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New CAS Linguistics Facebook Page
Have a look: http://www.facebook.com/pages///39972495300. We welcome your suggestions about what else you would like to see there... Thanks!
Congratulations on tenure and promotion
We are delighted to announce that Prof. Jonathan Barnes has been promoted to Associate Professor of Linguistics with tenure.
Congratulations to our graduating seniors
See some photos from the graduation ceremony for Linguistics.
Linguistics courses for next year
Linguistics courses for Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 .
Click here to download a printable (pdf) version of course schedule and descriptions for Fall 2008.
Dates for preregistration are listed here. Please meet with your adviser to discuss your academic plans :-)
Waitlist: If you have not been able to register for CAS LX 250 or CAS LF 500, please see this page for further information and to be added to our waitlist.
Study Abroad
Study Abroad programs that include Linguistics options
Sign language: Summer program to learn Italian Sign Language in Siena
Recent UROP Award Recipients
Morgan Jenatton, received a UROP award for to work with Prof. Neidle on "The Expression of Past Tense in American Sign Language: The Role of Lexical Items and Non-Manual Expressions" (in conjunction with the American Sign Language Linguistic Research Project) during Fall 2007.
During summer of 2007, the following undergraduates were engaged in UROP-sponsored research, both working with Prof. Barnes:
Lauren Ackerman,
"It Ain't Over Till The Fat Lady Sings: Soprano Resonance Modification at High Frequencies Over a Range of Dynamics."
Marcus Eldridge,
"Variation and Stability in Tone and Intonation Languages: A comparative study of restrictions on tonal variation in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English." |
Recent grants from the National Science Foundation
Professors Stan Sclaroff (BU Computer Science) and Carol Neidle just received a grant from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative project with Vassilis Athitsos (BU PhD 2006, now at the University of Texas at Arlington). The funding for "Large Lexicon Gesture Representation, Recognition, and Retrieval" will enable research on computer-based recognition of ASL signs. One goal of the research is development of a "look-up" capability, whereby a signer can produce a sign in front of a camera, or identify a sign in a video, and have the computer identify which sign it is. One application of this technology would be an interface for a multi-media sign language dictionary. Prof. Neidle is also continuing her NSF-funded collaboration with Dimitris Metaxas (Computer Science, Rutgers University) on "Advances in recognition and interpretation of human motion: An Integrated Approach to ASL Recognition."
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Professor Jonathan Barnes recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative project on "Prosodic Categories of American English in Form and Function." Here is an abstract of the research he is conducting with Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel (MIT) and Nanette Veilleux (Simmons):
Anyone with even passing experience of synthesized speech, text-to-speech, or speech recognition technologies is acutely aware of just how much we still don't understand about rhythm and intonation in human speech. Intonation is extremely important: Changes to an intonation contour -- the characteristic rises and falls of the voice's pitch during an utterance -- can change the meaning conveyed, often dramatically. (Compare "He's reliable." vs. "He's reliable?") Getting intonation wrong, even if everything else is right, makes speech sound at best non-native, at worst even non-human. Fixing this problem is a serious challenge, because intonational distinctions are slippery. Most native speakers cannot say with confidence whether a given utterance does or does not convey "incredulity", or "resigned acceptance", in the same way that they can usually tell whether a given sequence of sounds does or does not mean "cat".
The problem of what intonation means and what exactly carries that meaning is reflected in experimental studies as well; researchers frequently disagree about the interpretation of results. This project aims to overcome this by taking on several particularly difficult examples of American English intonation, using several complementary experimental methods. Comparison of the results from these different approaches will answer not just isolated questions about American English, but more importantly broader questions about how to test competing theories of intonation. The goal is a consensus method for investigating intonation in human language in general. Success in reaching that goal will improve emerging speech technologies and their application across languages, as well as helping linguistic field workers and second-language teachers grappling with questions of how to convey what is meaningful in a given language's intonation system.
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