Pocholo Umbal
[pəˈtʃoʊloʊ umˈbɐl]
Hello! I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto and a Graduate Educational Developer at the Teaching Assistants' Training Program. My pronouns are he/him.
I am a sociolinguist working under the variationist framework. I examine the relationship between language and the linguistic and societal forces that lead to variation and change. In particular, I am interested in modeling the linguistic behaviour of bilinguals in language contact situations, with specific focus on sound production. For my dissertation, I am analyzing rhotic, obstruent and vowel variation in Toronto Heritage Tagalog.
I have conducted projects investigating vowel variation in Canadian English among Filipinos in Vancouver and Toronto. Extending this line of work, I am working alongside a team of Asian North American scholars (Andrew Cheng, Lauretta S.P. Cheng, and Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales), surveying linguistic patterns of Asian North American communities.
Finally, I also work on issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in linguistics with Nathan Sanders and Lex Konnelly at U of T. We have created various resources and materials to make teaching linguistics more inclusive.
I was born in Manila, Philippines and immigrated to Vancouver, BC. I received a BSc in cell biology and linguistics, as well as an MA in linguistics from Simon Fraser University. My MA work was supervised by Dr. Panayiotis A. Pappas and Dr. Suzanne K. Hilgendorf. For my PhD at UofT, I am supervised by Dr. Naomi Nagy and part of the Heritage Language Variation and Change (HLVC) in Toronto project.
I am a sociolinguist working under the variationist framework. I examine the relationship between language and the linguistic and societal forces that lead to variation and change. In particular, I am interested in modeling the linguistic behaviour of bilinguals in language contact situations, with specific focus on sound production. For my dissertation, I am analyzing rhotic, obstruent and vowel variation in Toronto Heritage Tagalog.
I have conducted projects investigating vowel variation in Canadian English among Filipinos in Vancouver and Toronto. Extending this line of work, I am working alongside a team of Asian North American scholars (Andrew Cheng, Lauretta S.P. Cheng, and Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales), surveying linguistic patterns of Asian North American communities.
Finally, I also work on issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in linguistics with Nathan Sanders and Lex Konnelly at U of T. We have created various resources and materials to make teaching linguistics more inclusive.
I was born in Manila, Philippines and immigrated to Vancouver, BC. I received a BSc in cell biology and linguistics, as well as an MA in linguistics from Simon Fraser University. My MA work was supervised by Dr. Panayiotis A. Pappas and Dr. Suzanne K. Hilgendorf. For my PhD at UofT, I am supervised by Dr. Naomi Nagy and part of the Heritage Language Variation and Change (HLVC) in Toronto project.
Curriculum Vitae
Contact information
p 'dot' umbal 'at' mail 'dot' utoronto 'dot' ca
Department of Linguistics | University of Toronto
Sidney Smith Hall Fourth Floor, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3 Canada
Department of Linguistics | University of Toronto
Sidney Smith Hall Fourth Floor, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3 Canada
Office hours
Summer 2023, by appointment (via Zoom)
Recent activities and updates
- February 2023: My co-authored paper on integrating qualitative and quantitative analyses of stance finally has a home in Language in Society Volume 52, Issue 1.
- October 2022: I received a Student Travel Award to attend NWAV 50.
- January 2022: My co-authored paper outlining our EDI initiative in linguistics has been submitted. You can read the draft here.
- December 2021: My co-authored paper on Heritage Tagalog (r) variability has been published in Languages as part of a special issue on Heritage Speaker Phonetics and Phonology: Testing Models and Expanding the Range of Data.
- November 2021: My paper on /u/-fronting in second-generation Filipinos in Toronto has been published in American Speech Volume 96, Issue 4.
- July 2021: A special issue on language and gender diversity has been published in Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics. Read our introduction here.
- May 2021: Lex Konnelly, Nathan Sanders, and I presented our work on the Diverse Names Database at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association.
- January 2021: I was awarded the LSA's Elizabeth Pine Dayton Award in recognition of my work on the sociolinguistics of heritage languages.
Links
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