustainability Workshop, held in July 2016 [n=200+]
• Mending the Holes in our Stories: Dene Migration Symposium II, held at the Tsuut'ina Nation in September 2017 [n=100+]
• 11th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, held in September 2018
• 50th Algonquian Conference, held in 2018
• LING 323 Linguistics and the Mind added in 2016 
• Colston co-founds the book series Figurative Thought and Language (John Benjamins) in 2016 and is  co-editor from 2016 to present
• Certificate in Language Documentation and Revitalization (CLADR) courses added in 2019:
  • LING 360 Indigenous Languages of the Americas
  • LING 361 Language Revitalization
  • LING 362 Language Documentation
  • LING 460 Practicum in Language Documentation and Revitalization
• Certificate in Language Documentation and Revitalization (CLADR) effective 2021
• Development of additional labs and research tools:
  • Prosody Lab in 2016
  • Child and Infant Research Participation portal in 2018
  • Little Magpies Lab for Infant Language Learning in 2019
  • Sound Studies Institute established SoundsOnline.ca in 2020
• The Linguistics Department hosted its 50th Anniversary conference in 2019
• Colston is editor of the journal Metaphor and Symbol (Taylor & Francis) from 2020 to present
• Paradis received the National Achievement Award (Prix national d’excellence) from the Canadian Linguistics Association/L’Association canadienne de linguistique in 2020
• Guardado received a McCalla Professorship for 2020-2023

Major Grants

2014-17 Arppe
SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (>$150,000)
21st Century Tools for Indigenous Languages

2014-19 Tucker
SSHRC Insight Grant (>$400,000)
The spoken English lexicon: Massive auditory lexical decision

2015-20 Paradis
SSHRC Insight Grant (>$300,000)
Age Effects in Child English Second Language Acquisition

2016-18 Beck
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (>$250,000)
Totonac Ethnobotanical Knowledge: Documenting Traditional Ecological Knowledge Across Communities

2018-19 Tucker
Library and Archive Canada ($100,000)
Smoke Signals, Satellites and Servers: Digitizing the ANCS Television Archive

2018-20 Tucker
Aboriginal Languages Initiative (>$90,000)
Digitizing the Ancestors

2018-20 Rosés Labrada
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (>$80,000)
Community-based documentation of Piaroa traditional knowledge, with special attention to dialectal and intergenerational variation

2018-22 Arnhold
SSHRC Insight Development Grant (>$74,000)
Speech prosody of new vs. shared information in Canadian English

2018-23 Beck
SSHRC Insight Grant (>$300,000)
Internal classification, linguistic ecology, and typological variation in Central Totonac, an endangered Mesoamerican language family

2016-2025 Libben (Project Director), Järvikivi (PI), Arnhold (Collaborator), et al.
SSHRC Partnership Grant (>$2,000,000)
Words in the world

2017-2023 Ungar (PI) and Paradis (Co-applicant)
SSHRC Partnership Grant (> $2,000,000)
Child and youth refugee research coalition (CYRRC): Using research  to inform best practices for language, literacy, learning, social integration, and child and family  wellbeing

2017-2023 Järvikivi (PI), Arnhold (Co-applicant) and Paradis (Co-applicant) 
SSHRC Insight Grant (> $200,000).
Understanding children's processing of reference in interaction

2018-2023 Compton (PI), Arnhold (Co-applicant), et al.
SSHRC Insight Grant (>$90,000)
Polysynthesis and wordhood in Inuit

2019-2026/7 Arppe (Project Director)
SSHRC Partnership Grant (>$2,000,000)
21st Century Tools for Indigenous Languages

2019-2020 Daskalaki (PI), Paradis (Co-Investigator), Chen  (Co-Investigator), and Soto-Corominas (Co-Investigator)
Child and Youth Refugee Research Coalition Grant (CYRRC), Dalhousie University (>$14,000)
Exploring the interdependence between morphological and syntactic development in heritage contexts: The case of Syrian refugee children in Canada

2019-2026 Guardado
SSHRC Insight Grant (>$90,000)
Heritage Language Ideologies, Policies and Practices: An Examination of Linguistically Mixed Families in Alberta

Academic Staff Changes

Gains:

• Yvonne Lam (2022 [Associate Professor])
• Marianne Huijsmans (2022 [Assistant Professor])

Losses:

• Benjamin Tucker (2022)
• Terry Nadasdi (2023)

Graduate Alumni 

MSc (9):

• J. Li (2022)
• M. Quintana Goday (2022)
• V. Fiawornu (2022)
• M. Bohach (2023)
• K. Antonsen (2023)
• S. Hammond-Thrasher (2023)
• N. Daley (2024)
• A. Menon (2024)
• T. Schnoor (2024)

PhD (8):

• M. Garcia-Vega (2022)
• M. Kelley (2022)
• K. Schmirler (2023)
• M. Alden (2023)
• R. Hert (2023)
• A. Harrigan (2024)
• R. McGraw (2024)
• D. Moore (2024)
• Nik Toler (2024)

Postdoctoral-Fellows 

• Dr. Adriana Soto-Corominas (2018-2021, under Johanne Paradis)
• Dr. Jiseung Kim (2020-2022, under Anja Arnhold & Juhani Järvikivi)
• Dr. Josh Holden (2020-2022, under Antti Arppe)
• Dr. Daniel Hieber (2021-2022, under Antti Arppe)
• Dr. Youran Lin (2023-2024, under Johanne Paradis)
• Dr. Maja Robbers (2024–2025, under David Beck)

Major Accomplishments

• Rosés Labrada received the Early Career Researcher Award from the Canadian Linguistic Association in 2022
• Rosés Labrada received a Faculty of Arts Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2022 
• Rosés Labrada received a Fulbright Canada Research Chair (University of California, Santa Barbara) “A Sketch Grammar and Lexicon of Sapé, a Language of Venezuela” in 2023
• LING 422/522 Heritage Language Acquisition added in 2023
• LING 418/518 Prosody added in 2023
• Colston co-edits Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought published 2023
• 55th Algonquian Conference, held in October 2023
• Paradis awarded Labex (le laboratoire d’excellence) EFL (Empirical Foundations of Linguistics) International Chair from the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, France, in 2024
• Development of research space:
  • Centre for Comparative Psycholinguistics moves to Assiniboia Hall in 2024
• Renovation of the Alberta Phonetics Lab in 2024

Major Grants

2020-2023 Daskalaki (PI) and Paradis (Co-Investigator)
SSHRC Insight Development Grant (> $60,000)
The bilingual development of immigrant children in Western Canada: Predictors and outcomes of crosslinguistic influence.

2020-2023 Guardado
SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant  (>$20,000)
Language Revitalization in El Salvador: Investigating the Feasibility of a Collaborative Intervention with the Indigenous Community of Santo Domingo de Guzmá

2020-2023 Archer (PI) and Pexman (Co-Investigator)
SSHRC Insight Development Grant (>$60,000)
Sound Symbolism may bootstrap infant word learning

2020-2023 Guardado (PI), Lam (PI), Daskalaki (PI), Tsushima (PI)
OVPRI ($30,000)
Investigating Heritage Languages in Alberta: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of Parental Strategies, Child Identities and Linguistic Features

2021-2025 Guardado
SSHRC Insight Development Grant ($70,000)
An Ethnography of three Indigenous Communities in El Salvador: Current Realities and Future Possibilities for Language Revitalization

2021-2023 Rosés Labrada      
SSHRC Insight Development Grant (>$60,000)
Mobilizing Piaroa Legacy Materials

2021-2024  Rosés Labrada
SSHRC Insight Grant (>$90,000)
Breathing New Life into Legacy Materials: Research and Repatriation for a Sáliba Collection.

2022-2027 Paradis
SSHRC Insight Grant (>$300,000)
Bilingual Development in Children with Special Education Needs: Minority and Majority Language Contexts.

2022 Järvikivi (PI) and Arnhold (Co-applicant)
Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) Research Cluster Grant ($60,000)
Understanding barriers - Canadian map of language attitudes

2023-2026 Hammerly (PI) and Arppe (Co-Investigator), Tessier  (Co-Investigator), and Silfverbeg  (Co-Investigator) 

SSHRC Insight Grant (>$200,000)
Mapping and modelling grammatical person and voice in Ojibwe

2023-2028 Arnhold
SSHRC Insight Grant (>$300,000)
Linguistic complexity in the marking of new information.