Rhodes University Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

12/05/2026

Join us for our DRS tomorrow:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/lAci_48ySkKBjWVE9DS4gA

06/05/2026

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Emeritus Didier Demolin will present a talk in the Rhodes University Department of Music and Musicology.

Title: The Acoustics of Vocal Registers
Date: 15 May 2026
Time: 12:00
Venue: Beethoven Room, Department of Music and Musicology

The talk focuses on the acoustic properties of vocal registers and how these are produced and differentiated in speech and voice.
We look forward to an engaging and insightful session

05/05/2026

Highlights from the Field Methods in Linguistics postgraduate module, taught by RU Linguistics Senior Research Associate Eva-Marie Bloom Ström.

Students recently visited Cata, Eastern Cape, as part of their fieldwork, where they worked directly with speakers and community members to collect language data through interviews, focus groups, and everyday conversational interaction. The visit provided an opportunity to apply field methods in a real research setting.

Thank you to Eva-Marie Bloom Ström for leading the course, and to the Cata community for their time and participation.

04/05/2026

Highlights from this past week’s Departmental Research Seminar, “Structure without stability? The Inflectional Phrase in L2 English production”, presented by Tracy Bowles.

Thank you to Tracy for the insightful presentation, and to everyone who attended and contributed to an engaging and thoughtful session!

03/05/2026

RU linguist Tracy Bowles examined how Grade 7 English second-language learners put together sentences, with a particular focus on the Inflectional Phrase (IP), in this past week’s Departmental Research Seminar. The presentation explored how learners produce and process key grammatical features, including tense, agreement, auxiliary support, and negation, across a range of constructions. It highlighted patterns in learner production that point both to emerging competence and areas of structural difficulty.

Here is a short snippet from the presentation.

28/04/2026

Happening tomorrow!

16/04/2026

Rhodes University’s Linguistics and Applied Language Studies department hosted a Departmental Research Seminar on 15 April 2026, presented by Prof. Emeritus Didier Demolin, which explored the emergence of language sound systems and brought together perspectives from phonetics, evolution, and cognitive science.

The presentation examined how speech can be understood as an acoustic signal, shaped by continuous movement in the vocal tract, including the coordination of the tongue, lips, and airflow. Attention was also given to the relationship between speech production and perception, and to the roles they play in shaping how language functions.

Beyond this, the seminar engaged with broader questions around the evolution of speech, the development of human vocal and cognitive capacities, and the differences between human and non-human primates. It also addressed the complexity and diversity of sound systems across languages, highlighting how these systems have developed over time.

See the video below for a brief excerpt from the session.

14/04/2026

Happening tomorrow!

Ever wondered how humans developed the ability to speak?

Join us for a thought-provoking seminar on “The Emergence of Language Sound Systems”, presented by Prof. Emeritus Didier Demolin from the Laboratoire de Phonétique et phonologie, CNRS, Sorbonne-Nouvelle, France, and a Research Associate of the Department of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Rhodes University.

This talk explores how human speech developed over time, what makes our sound systems unique, and how language evolved from early human ancestors to what we know today.

Date: Wednesday, 15 April 2026
Time: 12:20 - 13:05
Venue: Arts Minor, Rhodes University
Register to join online: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/5K1xLkWcSsSx2K2PFiP2xQ

Everyone is welcome.

10/04/2026

Ever wondered how humans developed the ability to speak?

Join us for a thought-provoking seminar on “The Emergence of Language Sound Systems”, presented by Prof. Emeritus Didier Demolin from the Laboratoire de Phonétique et phonologie, CNRS, Sorbonne-Nouvelle, France, and a Research Associate of the Department of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Rhodes University.

This talk explores how human speech developed over time, what makes our sound systems unique, and how language evolved from early human ancestors to what we know today.

Date: Wednesday, 15 April 2026
Time: 12:20 - 13:05
Venue: Arts Minor, Rhodes University
Register to join online: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/5K1xLkWcSsSx2K2PFiP2xQ

Everyone is welcome.