The Language Sciences Undergraduate Research Conference (LSURC) took place recently, with participation from a wide variety of students. Prizes were awarded both for talks and for posters.
The first place talk prize went to UBC undergrad Matthias Diederichsen for a talk titled ‘Word Order in a “Free Word Order” Language: An Ojibwa Treebank Study’, with the second place prize going to Simon Fraser University undergrad Phoenix Neuscheler for a talk titled ‘Reduplication and Pluractionality in Javanese’.
The first place poster prize went to UBC undergrads Marija Cvetkovic, Erin Wong, and Zoe Cheng ‘Gestural Timing and the Emergence of Rhoticity in Memphis English /ju/’ and tied second place prizes went to a poster by UBC undergrad Mandy Moniz ‘The Impact of Testing Environment on Adult Statistical Word Segmentation: An In-Person Replication of Melville’ and another poster by UBC undergrads Esme Yang, Lindsay De Souza, and Priya Singh ‘Embodied Emotion: Evidence from Vocal Tract Posture During Speech Pauses’.
Titles and full abstracts are below.
Oral Presentation:
1st place: Matthias Diederichsen (UBC), “Word Order in a “Free Word Order” Language: An Ojibwe Treebank Study”
Word order in Ojibwe is often said to be “free” or “flexible,” but this project asks whether there is systematicity hiding behind these labels. By developing and querying a small Ojibwe treebank, I show that the interaction between the animacy hierarchy and syntactic position predicts how and when arguments are realized. While the findings are preliminary, they suggest that apparent flexibility in Ojibwe word order may reflect deeper structural patterns.
2nd place: Phoenix Neuscheler (SFU), “Reduplication and Pluractionality in Javanese”
The talk, entitled “Reduplication and Pluractionality in Javanese” looked at how pluractionality in Javanese may be expressed through reduplication of verbs, as well as any limitations. The results showed that pluractionality was generally licensed by full verb reduplication, but only when the verb itself was telic (i.e., has a clear endpoint to the action), such as ‘sew’ or ‘hit’. The other main finding (to be investigated further) is the effect that the benefactive applicative suffix -(a)ke has in licensing a non-obligatory pluractional reading on non-reduplicated telic verbs.
Poster Presentation:
1st place: Marija Cvetkovic, Erin Wong, Zoe Cheng (UBC), “Gestural Timing and the Emergence of Rhoticity in Memphis English /ju/”
Using VocalTractLab for articulatory synthesis, this study models the 3D vocal tract to demonstrate how gestural overlap in the /ju/ cluster mimics rhotic acoustics without a distinct /ɹ/ gesture. The synthesized low-F3 pattern and F3–F2 proximity (~350Hz) confirm that these configurations successfully reproduce the “r-like” quality emergent in Memphis English.
2nd place (tied):
Mandy Moniz (UBC), “The Impact of Testing Environment on Adult Statistical Word Segmentation: An In-Person Replication of Melville”
Building on Melville (2024), this study explores whether testing environment impacts adult statistical word segmentation. By replicating the original control condition in person, we examine whether laboratory testing produces more robust learning than online participation, yielding findings that challenge our initial expectations about engagement and statistical learning outcomes.
Esme Yang, Lindsay De Souza, Priya Singh (UBC), “Embodied Emotion: Evidence from Vocal Tract Posture During Speech Pauses”
Emotion can be seen in a smile and heard in the tone of a voice—but could emotion also be hidden in the shape of the vocal tract itself? This project explores whether emotional configurations of the vocal tract persist during pauses in speech. By examining moments when speakers temporarily stop talking, we investigated whether emotion-specific vocal tract postures remain even without active speech movements. The preliminary findings suggest that emotion may be reflected in a baseline vocal tract posture, expanding current models of emotional expression in speech beyond movement alone.
