Teamwork makes the dreamwork: A collaborative approach to documenting and analyzing language development of Hul’q’umi’num’ children

Over the last two years, a team of students and researchers from the Hul’q’umi’num’ Language & Culture Society (HLCS), Simon Fraser University, and the University of Victoria have been documenting language development of children in a language nest. Hul’q’umi’num’, spoken on Vancouver Island, is one of ten Central Salish languages, and currently only has around 40 first language speakers, most of whom are over 75 years of age. Now, there are 200 fluent and 1,000 semi-fluent L2 speakers, due to their motivation to champion the language (D. Gerdts, p.c.). The HLCS language nest provides space for infants, toddlers, and children to hear and use the language with Elders and adults (FPCC 2014, King, 2001). A unique feature of this language nest is that the parents/participants are also Linguistics students researching Hul’q’umi’num’ phonetic structure. Thanks to this research duo, we have collected an abundance of data to analyze and add to existing literature (cf. Bird et al. 2016, 2019, 2021 Bird & Onosson 2019, Percival & Bird 2019).  Salish languages have 22 sounds that do not exist in English (Gerdts & Hukari, in press). This can make it difficult for second language learners who primarily speak English. By observing recordings of second language learners, we can identify differences from native speakers’ speech production. One phoneme is chosen for this study as it has a strong feature that is apparent in native speech and can be measured to determine growth in language development of second language learners. Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Donna Gerdts, Department of Linguistics, Simon Fraser Universit

The Reasonable Doubt Rule and the Meaning of Innocence

Although the presumption of innocence is universally acknowledged as central to the Anglo-American accusatorial system, considerable controversy surrounds how far the presumption of innocence should be extended through the requirement that the state prove the defendant\u27s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Determining the scope of the presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt rule requires balancing the risk of acquitting the guilty against the danger of convicting innocent individuals. The balancing is made even more difficult when posed as a question of constitutional law because it raises concerns of federalism and separation of powers. This Article reviews the various judicial and scholarly approaches to striking the proper balance and analyzes their strengths and weaknesses. The Article concludes that only an expansive view of when the reasonable doubt rule applies adequately protects the presumption of innocence and that acceptable alternatives to limiting the reasonable doubt rule exist to minimize the risk of acquitting the guilty

The True Legacy of Atkins and Roper: The Unreliability Principle, Mentally Ill Defendants, and the Death Penalty’s Unraveling

In striking down the death penalty for intellectually disabled and juvenile defendants, Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons have been understandably heralded as important holdings under the Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence that has found the death penalty “disproportional” for certain types of defendants and crimes. This Article argues, however, that the cases have a far more revolutionary reach than their conventional understanding. In both cases the Court went one step beyond its usual two-step analysis of assessing whether imposing the death penalty violated “evolving standards of decency.” This extra step looked at why even though intellectual disability and youth were powerful mitigators, juries were not able to reliably use them in their decisionmaking. The Court thus articulated expressly for the first time what this Article calls the “unreliability principle:” if too great a risk exists that constitutionally protected mitigation cannot be reliably assessed, the unreliability means that the death penalty cannot be constitutionally imposed. In recognizing the unreliability principle, the Court has called into serious question the death penalty for other offenders to whom the principle applies, such as mentally ill defendants. And, unlike with the “evolving standards” analysis, the unreliability principle does not depend on whether a national consensus exists against the practice. This Article identifies the six Atkins-Roper factors that bring the unreliability principle into play and shows why they make application of the death penalty to mentally ill defendants unconstitutional. The principle, which finds its constitutional home in the cases of Woodson v. North Carolina and Lockett v. Ohio, has profound implications for the death penalty, and if taken to its logical endpoint calls into question the Court’s core premise since Furman v. Georgia, that by providing individualized consideration of a defendant and his crime, the death penalty decision will be free of arbitrariness