Personal

I live in Québec City and I am married to this other linguist. Here’s some general info on my background and interests.

Bio

I’m originally from Brazil—I was born in Esteio, a small city near Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul. Porto Alegre is the southernmost capital city in Brazil, so it’s quite close to Uruguay and Argentina.

Parts of my family come from Portugal and Italy. They immigrated to South America back in the 19th century, a period when hundreds of thousands of Europeans moved to Brazil—particularly to Rio Grande do Sul. The Portuguese side of my family comes from Castro Laboreiro, a small village in northern Portugal (quite close to the Spanish border). The Italian side of my family originated in Vicenza, in northern Italy.

Rue du Petit-Champlain in Québec City In 2012, it was my turn to immigrate: I left Brazil and moved to Canada to do my PhD at McGill under the supervision of Heather Goad (fall 2012–fall 2017). I lived in Montreal for nearly six years. Right after my PhD, I taught at Concordia University in the fall of 2017, and then moved to the US in early 2018 to join the Department of English at Ball State University, where I taught for four years. In 2017, I also received a fellowship to pursue a post-doc at Harvard under the supervision of Kevin Ryan, which I declined to accept the tenure-track position at Ball State. In early 2022, I joined Newcastle University in the UK as a lecturer (analogous to assistant professor), but soon returned to Canada to join Université Laval as professeur adjoint in June 2022.

Outside academia, I enjoy travel, music, technology, guitars, coffee, Thai and Indian food, hiking, chess and photography (see portfolio below). Here’s a (very eclectic) playlist with some of my favorite songs. My favorite composer for the classical guitar is Francisco Tárrega, and my favorite piece is Capricho Árabe. My favorite books are El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha, The Odyssey, Cien años de soledad, Ficciones, Moby Dick and Les Misérables (in no particular order).

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows;
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

A. E. Housman

Linguistics

McGill convocation in October 2017 I got interested in Linguistics after I started teaching English to Portuguese speakers in Brazil. That led me to a BA in Language Studies, which in Brazil is called Bacharelado em Letras (Bachelor’s Degree in Letters), and typically involves a combination of Portuguese, Brazilian and English Literature, Linguistics, and Translation studies. As an undergrad, I participated in some research projects on the interface of phonology and morphology, which motivated me to pursue an MA in Linguistics. My MA focused on linguistic theory, particularly on phonology and second language acquisition. My PhD focused on experimental and theoretical phonology.

Because my research interests connect phonology and quantitative methods, I enjoy coding and developing scripts to automate experiments and data analysis in R (a language for statistical computing). I have designed and taught different workshops on data analysis for linguists (focusing on linguistic data). I am also interested in Bayesian statistics, and how linguistic assumptions can be encoded in different statistical models. All these interests come together in my book Data visualization and analysis in second language research.

My name

At Université Laval in winter 2023 I get asked about my first name on a regular basis, and I have been miscited in the recent past. My full name is Guilherme Duarte Garcia (no accent in Garcia, and no hyphen between Duarte and Garcia). Guilherme (Portuguese) is equivalent to Guillermo (Spanish), Guglielmo (Italian), Guillaume (French), Wilhelm (German), or William (English). I have two last names (Duarte is not a middle name), but I use Garcia, Guilherme D. in all citations. Unlike in Spanish, in Portuguese the second last name is the father’s surname, and the first last name is the mother’s surname.

My name

Travel and photography

Penelope learning chess I love travel and maps, so here is an interactive map with most places I’ve been to. I also enjoy landscape photography—you can see some of my photos in the portfolio here. These days I basically just use my iPhone for photos, but I also have a mirrorless camera (and used to have a DSLR until 2019). The cat in the photo is Penelope (her “official” name, but we normally call her Ratão or Bêbi). We adopted her when we lived in the US back in 2021, and all our cables have needed protection since then.