Official Launch of the Maryland Language Science Center at the 4th Annual Language Science Day

This year the 4th annual Language Science Day, taking place on September 27th at the Riggs Alumni Center, is featuring the official launch of the Maryland Language Science Center. The launch is scheduled from noon to 1:45 pm at the same location. The Maryland Language Science Center represents a major commitment by the University of Maryland to language science as a strategic priority. The center is a collaborative effort involving language scientists from 16 departments and centers in six colleges across the university. The Center’s efforts will focus on interdisciplinary research and training, with the goal of answering grand challenges in basic science, and solving real-world language problems in education, technology, and health. More information on the center and the event is at languagescience.umd.edu/launch

Dustin Chacón - Summer Research in Bangladesh and India

Dustin Chacón (3rd year IGERT student from the Linguistics Department) spent summer 2013 doing research in Dhaka, Bangladesh and Kolkata, India. He worked with Professor Sikder Monoare Murshed and Mashrur Imtiaz at Dhaka University, and with Professor Mina Dan and Shirsho Dasgupta at Calcutta University. Dustin was running a series of experiments investigating how filler-gap dependencies are resolved in Bengali/Bangla, an Indo-Aryan language with more than 200 million speakers. Dustin was investigating the role that word order plays in resolving ambiguous filler-gap dependencies in Bangla, since Bangla has a flexible word order in the relevant respects. He was also investigating dialectal differences between West Bengali Bangla and Bangladeshi Bangla, since pilot data suggested filler-gap dependency resolution preferences varied by dialect.

UMD Language Science Outreach Group at the “CHANGE THE WORLD: Science & Engineering Careers Fair”

On September 27 and 28, 2013 the UMD Language Science Outreach group is participating in an NSF-organized science and engineering careers fair for local teachers, middle and high school students, entitled “CHANGE THE WORLD: Science & Engineering Careers Fair.” The event is tailored to middle and high school students, teachers, and families. NSF is co-sponsoring this important event with Congressman Frank Wolf in northern Virginia at the Dulles Town Center Mall at Dulles Town Circle, Dulles, Virginia 20166 on Friday-Saturday, September 27-28, 2013. The careers fair will showcase exciting science and innovation with the goal of encouraging young people, especially in grades 7-12, to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). More than 60 interactive exhibits will engage students, teachers, parents, and the public in activities highlighting the work done by scientists and engineers and their process of discovery: from facial recognition to “smart” bridges; from predicting lava flows to DNA sequencing of strawberries; from investigating crashes to manipulating robots. Members of the 2013 Language Science group attending the event are Alison Shell (Psychology), Chris Heffner (Linguistics), Alix Kowalski (Hearing and Speech Sciences), Rachel Dudley (Linguistics), Yakov Kronrod (Linguistics). Faculty support is offered by Meredith Rowe (Human Development) and Ellen Lau (Linguistics).

New Members Elected for the Language Science Student Executive Committee

This 2013 Language Science student Executive Committee’s members are Chuchu Li (Human Development and Quantitative Methodology), Yuichi Suzuki and Eric Pelzl (Second Language Acquisition), Shota Momma (Linguistics), Mike McCourt (Philosophy), Alison Shell (Psychology), and Katie Leech (Human Development and Quantitative Methodology)

2013 Language Science IGERT Students

The 2013 recipients of the full IGERT student status are Alix Kowalski (Hearing and Speech Sciences), Eric Pelzl (Second Language Acquisition), Michael McCourt (Philosophy), Alvin Grissom (iSchool), Mike Fetters (Linguistics), Alia Biller (Second Language Acquisition), Rachel Dudley (Linguistics), Zoe Schlueter (Linguistics), and Chris Heffner (Linguistics).

Giovanna Morini (HESP) wins an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant

Giovanna Morini (5th year IGERT student from the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences) won an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant to complete her dissertation research entitled “Interactions between Language Experience and Cognitive Abilities in Word Learning and Word Recognition." The PI on the grant is Rochelle Newman (Hearing and Speech Sciences) and the Co-PI is Colin Phillips (Linguistics).

Language Science Outreach: Northwood High School Annual Visit to U-Maryland

Students enrolled in psychology classes at Northwood High School will be visiting campus on February 15, 2013. The students will attend a lecture by Jeff Lidz (LING) after which they are split into groups, and each group attending two lab presentations out of the thirteen available. The thirteen lab presentations are offered by language science students and they range from topics about Animal Communications to Baby Talk. For more information and the event schedule please see: http://www.languagescience.umd.edu/wiki/Northwood2013

Winter Storm Daily Digest - 01.17.2013

Dear Winter Storm Participants, Congratulations! You've made it to the final day of Winter Storm!
Events for Friday: 1/18/13 1. Language Analysis Workshop Language Analysis Workshop teams meet to prepare for presentations.
2. Lunch: Special Interest Group Presentations The Special Interest Groups which have been meeting throughout Winter Storm present the results of their explorations.
3. Language Analysis Workshop: Presentations Teams from the Language Analysis Workshop present their results in describing different aspects of the Zazaki language with the aid of a native informant.
4. Closing Colin Phillips leads a session and offers a few closing remarks at the end of Winter Storm 2013.
5. Happy Hour! Everyone is invited to Looney's Pub to celebrate the end of a phenomenal Winter Storm! Please refer to the website for precise scheduling and location information. If there is any feedback you would like to give the Winter Storm Committee please send it to igert-winterstorm@umd.edu. The Winter Storm Committee will circulate a survey, the results of which allow us to better design and execute future Winter Storms; we ask that you please respond to this request when it comes. Thank you for your participation! The Winter Storm Committee

Winter Storm Daily Digest - 01.16.2013

LOCATION CHANGE: Friday's presentations will now be held in MMH 1304. This is reflected on the website. LOST ITEM: Shevaun set out a pepper grinder with the wonderful lunch she prepared for us today. The pepper grinder has gone missing. If you have any idea about its whereabouts, please contact her at shevaun@umd.edu.

Events for Thursday: 1/17/13
1. Python Raul Guerra leads a session reviewing the last two weeks of Python material, and introduces new python libraries.

2. Lunch Talk: Carol Espy-Wilson, Electrical Engineering Department Phonetic Features, Articulatory Phonology and Speech Variability: Accurate models of coarticulation and lenition should greatly improve the performance of speech recognition systems. Phonetic recognition in most systems is still poor so that there is still a heavy reliance on language modeling. In this talk, I will discuss speech variability and our efforts to develop recognition paradigms that incorporate phonetic features and articulatory phonology to more accurately perform low-level speech recognition analysis.

3. Special Interest groups SIG teams meet to prepare for Friday's presentations. Please refer to the website for precise scheduling and location information. If there is any information you would like included in a future Winter Storm daily digest, please forward this information to the WS Committee (igert-winterstorm@umd.edu).

Thank you for your participation! The Winter Storm Committee

Winter Storm Daily Digest - 01.15.2013

Please note that changes have been made Wednesday's schedule. The entire week's schedule is viewable on the website. http://www.languagescience.umd.edu/wiki/WinterStorm. Highlights from Special Interest Groups: From Giovanna Morini, Less Is More SIG "We discussed a paper that relied on different methods (other than the commonly used SRT task) to examine implicit learning and language abilities. Data from this paper suggested that the ability to correctly reproduce auditory or visual sequences is highly correlated with a spoken language measure that assesses sensitivity to word predictability in speech. Given that we are interested in age-related changes associated with working memory and implicit learning, next time we will examine ways in which these types of tasks can be used with children."

From Shota Momma, Working Memory in Sentence Production "Today, we discussed the agreement attraction in production and potential roots of the phenomenon in working memory. Specifically, we compared the encoding-based account and the retrieval-based account, and thought about potential consequences of adapting each model. Also, we discussed the potential model of working memory that is compatible with language production more generally."

Events for Wednesday: 1/16/13
1. Language Analysis Workshop Participants work in specialized groups to continue their investigation of the Zazaki language.
2. Lunch Talk: Ellen Lau, Linguistics Department Predictive facilitation in lexical processing: mechanisms and neural implementations: Although many language researchers now assume an important role for predictive mechanisms in comprehension, it has been surprisingly difficult to show that early contextual facilitation effects--such as the N400 effect in ERP--are due to prediction rather than passive long-term memory processes such as spreading activation. In order to determine which cortical regions contribute to early predictive facilitation, we used a within-subjects multimodal neuroimaging design (EEG-MEG and fMRI) that supplements the high spatial resolution of fMRI with the excellent temporal resolution of EEG-MEG. The results show not only that prediction contributes significantly to the N400 priming effect in ERP, but that the effect of spreading activation is surprisingly small. fMRI and MEG source localization indicate that early effects of predictive facilitation are due to reduced activity in left anterior temporal cortex, a region variously implicated by previous literature in semantic storage and semantic combination. I will argue that together these results provide new evidence for predictive facilitation in lexical processing, and suggest that facilitated conceptual access is an important contributor to the N400 effect.
3. Language Analysis Workshop Groups will have an extra elicitation session with the native speaker. 4. Special Interest Groups Research planning groups meet for the fifth time. Please come prepared! Check the website for individual SIG pages, which contain group agendas and member contact information. If there is any information you would like included in a future Winter Storm daily digest, please forward this information to the WS Committee (igert-winterstorm@umd.edu). Thank you for your participation! The Winter Storm Committee

Winter Storm Daily Digest - 01.14.2013

Please note that changes have been made to Tuesday and Wednesday's schedule. Up-to-date information is viewable on the website. http://www.languagescience.umd.edu/wiki/WinterStorm. Highlights from Monday: In the Professional Development session, Dr. Sunyoung Lee-Ellis discussed non-academic career paths that are relevant for Ph.D students, based on her and her colleagues' experiences. She compared and contrasted academic and non-academic jobs, with regard to hiring processes, job content and work styles. She also discussed the transferability of skills acquired during Ph.D program and how to stay academically relevant while working in a non-academic position.

The Language Analysis workshop continued with elicitation today, with each group attempting to gain the information necessary to describe a particular aspect of the Zazaki language. Then, during lunch there was a discussion session covering more general questions about field work, other language investigation techniques, and their applications. The groups then collaborated to solve some Zazaki grammar problems.

Events for Tuesday: 1/15/13
1. Python Alvin Grissom will lead students in a review of material covered thus far, then cover input/output redirection and file handling.
2. Lunch Talk: Gisela Granena and Michael Long, Second Language Acquisition Department Age of onset, length of residence, language aptitude, and ultimate L2 attainment in three linguistic domains: A study was conducted to identify the scope and timing of maturational constraints in three linguistic domains within the same individuals, as well as the potential mediating roles of amount of second language (L2) exposure and language aptitude at different ages in different domains. Results for three learner groups defined by age of onset confirmed previous findings of windows of opportunity closing first for L2 phonology, then for lexis and collocation, and finally, in the mid-teens, for morphosyntax. All three age functions exhibited the discontinuities in the rate of decline with increasing AO associated with sensitive periods. Significant correlations were found between language aptitude, measured using the LLAMA test (Meara, 2005), and pronunciation scores, and between language aptitude and lexis and collocation scores, in the AO 16-29 group.
3. Python Help Participants can get extra assistance with Python in this help session led by Alvin Grissom.
4. Afternoon R Session Scott Jackson offers instruction in the free statistical computing environment R. The broad topic under discussion is mixed effects models, but participants are welcome to bring questions on other topics.
 If there is any information you would like included in a future Winter Storm daily digest, please forward this information to the WS Committee (igert-winterstorm@umd.edu). Thank you for your participation! The Winter Storm Committee

Winter Storm Daily Digest - 01.11.2013

Highlights from selected Special Interest Groups: From Chris Heffner, Word Segmentation "Today, the word segmentation group spent its time examining the "Possible Word Constraint", a proposed universal preference for listeners to posit word boundaries near vowels, based on the erstwhile constraint that absolutely every word in absolutely every language has a vowel in it. We also discussed a paper covering the PWC in Slovak, a language, like Croatian and Russian, where certain prepositions contain a single consonant and no vowel."
From Alison Shell, Less Is More "Based on a review article today, we talked the importance of modality or in sequence learning tasks. We also discussed types of tests that could look at language ability in the form of sentence processing, to compare to sequence learning ability in an SRT task. We plan to look at an empirical article next session to continue the conversation."

Events for Monday: 1/10/13
 1. Language Analysis Workshop With the aid of a native Zazaki speaker, participants continue to practice field methodology and learn language description techniques.
 2. Lunch: Language Analysis Workshop, second session Due to illness, there will be no faculty lunch talk today. Free lunch will still be served, in the MMH Atrium, and the Language Analysis Workshop will have an extended meeting.
 3. Special Interest Groups (SIG) Research planning groups meet for the fourth time. Please come prepared! Check the website for individual SIG pages, which contain group agendas and member contact information.
4. Professional Development Recent PhD graduate and IGERT fellow Sunyoung Lee-Ellis from the Second Language Acquisition Department discusses career alternatives for PhD graduates. Please refer to the website for precise scheduling and location information. If there is any information you would like included in a future Winter Storm daily digest, please forward this information to the WS Committee (igert-winterstorm@umd.edu). Thank you for your participation! The Winter Storm Committee

Winter Storm Daily Digest - 01.10.2013

Highlights from earlier WS events: From Yakov Kronrod: "The heritage and bilingual phonology group has been talking about potential experiments comparing phonological transfer from L1->L2 and vice versa in cases where the L1 and L2 representations of a contrast differ in terms of allophony, separate phonemes, or non-existent contrast. We are a small group and open to new participants, especially as we move through these weeks and set up the foundation of what is sure to be a great journal club in the coming years."

From Scott Jackson: "Today's (Thursday) session focused on: (1) more examples of interpreting coefficients, (2) centering and other transformations, (3) contrasts and multiple comparisons, and (4) model building and beginnings of hypothesis testing. Topics for the last session (on next Tuesday) are still "attendee-driven", so if someone wants to talk about some specific or "advanced" issues they've been having, they are welcome to let me know so I can work it in!"

 Events for Friday: 1/11/13

 1. Python There will be an extra help session 9-10am to answer any questions on previous material or homework's. Yakov Kronrod will be available during this time in the regular room, MMH 1304. Then from 10-12, He He will demonstrate use of the Natural Language ToolKit (NLTK) for tokenization, and pickle for serialization. Please follow the instructions on installing the 'NLTK' package available at http://www.languagescience.umd.edu/wiki/WinterStorm/python/Day3, and bring your laptop to all Python sessions!

 2. Lunch Talk: Susanne M. Jaeggi, Psychology Department and Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Working memory skills are highly important for complex cognition; they are involved in a multitude of school-relevant tasks and predict academic achievement. Thus, training on working memory should improve skills that rely on the efficient functioning of working memory. I will show data that demonstrate transfer to non-trained tasks throughout the lifespan, that is, in young adults, in old adults, in typically developing children, as well as children with ADHD. I will provide evidence that working memory training not only leads to improvements in measures of attention and reasoning, but also in important scholastic skills, such as mathematics and reading. I will conclude with the notion that cognitive training can be effective and long-lasting, but I will also point out that there are limiting factors that must be considered in order to evaluate the effects of cognitive training, such as training time, individual differences in training performance, and motivation.
 Remember, the room we are using for the lunch talks, SKN0200, normally prohibits food, so please be respectful of the space and clean up thoroughly!

 3. Special Interest Groups (SIG) Research planning groups meet for the third time this week. Please come prepared! Check the website for individual SIG pages, which contain group agendas and member contact information. Don't forget to send us updates at igert-winterstorm@reflectors.mail.umd.edu so we can let the rest of Winter Storm know what you're up to!

 4. How to use Mechanical Turk Aaron Steven White and Dan Parker cover the basics of setting up experiments on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. a crowd-sourcing platform that has become a vital tool for researchers looking for a quick, cheap method for gathering human behavioral data. Topics covered include account creation, task creation using Amazon's command line tools, building experiments and more.

 5. House Party - BYOB The WS House Party this year is graciously hosted by Susan Teubner-Rhodes and Anna Lukyanchenko, (details on wiki and in the program). We will have some amazing food there from Shanghai Tokyo for all to enjoy. However, it is BYOB, so please feel free to bring by some drinks of choice. As always, some Winter Storm beer will be provided by Colin. Faculty are welcome and encouraged to attend along with all the graduate students. Please refer to the website for precise scheduling and location information. If there is any information you would like included in a future Winter Storm daily digest, please forward this information to the WS Committee (igert-winterstorm@umd.edu). Thank you for your participation! The Winter Storm Committee

Winter Storm Daily Digest - 01.09.2013

Highlights from Wednesday: Mike Fetters and Dustin Chacón's group on Variation and Acquisition discussed some simple parameters that have been proposed and the precise mechanisms that a child might use in determining which kind of language she is learning.
Josh Falk's group on Sign Language and the Syllable discussed David Perlmutter's theory of the sign language syllable, then turned to a discussion of sonority. Next, they will explore potential experiments which could elucidate whether segments having a steady state is necessary in a sonority peaks.
From Alison Shell, Explaining the Critical Period in Second Language Acquisition "Based on our reading, we discussed the relationship between working memory, attentional control and implicit sequence learning. We attempted to connect this to the Less Is More theory and plan to look at the connection of these components with language next session."

Events for Thursday: 1/10/13

1. Language Analysis Workshop This session, participants continue exploring linguistic fieldwork, and begin eliciting and transcribing data from their Zazaki speaking informants.



2. Lunch Talk: Kira Gor, Second Language Acquisition Do second language (L2) learners rely on the same mechanisms in auditory lexical access as native speakers? The talk will review several auditory lexical decision experiments with L2 learners of Russian, a language with rich inflectional morphology organized in paradigms, with focus on two aspects of L2 lexical access: 1. The role of phonological similarity and cohort neighborhood size in L2 lexical processing. 2. Decomposition as opposed to whole-word storage and access of inflected words.
The room we are using for the lunch talks, SKN0200, normally prohibits food, so please be respectful of the space and clean up thoroughly!

3. Professional Development Colin Phillips offers tips on how to secure funding for your research


4. R sessions Scott Jackson (CASL) offers instruction in using the free statistical computing environment R. Topic: mixed effects models. Please refer to the website for precise scheduling and location information. If there is any information you would like included in a future Winter Storm daily digest, please forward this information to the WS Committee (igert-winterstorm@umd.edu). Thank you for your participation! The Winter Storm Committee

Winter Storm Daily Digest - 01.08.2013

Highlights from Tuesday:
From Dustin Chacon: "The Language Analysis workshop discussed applications of field methodology to other domains of language science, and how other fields of language science can contribute to traditional fieldwork. We discussed basic properties of Zazaki Kurdish, and the participants split into groups and chose topics to prepare elicitations on. Elicitations begin on the next meeting." The Language Analysis workshop will meet again Thursday morning, from 10-12pm.

Events for Wednesday: 1/9/13
1. Python There will be an extra help session 9:30-10am to answer any questions on the first python session, the homework, or initial questions on materials for day
2. Yakov Kronrod will be available during this time in the regular room, MMH 1304. Then at 10, Jiarong Jiang provides more practice with if-statements, for loops, file/string operations, and introduces a new data structure: the dictionary. Please bring your laptop to all Python sessions! The Monday Python Session 2.
Lunch Talk: Matt Goupell, Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences Cochlear implants (CIs) are the most successful sensory prostheses in that it can restore speech understanding to near perfect levels in quiet in some users. However, not all CI users perform at high levels.

One tool to understand the CI subject variability stemming from using degraded speech signals is to perform the processing that would occur in a CI, and then present that information acoustically to people with typical hearing via a “channel vocoder.” This talk will review how CI processing and the channel vocoder works (with an emphasis to be palatable to non-engineers). Then we will discuss two types of vocoder research: (1) the impact of spectral shifting and warping on vocoded speech understanding and (2) adaptation and training effects for vocoded speech understanding. The room we are using for the lunch talks, SKN0200, normally prohibits food, so please be respectful of the space and clean up thoroughly!
3. Special Interest Groups (SIG) Research planning groups meet for the second time. Please come prepared! Check the website for individual SIG pages, which contain group agendas and member contact information.
4. Python Help Peter Enns offers additional instruction and assistance in Python.
All photos by Csilla Kajtar. Please refer to the website for precise scheduling and location information. If there is any information you would like included in a future Winter Storm daily digest, please forward this information to the WS Committee (igert-winterstorm@umd.edu). Thank you for your participation! The Winter Storm Committee

Winter Storm Daily Digest - 01.07.2013

Shota Momma (LING), (Working Memory and Sentence Production) reports that the group first had a overview on some prominent models of Working Memory and language production, and then discussed some empirical phenomena in which two systems apparently interact. They chose to look further into the grammatical encoding stage.
Yuichi Suzuki (SLA) reports that the Critical Period in Second Language Acquisition group surveyed critical period effects in L2 and the "less is more" hypothesis, then discussed ways to address implicit learning in linguistically relevant areas such as artificial grammars.
Dustin Chacon (LING) and the Theories of Language Variation and Acqusition SIG reviewed the logical problem of language acquisition, the genesis of Parametric Theory in generative linguistics, and how these two topics can relate variation and acquisition. Next meeting, they will discuss specific parameters, how parametric structure can aid the child, and discuss potential projects.

Events for Tuesday: 1/8/13

1. Language Analysis Workshop
This interdisciplinary workshop is an exciting addition to Winter Storm this year. This session will introduce linguistic fieldwork, and explain the goals of the workshop.

2. Lunch Talk: Rebecca Silverman, University of Maryland, College of Education

Reading comprehension is an essential skill for students at the transition from learning to read to reading to learn in the upper elementary grades. Many students struggle in reading comprehension, including students from low income and English language learning backgrounds.Findings from a two-year research project suggest that linguistic awareness skills such as semantic, syntactic, and morphological awareness contribute to reading comprehension. Thus, these skills could be considered as malleable factors for intervention to support struggling students in upper elementary school.

3. Professional Development Senior graduate students and an IGERT graduate discuss how to pursue a career in language science.

4. R sessions Scott Jackson (CASL) offers instruction in mixed effects models. Please refer to the website for precise scheduling and location information. If there is any information you would like included in a future Winter Storm daily digest, please forward this information to the WS Committee (igert-winterstorm@umd.edu). Winter Storm 2013 committee