Guest Speaker: Sonya Bird (University of Victoria)

Dear linguists,

We are happy to announce Dr. Sonya Bird's talk (University of Victoria) on Friday, February 6, 2026 at 3:10-4:30pm in Sid Smith Hall SS560A. Please see the title and abstract for her talk below. There will also be a small reception after her talk at the department lounge. 

Sonya will also be available for meetings (SS4086) on the same day from 10am-12pm. Interested graduate students and faculty are highly encouraged to meet with Sonya and/or join for dinner after the Friday talk. 

Please complete the form to sign up for meetings or dinner. Sign-up - Meetings & Meals with Sonya Bird (Feb. 6/26) – Fill out form 

Title: Putting it all together: Hul’q’umi’num’ listening quizzes

Abstract: This presentation is based on a project to create a series of listening quizzes (60 in total) to support adult learners of Hul’q’umi’num’ (Central Salish) in fine-tuning their listening and speaking skills. Hul’q’umi’num’ has a rich consonant inventory, including many sounds not found in learners’ L1 (English). It also has a long legacy of collaborative linguistic research, resulting in a large corpus of recorded materials that are available to support language teaching and learning. The quizzes were developed collaboratively, drawing from insights in experimental phonetics (Bird et al. 2022), second language acquisition (Uchihara et al., 2021), and Indigenous language learning (Brant, 2024; McIvor, 2020). This presentation will present findings from a study that assessed their usefulness in the context of a university-level, community-based course on Hul’q’umi’num’ sound structure. Findings showed that learners appreciated the quizzes, and that their perception improved as they practiced with them. The listening quizzes provide a model of how to blend research and pedagogy in a way that centers the community’s needs and priorities while also increasing our understanding of second language speech perception, laying the foundation for more targeted efforts to support learners in their language work.

Bio: Sonya Bird grew up in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal in Kanien’kehá:ka territory speaking French and English and now lives and works on the lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples. She has been documenting the details of pronunciation in Coast Salish languages since 2002 and has also worked on pronunciation with speakers of Dene languages, especially Dakelh (Carrier). She is particularly interested in the role of pronunciation and oral fluency in Indigenous language revitalization. Her most recent work is focused on supporting Hul’q’umi’num’ learners to speak proficiently and fluently. In collaboration with the Hul’q’umi’num’ Language & Culture Society and the Hul’q’umi’num’ Language Academy, she has been documenting the details of pronunciation across Hul’q’umi’num’ speakers of different generations and fluency levels, to understand what the challenges are for learners and to help design pedagogical tools and methods to overcome these challenges. On the pedagogical side, she is particularly interested in exploring the benefits of incorporating phonetic analysis and “speech visualization” into pronunciation learning and teaching. Sonya has also been actively involved in developing and teaching in UVic’s undergraduate and graduate programs in Indigenous Language Revitalization since 2016

Area of expertise: Acoustic, articulatory, and perceptual phonetics; Sound structures of Salish languages; Pronunciation & language acquisition; Indigenous language revitalization

Regards,

Guest Speaker Committee (Ivan Bondoc, Myrto Grigoroglou, Tahohtharatye Joe Brant and Samuel Akinbo)