Neil Wick's studies at the University of Toronto| Neil Wick > University Studies | Search Neil's UofT pages |
Neil Wick's studies at the University of Toronto
In September of 1996, I started into a part-time degree program
at the University of Toronto. I received my B.A.
in Linguistics in May of 2000, I have upgraded that
to an Honours B.A. as of June, 2002.
In September, 2002, I will be continuing my studies
in linguistics in the full-time Masters degree
program at York University in Toronto.| Linguistics (major) |
My major course of study is Linguistics. The following topics represent some of my research areas and past projects.
Catastrophe Theory and Language Variation: I have begun to investigate the relationship between language variation and catastophe and chaos theory. See my catastrophe theory page for more details. I will be presenting a paper on Applying Chaos and Complexity Theory to Language Variation Analysis at NWAV 31 in Stanford, California, in October, 2002.
Pronunciation Survey: I conducted a Survey on English Pronunciation Preferences. It's still available. Go ahead and try it. First results are also available at the same page.
Acoustic Analysis: In the Spring 2000 term, I studied acoustic phonetic analysis. We used a Macintosh program called Signalyse which is very capable, although it does seem to crash sometimes on newer Macs. Speech Filing System is a similar program for Windows, MS-DOS, and Unix, available free from University College in London, England.
Dictionary Project: In 1997/98, I spent 8 hours per week working on a long-term dictionary research project at the University of Toronto:
Useful links for English Dictionary research (revised May 14/99)
The current draft version of my Video Industry Jargon file (RTF format)
| Portuguese (minor) |
I've also completed in a minor program in Portuguese. This was a challenge for me, since most students following this course of study come from a Portuguese-speaking home environment.
| Anthropology (minor) |
My major interests in linguistics generally lean toward sociolinguistics and dialectology, so several anthropology courses have helped me in this direction. I completed my anthropology minor in the spring of 2002.