Two University of Waikato projects were the only New Zealand submissions selected to take part in a recent, unique Twitter event.
Linguistweets, organised by the Brazil Linguistics Association – was the first ever international linguistics conference held online.
Hundreds of abstracts were received from all around the world, with just 96 selected to present.
One project, by Dr Nicola Daly in the School of Education, investigated how bilingual picture books can be used to support language revitalisation.
The other, by Dr Andreea Calude from Te Kura Toi School of Arts and Computer Science PhD student David Trye, concerned relationships between Māori words in New Zealand newspaper articles.
When it comes to Māori borrowings in New Zealand English, the use of one loanword is likely to trigger the use of others (often several others) in the same text.
For example, the word “Mātauranga” occurs with “Māori” more than any other word, and it makes sense to study groups of words, rather than on words in isolation.
Linguistweets, held earlier this month, featured research presentations delivered via a series of up to six tweets, presented during a fifteen-minute time slot, under the hashtag #linguistweets.
As a result of the extreme challenges experienced globally this year, the likelihood is that conferences of this nature will become a more common occurrence. They not only remove the hassle of travelling, but also promote open science where everyone can follow the presentations and participate in the discussions.
