Linguistics chairperson receives Fulbright award

William Idsardi, chairperson of the Department of Linguistics

3:35 p.m., Nov. 30, 2004--William Idsardi, chairperson of the Department of Linguistics at UD, has received a Fulbright award to teach in Canada during the 2005-06 academic year. He will serve as the Fulbright-York University Distinguished Chair in the Department of Language, Literature and Linguistics at York University in Toronto, where he will both lecture and conduct research.

His research interest is in phonology, or the science of speech sounds, and its relationship to grammar, phonetics, morphology, syntax, speech acquisition and other areas of study. During his year at York University, Idsardi will focus on Canadian English, including cross-dialect perception, language attitudes and historical change. He plans to record and compare Canadian English and the English spoken by the large population of British who have emigrated to Toronto.

Idsardi serves on the editorial board of Linguistic Inquiry and as associate editor of Phonology. He also has chaired the program committee of the Linguistic Society of America.

He has published extensively in his field and given several invited lectures in the United States and abroad. He is working on a book, Laryngeal Phonology, which will be published by the Cambridge University Press.

A graduate of the University of Toronto, Idsardi received his doctorate in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined the UD faculty in 1988. He served as a Fulbright visiting associate professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto in 1999.

Article by Sue Moncure
Photo by Kathy Atkinson

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