James Hyett is a linguist
Indeed I am! If you'd like to go back to the homepage, click here.
I am not currently affiliated with any research institution, but have been lucky enough to present and be published for my co-authorship of some papers with Carol Percy. I met Carol through the 2017 iteration of the Jackman Humanities Institute's Scholars-in-Residence program at the University of Toronto. After our month together concluded, we kept in touch and began working on a project to analyse the development of the use of "you was" as a variant form of "you were" in English through combining linguistic and dramaturgical analysis of eighteenth-century comedies.
I started out in linguistics as a precocious high school student, sketching out conlangs and competing in the North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition (then Olympiad) and going on to be part of Team Canada (there was only one at the time) in the 2015 International Linguistics Olympiad in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. Then, I studied linguistics in my undergrad at the University of Toronto, with specific interest in historical linguistics and phonetics, as well as sociolinguistics. My time at The Academy stopped then, but my linguistic interest has found other modes of expression, including learning languages, translating, dialect coaching, and indeed writing on linguistics as an independent scholar! Below is a listing of my work.
Recent books and articles
- With Carol Percy: “Gender, genre, and prescriptivism: Eighteenth-century female playwrights' use of YOU WAS and YOU WERE.” In Unlocking the History of English: Pragmatics, Prescriptivism and Text Types. Selected Papers from the 21st ICEHL, edited by Luisella Caon, Moragh S. Gordon and Thijs Porck. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2024. Pp 60–84. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.364.03hye
- With Carol Percy: “Theatrical practices and grammatical standardization in eighteenth-century Britain.” In English Historical Linguistics: Change in Structure and Meaning. Papers from the XXth ICEHL, edited by Bettelou Los, Claire Cowie, Patrick Honeybone and Graeme Trousdale. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2022. Pp 264–285. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.358.11hye
Recent talks
- With Carol Percy: “Emerging language norms in translated and original plays by Elizabeth Griffith and Charlotte Lennox: ‘What the Devil was you thinking of?’” CSECS/MWASECS 2021: Translation and Appropriation in the Long Eighteenth century. University of Winnipeg: Online delivery. 13-16 October 2021.
- With Carol Percy: “Female characters as comic prescriptivists? Eighteenth-century you was on stage.” 6th Prescriptivism Conference: Modelling Prescriptivism: Language, Literature, and Speech Communities. University of Vigo, Spain: Online delivery. 23-25 September, 2021
- With Carol Percy: “Gender, genre, and grammatical standardization: Eighteenth-century women playwrights’ use of you was and you were.” 21 st ICEHL Conference. University of Leiden: Online delivery. 7-11 June, 2021.
- With Carol Percy: “Theatrical practices and grammatical standardization in eighteenth-century Britain: You was and you were.” 20th ICEHL / International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, 27-30 August, 2018.
- “R is for Revolution: Regular Sound Change and Pedagogical Problems in Eighteenth-Century French Teaching in England.” at The Canadian Society for Eighteenth Century Studies / Northeastern American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Joint Annual Conference, University of Toronto, 18-22 October, 2017.
- "Whan that Aprille with his Memes Soute: The linguistic exploration of internet memes, and antique innovation in a recent meme." at Canadian Linguistics Annual Undergraduate Symposium (CLAUSE), Concordia University, 7-9 April, 2017.
Linguistics puzzles
- "Phở Bar" on Vietnamese; included in Round 1 of NACLO 2017
- "Signs from Above" on Cistercian Sign Language; included in Round 1 of NACLO 2016 and an edited version included in Alex Bellos' The Language Lover's Puzzle Book (2021)