Guest Speaker - Sonya Bird (Victoria University)

Guest Speaker - Sonya Bird (Victoria University)

There will be a small reception after the talk. Area of expertise: Acoustic, articulatory, and perceptual phonetics; Sound structures of Salish languages; Pronunciation & language acquisition; Indigenous language revitalizationBio: Sonya Bird received her BA Honours in Linguistics from the University of British Columbia (1993-1996) and then completed her MA and PhD at the University of Arizona (1997-2002). Her dissertation was on the phonetics and phonology of intervocalic consonants in the Lheidli dialect of Dakelh (Carrier), a Dene language spoken in British Columbia. After finishing her PhD, she returned to UBC as a SSHRC post-doctoral fellow to study the phonetic properties of glottalised resonants in St’át’imcets (Lillooet), an Interior Salish language also spoken in British Columbia (2002-2004). She joined the Department of Linguistics at the University of Victoria in 2004 and established the Speech Research Lab in 2007, supported by funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation.Dr. Bird’s research combines Phonetics with Indigenous Language Documentation and Revitalization. She is particularly interested in the role of pronunciation and oral fluency in Indigenous Language Revitalization. Thanks to a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2018-2023) and in collaboration with the Hul’q’umi’num’ Language & Culture Society, her recent work has focused on speech production and perception among Hul’q’umi’num’ speakers of different ages and proficiency levels. The goals are to (1) document the pronunciation details of Hul’q’umi’num’ across speakers, (2) understand what the challenges are for learners, and (3) help design tools and resources to overcome these challenges, with a focus on tools that incorporate “speech visualization” and phonetic analysis. Activities made possible by the SSHRC PDG can be found on the Hwulmuhwqun ~ xʷəlməxʷqən Pronunciation Lab website.Dr. Bird has also been involved in supporting UVic’s undergraduate and graduate programs in Indigenous Language Revitalization. Since 2016, she has participated in designing and delivering the Masters in Indigenous Language Revitalization (MILR) program, offered jointly by the Departments of Linguistics and Indigenous Education, for which she acted as Graduate Advisor in 2020-22. She has also been the Academic Advisor of the (undergraduate) Certificate in Indigenous Language Revitalization program.See more at: https://www.uvic.ca/humanities/sllc/people/faculty/bird-sonya.php Regards,Guest Speaker Committee (Ivan Bondoc, Myrto Grigoroglou, Tahohtharatye Joe Brant and Samuel Akinbo)