Suzi Lima

Counting and Measuring in Indigenous languages spoken in Roraima (with Isabella Coutinho Costa (State University of Roraima)

Languages vary in how they express counting and measuring operations, and the study of this variation can shed light on the relationship between language, culture, and cognition. This project aims to explore counting and measuring strategies employed in the grammar of Indigenous languages spoken in Northern Brazil. Specifically, we will investigate the use of plurals, numerals, container phrases (such as “cups of” in ‘three cups of water’), measure phrases (such as “liters of” in ‘three liters of water’), and quantifiers (such as “many” and “much”) in different contexts, including cooking and measuring individuals, space, distance, and time.

Funding: SSHRC/ Insight Development Grant

Counting and Measuring in Gã and Yoruba (with Samuel Akinbo [University of Toronto])

The goal of this project is to document the preparation of traditional foods and investigate the grammar of counting and measuring in Gã and Yoruba, two closely related languages spoken in Ghana and Nigeria, respectively. Collaborating with universities in Ghana and Nigeria, one of the project’s key goals is to preserve and revitalize stigmatized traditional foods.

Funding: Black Research Network Ignite Grant (University of Toronto)

Generics across languages (PI: Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga; Collaborators: Matt Husband (University of Oxford), Linnaea Stockall (Queen Mary University of London), Suzi Lima)

While much is known about generic expressions in English and a few closely related languages, a significant limitation to our current understanding—and to future research on generics and related areas—is the lack of wide-ranging typological investigation that systematically examines their different forms across a representative sample of languages. We initiated this project to address this gap.

We developed the Generics Toolkit, which includes a standard set of genericity phenomena drawn primarily from reviews, sentences extracted from psychological literature eliciting generics with different propositional content, and a structured set of open-ended comment sections.

Funding: Britsh Academy/Leverhulme Trust

On the count/mass distinction in Mayan languages (with Pedro Mateo Pedro [UofT] and Suzi Lima)

In collaboration with Mayan Indigenous researchers (Adan Francisco Pascual, Ruperto Montejo Esteban, Marco Antonio Antonio Mateo, Filiberto Patal Majzul, Antonio Moises Toma Cruz), we have worked on describing the count/mass distinction in nine Mayan languages (including Itzaj, Ixil, Mam, Awakateko, K’iche’, Achi, Kaqchikel, Q’anjob’al, and Popti’). We are currently working on a paper that reports the results of the project.

Comparatives in African languages (with Vera Hohaus [University of Manchester])

Building on work done for the project “Counting and measuring in African Languages Spoken in Toronto” (Connaught New Research Award), in this project, we explore the structure and interpretation of superlative and comparative structures in Kirundi, Kinyarwanda and Tshiluba.