Natural language research announcements

["Schwartz, Lane Oscar" <lanes AT illinois.edu>]

FYI, I’ll be presenting at the LING seminar on Monday.

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Dell, Brennan Michael" <dell3 AT illinois.edu>

Subject: Linguistics Department Seminar Series: Machine Learning and Linguistic Fieldwork

Date: 06 December 2018 at 1:07:17 PM CST

To: "ling-dept-l AT lists.illinois.edu" <ling-dept-l AT lists.illinois.edu>, "ling-grad-l AT lists.illinois.edu" <ling-grad-l AT lists.illinois.edu>

Cc: "Schwartz, Lane Oscar" <lanes AT illinois.edu>, "Talic, Aida" <aita17 AT illinois.edu>, "Montag, Jessica Lena" <jmontag AT illinois.edu>, "Rispoli, Matthew" <mrispoli AT illinois.edu>, "Schilson, Kathryn D" <kats AT illinois.edu>

Hi everyone!

 

Our final department seminar for this semester will take place next Monday. More information is below:

 

Who: Lane Schwartz, Assistant Professor (UIUC)

What: Intersecting machine learning and linguistic fieldwork: Computational models for St. Lawrence Island Yupik
Where: FLB 1080 – Lucy Ellis Lounge
When: 4:00PM - 5:00 PM, 10 December, 2018

 

Title:  

    Intersecting machine learning and linguistic fieldwork: Computational models for St. Lawrence Island Yupik

Abstract:

    Many of the foundational techniques that underlie modern computational linguistics make two fundamental assumptions: (1) that labeled training data will be available and (2) that techniques that work well on English and other widely used European languages will also work across typologically diverse languages of the world. Both of these assumptions are fatally flawed with respect to many low resource and endangered languages, but especially with respect to polysynthetic and agglutinative indigenous languages of the Americas.

    My work examines techniques to bootstrap computational models of morphology, syntax, and translation for such languages in unsupervised and minimally-supervised ways, explicitly leveraging existing linguistic documentary resources such as dictionaries and grammars created by indigenous language activists and field linguists. In this work, I focus specifically on Yupik, an endangered language in the Inuit-Yupik language family indigenous to St. Lawrence Island in Alaska and the Chukotka Peninsula in far eastern Russia.

 

 

Thanks!

-Brennan