Linguistics

Research area: My research focuses on cognitive aspects of early child development. More specifically, I examine how children learn to comprehend and produce spoken language. Most of my work is with infants between the ages of 4 months and 2 years, but I also work with children as old as 8 years of age. Some recent topics I have worked on include the emergence of word comprehension, developmental changes in talker recognition, children's sensitivity to language-specific prosodic cues, the relationship between speech perception and speech production, bilingualism, infant-directed speech, developmental sociolinguistics, and language acquisition in a linguistically diverse setting.

Student roles:
The precise nature of the student's participation will be adjusted to best match the student's interests and skills, but generally speaking the student should be involved in all stages of this research, including participant recruitment, scheduling, testing, and the early stages of data analysis. The student will also be required to take an online course on research ethics, complete assigned readings, and attend lab meetings.

Skills required:
The ideal candidate for this position would be highly interested in cognitive science and developmental psychology. Some coursework in Cognitive Science and/or Psychology would be extremely helpful. The candidate should also be comfortable interacting with children. They will need to work well both alone as well as part of a team.

Research area: I am a developmental psycholinguist and Canada Research Chair in Spoken Language Acquisition. I am director of the Child Language and Speech Studies (C.L.A.S.S.) Lab at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and a member of the Perception Cognition and Language Research Group housed in the Culture Communication and Technology Building at the Missisauga campus of the University of Toronto. The population in the Greater Toronto Area (including Mississauga) is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse populations in the world. My research studies how children acquire language in this dynamic and complex language environment.

Student roles:
This project will involve helping to set up and run sociolinguistic experiments with young children. More specifically, the project will examine the intersection between social and linguistic development. The details of the study will be adjusted to some extend depending on student interest. The Greater Toronto Are is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse places in the world and this research project will aim to capitalize on that diversity.

Skills required:
The ideal candidate for this position would be highly interested in both cognitive development and language processing. Some coursework in Linguistics and/or Psychology, especially in the area of psycholinguistics or sociolinguistics, would be extremely helpful (but is not required). The candidate should possess strong communication skills and be comfortable interacting with infants.

Research area: I am a developmental psycholinguist and Canada Research Chair in Spoken Language Acquisition. I am director of the Child Language and Speech Studies (C.L.A.S.S.) Lab at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and a member of the Perception Cognition and Language Research Group housed in the Culture Communication and Technology Building at the Missisauga campus of the University of Toronto. The population in the Greater Toronto Area (including Mississauga) is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse populations in the world. My research studies how children acquire language in this dynamic and complex language environment.

Student roles:
This project will involve doing acoustic analyses on spoken language samples and/or helping to run speech experiments with adults or young children. The details of the study will be adjusted to some extend depending on student interest. The Greater Toronto Are is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse places in the world and this research project will aim to capitalize on that diversity.

Skills required:
The ideal candidate for this position would be highly interested in both cognitive development and language processing. Some coursework in Linguistics and/or Cognitive Science and/or the Speech Sciences, would be extremely helpful (but is not required). The candidate should possess strong communication skills and be comfortable interacting with people.

Research area: My research specializes in lexical semantics at the syntax–semantics interface, with a focus on how events are linguistically encoded across word classes and languages. I work on motion event semantics in English and French, examining how meaning is distributed between verbs and nouns and how this relates to typological patterns, register, and discourse context. My approach combines functional and cognitive linguistics with corpus-based methods, semantic annotation, and contrastive analysis in bilingual and multilingual settings. While I work mostly in English, I welcome opportunities to collaborate with others who have a level of expertise in other languages.

Student roles:
The student will play an active research role in a focused project linked to a larger study on motion event semantics in English and French. With guidance from the research team, the student will participate in the semantic analysis of motion event expressions, with particular attention to the relationship between nouns and verbs.
Using established semantic annotation guidelines, the student will identify features such as event structure, path, and manner, and will contribute to examining how these features vary across languages and discourse contexts. The student will also be involved in refining and testing annotation criteria, documenting analytical decisions, and discussing emerging patterns with the research team.
Depending on background and linguistic skills, the role may also include exploratory work on additional language data. Throughout the internship, the student will take part in regular research meetings, contribute to written research materials, and engage in collaborative discussion with supervisors and team members. The role emphasizes methodological training, analytical reasoning, and the development of research autonomy within a supportive and collaborative environment.

Skills required:
The student should have academic training in linguistics, with coursework in semantics, syntax or corpus linguistics. Prior experience with corpus methods, semantic annotation, or contrastive English–French analysis is an asset but not required, as training will be provided. The project requires strong analytical skills, attention to detail, and an interest in empirical language research. The student should be able to work independently while contributing to a collaborative research environment.

Research area: My specialized research area focuses on the motor control of communicative systems (hand, face, vocal tract). Under a broad scope of inquiries, I investigate how posture serves as a fundamental basis for rapid, precise movements in speech, sign, and facial expression. By integrating biomechanical simulation with physiological measurement and cross-system comparisons, this specific project explores the physical characteristics of human behavior in communicative tasks. One of the primary goals of this line of inquiry is to establish whether biomechanical stability and anticipatory postural adjustments (APA) represent universal principles of motor organization across human fine motor systems.

Student roles:
The student will play an active role in a research program that investigates the biomechanics of speech and facial expression through both computational simulations and physiological experiments. For the simulation components, the student will work extensively with the ArtiSynth modeling toolkit and the 3D FRANK models of the vocal tract and face. Responsibilities will include running simulations that sample combinations of muscle activations to identify regions of biomechanical stability. The student will measure outputs such as tongue-palate contact area or facial muscle configurations, utilizing metrics of biomechanical stability.

In addition to simulation work, the student will assist with collecting and processing experimental physiological data to test for anticipatory postural adjustments. This includes collecting and analyzing ultrasound imaging data to track lateral tongue positions. The student may also help organize surface EMG data measuring facial muscle activations, specifically tracking the suppression of zygomaticus major activity prior to bilabial speech targets.

Depending on their specific skillset, the student may also support inverse simulations to estimate muscle activation timing, perform data cleaning, or assist with statistical modeling. All necessary training will be provided. The student will be expected to maintain clear documentation of their work, attend regular lab meetings, and contribute collaboratively to our goal of establishing a unified framework for fine-motor control.

Skills required:
The student should possess a strong interest in motor control and communicative motor systems. Familiarity with ArtiSynth or other open-source biomechanical modeling toolkits or general computational modeling is a strong asset. Experience with methods used in our physiological experiments, such as ultrasound imaging or surface electromyography (EMG), would also be highly beneficial. Basic programming skills (Python, Java, R) are helpful. The student should be organized, detail-oriented, and comfortable working collaboratively in an interdisciplinary environment to help integrate biomechanical simulation and physiological measurement.

Research area: My research lies at the interface of discourse analysis, linguistics, and sustainability studies. I specialize in the analysis of abstract policy concepts—such as resilience—through reference, figurative language (metaphor and metonymy), and agency. My work draws on systemic functional linguistics, theories of reference, and corpus-based methods to examine how meaning, responsibility, and accountability are constructed in public and institutional discourse, with particular attention to bilingual and cross-register contexts in Canadian sustainability and climate-related texts.

Student roles:
The student will play an active research role in extending an existing discourse‑analytic project on the linguistic construction of resilience in Canadian sustainability discourse. Building on an already annotated bilingual corpus and preliminary analyses, the student will contribute to the consolidation, interpretation, and refinement of earlier findings.
Under the supervision of the research team, the student will assist with qualitative and comparative analyses focusing on reference chains involving resilience and the attribution of agency across different texts, registers, and contexts. The student will be involved in identifying recurring discursive patterns, assessing their stability or variation, and exploring their implications for accountability and meaning construction in policy discourse.
The role also includes contributing to methodological reflection by helping to evaluate how frameworks of reference and agency can be more systematically integrated in discourse‑based sustainability research. Depending on linguistic skills, the student may assist in extending the corpus to additional languages or cultural contexts.
Throughout the internship, the student will participate in regular research meetings, contribute to written research outputs (reports, drafts of academic papers), and engage in collaborative discussion with supervisors and team members. The position requires initiative, analytical skills, and openness to interdisciplinary perspectives.

Skills required:
The student should have training, for example, successfully completed courses in linguistics, discourse analysis, or a related field. Experience with corpus-based methods, qualitative analysis, and theoretical frameworks such as reference, metaphor, or systemic functional linguistics is an advantage but not a requirement as training can be provided. Familiarity with bilingual or comparative analysis (English–French) and experience working with annotated corpora are strong assets. The project also requires strong analytical skills, academic writing experience, and the ability to work independently within a collaborative research environment.

Research area: My research focuses on cognitive aspects of early child development. More specifically, I examine how children learn to comprehend and produce spoken language. Most of my work is with infants between the ages of 4 months and 2 years, but I also work with children as old as 8 years of age. Some recent topics I have worked on include the emergence of word comprehension, developmental changes in talker recognition, children's sensitivity to language-specific prosodic cues, the relationship between speech perception and speech production, bilingualism, infant-directed speech, developmental sociolinguistics, and language acquisition in a linguistically diverse setting.

Student roles:
In this project, the student will use a looking time and/or eyetracking methodology to examine spoken word recognition in English-learning toddlers. English-learning adults may also be tested. Depending on student interest, monolingual versus bilingual language acquisition may be examined. The student may also be involved in transcribing interactions between caregivers and their children. This means the student must be excited to learn how to edit and process speech signal recordings. The student will be involved in all aspects of the research process, including testing and data processing.

Skills required:
The ideal candidate for this position would be highly interested in both cognitive development and language processing. Some coursework in Linguistics and/or Psychology would be extremely helpful. The candidate should also be comfortable interacting with children. They will need to work well both alone as well as part of a team.