Plenary Speakers
Professor Robert Bayley (University of California, Davis)
Professor Bayley teaches courses in sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, and general linguistics. His research focuses on language variation and language socialization, especially in bilingual and second language populations. Currently, he is investigating the role of frequency in phonological and morpho-syntactic variation in English and Spanish. In addition, he is collaborating with Professor Rebecca Ambrose of the UC Davis School of Education on a four-year project to strengthen mathematics teaching and learning, particularly for English language learners, in an elementary school district in North Sacramento. Professor Bayley served as the Fulbright-York Chair in Linguistics at York University in 2003. In 2013, together with colleagues Carolyn McCaskill, Ceil Lucas, and Joseph Hill, he received the Andrew Foster Humanitarian Award from the National Black Deaf Advocates for the book and DVD, The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Its History and Structure. The same year, he was named President-Elect of the American Dialect Society.
Professor Gregory Guy (New York University)
Professor Guy specializes in sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, pidgin and creole studies, and phonetics and phonology, with particular interest in Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and varieties of English. In sociolinguistics he has worked extensively on language variation and change, with emphasis on variation and linguistic theory, sociolinguistic universals, social aspects of variation and change, and the statistical modelling of variability. His current research deals with the representations of language variation in linguistic theory, among them the role of lexical frequency in variation and change, and with the linguistic coherence of the speech community. Professor Guy is the author of dozens of widely-cited articles that shaped and defined variationist sociolinguistics for over three decades.
Professor Ruth King (York University, Toronto, Canada)
Professor King teaches courses on variationist sociolinguistics, morphosyntactic change, and language, gender and sexuality. Her research on grammatical variation and change in past and present-day French varieties, in particular Atlantic Canada Acadian French, integrates variationist sociolinguistics with formal linguistics and explores connections between linguistic change and social change in long-term language contact situations. She also works on dialect contact, minority languages in the media, and language and identity. Professor King’s latest book, Acadian French in Time and Space, has been published by Duke University Press in 2013.