Department of Linguistics

Mitch Marcus (PI), Norm Badler, Aravind Joshi, George Pappas, Fernando Pereira, and Maribel Romero (Penn); Andrew McCallum and Christopher Potts (UMass Amherst); Holly Yanco (UMass Lowell)

This project tests the hypothesis that incoming speech signals pass through a stage of linguistically naive, auditory processing before undergoing linguistically informed processing. It thus tests a model of speech perception which is autonomous rather than than interactive. A paper laying out the guiding ideas and presenting preliminary supporting data is "From ears to categories: New arguments for autonomy" S. Frota, M. Vigario, & M. Freitas (eds.) Prosodies, Proceedings of the First Conference on Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia, (pp. 177-222), Mouton de Gruyter, (2005).

Nearly everything we say carries an undercurrent of information about our feelings and attitudes. This expressive content can be merely suggested, but it is often directly encoded. We have words and morphemes for honoring those around us and conveying our approval. We also have (generally taboo) morphemes that denigrate, that convey our displeasure. The effects of using these lexical items can be dramatic. They create charged emotional states. They are revealing of the speaker's perspective, and they significantly impact how current and future utterances are perceived. The importance of this content has long been recognized, but it has, until recently, looked utterly foreign from the perspective of linguistic theory. This project will help change that. Its overarching goal is to identify expressive content as an important, coherent area of research and to bring together researchers throughout the cognitive sciences to work on the topic. Potts's current results, and his overall approach, square well with the neurological evidence and they are informed by an algorithmic perspective on linguistic meaning. In addition to providing the first major body of research on this topic to the theoretical linguistics community, the work can have an impact in discourse analysis, in law, and in the general public discourse. Angelika Kratzer and Peggy Speas are consultants on the grant.

Rajesh Bhatt is a Co-PI on this grant. The team is headed by Martha Palmer and also includes Nianwen Xue and Fei Xia.

Workshop to be held May 25-29, 2009

The Faculty Grants for Teaching were established to encourage the development of new initiatives in the teaching and design of undergraduate courses.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship Awards consist of a cash award of $3,000 and a year's leave of absence to encourage award recipients to concentrate on activities related to graduate education, research, creative work and scholarly attainment. Selection of the awardees is based on demonstrably outstanding accomplishment and potential for continued excellence in research and scholarly or creative activity.