News and events
News
June 2013
Registration is now open for the Cambridge Language Sciences Conference "Language Sciences in the 21st century: The interdisciplinary Challenge", which will be held on 3-4 Oct 2013. Book your place now!
June 2013
Congratulations to Professor Wendy Bennett, who has been awarded the Georges Dumézil award from the Académie Française for her work "Remarques et observations sur la langue française. Histoire et évolution d'un genre."
May 2013
Applications are invited from students with a background in linguistics, psychology or neuroscience for two four-year ESRC-funded multi-disciplinary studentships on the neural basis of adult second language learning. The studentship will be based in Cambridge and jointly supervised by Dr John Williams (Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics) and Dr Matt Davis (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit).
May 2013
Dr David Willis is using a database of Welsh tweets to assist his research into changes in the language as it's spoken today. British Academy funding for a year-long study has enabled Dr Willis and assistant researchers to interview around 160 people across Wales, beginning with North Wales where the language is thriving and a significant number of children use Welsh as their home language. The study has brought to light differences in the way language is used by speakers who have acquired Welsh at home and at school. You can listen to Dr Willis talking about his research on BBC Radio Wales - (1hr 53mins into programme)
May 2013
Congratulations to Associate Lecturer Dr Petros Karatsareas, who has been awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship by the British Academy to work on a research project looking at heritage languages in present-day London.
"London is often described as a linguistic melting pot where, according to the 2011 census, over 100 languages are spoken by the capital's ethnic communities. Recent work has illustrated the effects of contact between English and the most prominent heritage languages, documenting the development of novel dialectal features in the majority language within the city's walls. The present project shifts the focus away from English towards the emergence of innovation and change in London's 'other' languages: How do new forms of heritage languages develop in multicultural metropolises such as London? What is the linguistic and demographic profile of innovators? What implications do innovations in heritage languages have for the study of language change and its relation to language acquisition and language contact? What are the wider societal and economic benefits that can be harnessed from the study of the unique linguistic population that are heritage speakers? The project addresses these questions concentrating on the reduction of grammatical gender distinctions and nominal inflection in the heritage variety of Cypriot Greek spoken in the Boroughs of Barnet and Enfield, which have the highest concentration of Cypriot Greek speakers in the capital. The aim is to help chart the linguistic landscape of London by increasing our understanding of the patterns that define non-English language variation."
The project will be hosted by the University of the West of England at Bristol, where Dr Karatsareas will be collaborating with Dr Jeanette Sakel.
May 2013
Cambridge has been rated the best place in the world to study linguistics, coming top of the QS World University Rankings based on the opinions of academics and employers.
March 2013
A team of students from the Department, led by current PhD student Jessica Brown, held a markathon to mark entries in the 2013 UK Linguistics Olympiad. Over 6,000 secondary school students from around the UK participated in the annual competition which involves solving linguistic data problems.
During the Olympiad, competitors answer questions about not only English but about a range of languages, many of which they may never even have heard of. A typical question would ask the entrant to analyse short sentences from an unfamiliar language, which could be a relatively well-known language such as Japanese or something less familiar like the native American Papago. Having worked out the meanings of simple sentences, contestants are then invited to translate other sentences from English into the new target language. Other challenges range from traditional code-breaking to devising a computational system for spotting errors in translation. All tasks are designed to encourage types of thinking not required by the National Curriculum.
A number of qualifying UK entrants will have the opportunity to represent their country in the UK team at the International Linguistics Olympiad, held this year at the University of Manchester from 22nd to 27th July. The UK has an excellent track record at the international competition, bringing home a total of eleven honours in just three years.
February 2013
The race to fingerprint the human voice: Professor Francis Nolan comments on developments in automated speaker recognition systems in this Independent article.
January 2013
Congratulations to former DTAL PhD student Anna Tristram, who has been appointed to a permanent lectureship in French Studies at Queen's University Belfast.
January 2013
Categories and Gradience in Intonation, an ESRC research project led by Dr Brechtje Post, has recently concluded. Combining experimental tasks with the latest scanning techniques, the project findings provide evidence not only for the key principle on which virtually all current research in intonation hinges, but also the first neurobiological evidence for a refined, linguistically informed model of the neural underpinnings of intonation. Our understanding of human communication and the neural and cognitive systems that support it crucially depends on such insights.
December 2012
Two members of the Department, Professor Francis Nolan and Dr Kirsty McDougall, appeared on the BBC Radio 4 "Frontiers" programme to talk about their work in forensic Phonetics. Ranging from death threats left on voicemails and hoax 999 calls to fraudulent calls to banks and conversations between terrorists, phoneticians analyse the minute acoustic components of the human voice to determine not only what was said but to create a profile of the culprit, or work out if a suspect's voice matches the voice in the criminal recording.
Listen to the programme on BBC iplayer.
October 2012
Congratulations to Dr Theresa Biberauer who is now a Fellow of Churchill College.
October 2012
A very warm welcome to all staff and students at the start of the new academic year. Do keep an eye on the website for ongoing news, talks and events throughout the year.
September 2012
Congratulations to Professor Kasia Jaszczolt, who has been elected a member of Academia Europaea.
August 2012
We are pleased to announce the winner of this year's Sidney Allen Prize: John Torr. The Prize is awarded for distinction in Linguistics, where Linguistics is understood to include the study of language in general, and the study of the history and structure of specific languages or families of languages.
April 2012
The Cambridge Language Sciences website is now live!
In 2011, the University of Cambridge declared support for cross-disciplinary research in language sciences a priority, and in January 2012 the Language Sciences Strategic Research Initiative came into being, led by a Steering Committee with members drawn from across the University. Five key research themes have been identified in relation to the Initiative. These are; Language Communication and Comprehension, Language Learning across the Lifespan, Language Change and Diversity, Cambridge English, and Human Language Technologies. For more information about each of these themes, visit the website.
April 2012
A short Linguistics video for prospective undergraduates, Why study Linguistics at Cambridge? is now on the Departmental website, featuring staff and students of the Department.
March 2012
Dr David Willis has led a study tracing how and why the words used to express negation have changed in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean over the past millennium. The study is the first comprehensive attempt to look for patterns across such a breadth of languages and over such a timescale. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, it has resulted in in a series of publications including a two-volume book forthcoming in 2012.
December 2011
Congratulations to Drs Dora Alexopoulou, Henriette Hendriks, Napoleon Katsos, Teresa Parodi and Brechtje Post, who have been awarded a grant under the Cambridge Humanties Research Grants Scheme with Dr
Claire Hughes (Department of Experimental Psychology) and Dr Michelle Ellefson (Faculty of Education). The project will attempt to integrate linguistic and cognitive perspectives in the development of bilingual children, as well as pioneering internet-based testing methodologies.
December 2011
The Cambridge Bilingualism Network is an initiative by DTAL staff to raise awareness in the community about the strengths and challenges of raising bilingual children. The network has begun a strategic partnership with Cambridgeshire County Council's Race, Equality and Diversity Service and has received a favourable mention in the national and local press. You may also read more about this initiative in the December 2011 issue of the University Newsletter.
November 2011
In 2010, researcher Stephen Leonard began a 12-month research project, documenting the disappearing oral traditions of the northernmost settled people on Earth. A short film about his experiences living with the Inugguit, whose way of life is threatened by climate change, has been released online and is available here.
November 2011
Henriëtte Hendriks, Head of Cambridge’s newly formed Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, explains why linguistics – the scientific study of human language – is central to understanding our highly complex system of communication.
November 2011
Scientists are developing a computer that can read vast amounts of scientific literature, make connections between facts and develop hypotheses -article about the work of Anna Korhonen, Royal Society University Research Fellow in DTAL.
Events
24th June 2013
The Cambridge Linguistics Forum welcome Professor I Kecskes, State University of New York, Albany, with his talk "Is there anyone out there who really is interested in the speaker?". The talk will start at 4.00pm, in room GR06/07, English Faculty Building, Sidgwick Site. All are welcome.
30th May 2013
This week's Cambridge Linguistics Forum welcomes Professor E Lieven (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig/School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester). Professor Lieven's talk is titled "Building abstractions in Language Development" and will be held at 4.00pm, in room GR06/07, English Faculty Building, Sidgwick Site. All are welcome.
9th May 2013
This week's speaker at the Cambridge Linguistics Forum is Dr Graeme Trousdale, from Edinburgh University, speaking on "Constructionalization and Constructional change". The talk will start at 4.00pm, in the Lecturer's Common Room, Raised Faculty Building. All are welcome.
14th March 2013
This week's Cambridge Linguistics Forum welcomes Professor Lisa Cheng
from Leiden University/LUCL. Professor Cheng will be speaking on transitive psych-predicates in Chinese. The talk will start at 4.00pm, in Lecture Block Room 3 on the Sidgwick Site. All are welcome.
5th March 2013
The past fifty years have witnessed an explosion of research in the language sciences, facilitated in some cases by advances in technology within fields such as neuroscience, computer science and genetics, and in others by research based on "traditional" methods of scholarship and new theoretical approaches. Sadly, it has often been the case that there has been little interaction between researchers in different disciplines.
The Language Sciences conference at West Road on 3-4 Oct aims to open a dialogue between language scientists of all disciplines by inviting work from very different domains (including neuroscience, biology, anthropology, computer science, engineering, philosophy, psychology, education, languages and linguistics) in order to explore key issues and to share our research in a fruitful and productive way. It is hoped that the conference will allow researchers not just a glimpse into the research agendas of others, but also a better understanding of the potential for future collaboration.
For more information, and to register, please see the conference website.
28th February
This week's Linguistics Forum features Dr Silvina Montrul (University of Illinois), speaking on "Comparing Heritage Languages". The talk will be held at Gr06-07, English Faculty, 9West Road 4-5.30pm
14th February 2013
All are welcome to attend this week's Cambridge Linguistics Forum.
"A special indefinite: "such" and its West Germanic cognates", Johan van der Auwera & Daniël Van Olmen, Gr06-07, English Faculty, 9West Road 4-5.30pm
31st January 2013
All are welcome to attend this week's Cambridge Linguistics Forum.
"Exploring Word Meaning in Context with Graded Annotation", Dr Diana McCarthy, Raised Faculty Building Lecturer's Common Room 4-5.30pm
January 2013
The Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics is pleased to announce the programme of speakers for the Cambridge Linguistics Forum in Lent 2013. The Forum will run on Thursday afternoons, alternating with the talks arranged by the Linguistics Society, so there will be a Linguistics event running every week throughout Lent.
October 2012
The Department is once again playing an active role in the Festival of Ideas, with staff presenting the following talks:
April 2012
26 June 2012: Categories and Gradience: Neural Systems for Speech Communication
University of Cambridge, Phonetics and Phonology Research Cluster
We are delighted to announce a one-day workshop on Neural Systems for Speech Communication to be held at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge, UK, on the 26th June 2012. The focus of the workshop is on representations and neural mechanisms for segmentation, abstraction, and categorisation in speech processing.
Our invited speakers are:
- Kai Alter (University of Newcastle)
- Matt Davis (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge)
- Aditi Lahiri (University of Oxford)
The workshop is intended to provide a forum for discussion between researchers who approach the neurocognitive processing of suprasegmental and segmental information in speech from different intellectual contexts (notably linguistics, audition, language psychology, and cognitive neuroscience), and with different methodologies. A number of key papers will explore the theme of the workshop from different angles, complemented by poster presentations that add breadth or depth to the discussion. The presentations will be followed by a panel discussion with the invited speakers and the audience towards the end of the day. The discussion will explore commonalities and differences in theoretical and methodological approaches and their findings, trying to work towards a synthesis.
Abstract submission deadline: 21 May 2012
We invite papers which address the theme of the workshop:
- Abstracts should be uploaded on or before 21 May 2012 here
- Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words, in pdf or doc (but not docx) format, with 2.5cm or one inch margins, single-spaced, and with a font size of 12pt.
- Your abstract should be anonymous. You will be asked to submit a version with your name and affiliation on it if your abstract is selected for presentation. Please make sure that you do not use your name in the filename for your abstract, and please erase any details which might identify you in the file that you submit. Use one word from your abstract's title as the filename.
- If you need to use a phonetic font in your abstract, please either embed it in a pdf file, or use the Doulos SIL font
- Abstracts will be considered for oral or poster presentations, but please note that only very few slots are available for oral presentation. If you wish your abstract to be considered for poster presentation only, please indicate this when submitting your abstract. Oral presentations will be 20 minutes, with 10 minutes for questions.
- Paper acceptance notification will be sent by email by 4 June 2012. Information on registration, workshop programme, accommodation and conference dinner will appear on the workshop website
Please email neuralspeech@gmail.com if you require additional information.
Organisers: Brechtje Post, Emmanuel Stamatakis, Francis Nolan, Bettina Beinhoff, Hae-Sung Jeon, Toby Hudson
This workshop is funded by the ESRC grant 'Categories and Gradience in Intonation: Evidence from Linguistics and Neurobiology' (RES-061-25-0347; PI Post, CI Stamatakis).
March 2012
The Sixth European Dialect Syntax Workshop is organized by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Cambridge, in cooperation with the Meertens Institute and the Edisyn project (www.dialectsyntax.org). It will take place at Queens’ College, Cambridge, on March 31st, 2012. It will be preceded by The Second Cambridge Colloquium on the ‘Histories of the Ibero-Romance languages’–Norman MacColl Symposium 2012, to be held 28-30 March 2012 at Queens’ College, Cambridge; and it will be immediately followed on 1st April 2012 (Queens’ College, Cambridge) by the workshop on Romeyka and Asia Minor Greek, the second instalment of a series of workshops on Greek dialectal syntax, Romeyka, in particular, and Asia Minor Greek, in general. For more information, please see the Edisyn web site.
January 2012
Dr Bettina Beinhoff is co-organiser of the cross-departmental "Sociolinguistics Seminar Series". The current programme can be found here.
January 2012
Prof. Thomas Herbst from the Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg will be speaking at the DTAL Tuesday Colloquium on Tuesday 31 January 2012 from 4-6 pm in Room GR 06-07 of the English Faculty Building, 9 West Road. The subjet of his talk will be "Negotiating wages for verbs: The valency approach and argument structure constructions".
