Hello BULA-ers,
Just a reminder that we have a couple of excellent linguistics-related
events coming up in the next week, starting with the final BULA event of
the semester, tomorrow's How to Create Your Own Language Night!
*How to Create Your Own Language Night*
*When: Friday, Dec 1, 6pm*
*Where: CAS B18*
*Description: *Join BULA for a workshop where you'll be given a quick guide
on how to create a constructed language (along the lines of Klingon from
Star Trek, Dothraki from Game of Thrones, etc.), and then you'll get to
work on creating the basic elements of your very own conlang, with guidance
from Prof. Neil Myler. Pizza will be provided!
*RSVP on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/688546351335903/
<https://www.facebook.com/events/688546351335903/> *
[image: Inline image 1]
Also, don't forget that the Linguistics Program's final Colloquium of the
semester is taking place next Thursday:
*Speaker: Naomi Feldman (University of Maryland; Visiting Professor at MIT)*
*Title: How phonetic learners should use their input*
*When: Thursday, Dec 7, 5:30pm*
*Where: **Life Sciences and Engineering (24 Cummington Mall) Room B01*
*Abstract: *Children have impressive statistical learning abilities. In
phonetic category acquisition, for example, they are sensitive to the
distributional properties of sounds in their input. However, knowing that
children have statistical learning abilities is only a small part of
understanding how they make use of their input during language acquisition.
This work uses Bayesian models to examine three basic assumptions that go
into statistical learning theories: the structure of learners' hypothesis
space, the way in which input data are sampled, and the features of the
input that learners attend to. Simulations show that although a naïve view
of statistical learning may not support robust phonetic category
acquisition, there are several ways in which learners can potentially
benefit by leveraging the rich statistical structure of their input.
*RSVP on Facebook: **https://www.facebook.com/events/846247092203474/
<https://www.facebook.com/events/846247092203474/>*
Hope to see many of you there!
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Hello everyone,
BULA's final event of the semester will be taking place just over three
weeks from now, so mark your calendars:
*How to Create Your Own Language Night*
*When: Friday, Dec 1, 6pm*
*Where: CAS B18*
*Description: *Join BULA for a workshop where you'll be given a quick guide
on how to create a constructed language (along the lines of Klingon from
Star Trek, Dothraki from Game of Thrones, etc.), and then you'll get to
work on creating the basic elements of your very own conlang, with guidance
from Prof. Neil Myler. Pizza will be provided!
*RSVP on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/688546351335903/
<https://www.facebook.com/events/688546351335903/> *
[image: Inline image 1]
The Linguistics Program also has two very exciting colloquia coming up in
the next month or so, which many BULA members will be interested in.
*Speaker: Melissa Baese-Berk (University of Oregon--also a BU alumn)*
*Title: Perception of Non-native speech*
*When: Thursday, Nov 16, 5:15pm*
*Where: Life Sciences and Engineering (24 Cummington Mall) Room B01*
*Abstract: *Listening to non-native speech often provides a significant
challenge for native speakers of a language. While substantial work has
examined how non-native speech differs from native speech, relatively
little work has examined how native listeners perceive this speech. In this
talk, I will present studies examining what factors might influence how
native speakers perceive and can adapt to non-native speech. Experiments 1
and 2 examine how perception of non-native speech compares to the
perception of other unfamiliar types of speech and, and what cognitive and
linguistic factors might influence listeners’ abilities to perceive these
types of unfamiliar speech. Experiment 3 investigates how native listeners
adapt to non-native speech over time, and how exposure to speakers from
different backgrounds may influence this adaptation. In Experiment 4, I
will present production data investigating some global properties of
non-native production that may influence perception of this speech by
non-native speakers. I will discuss the implications of these studies for
our understanding of non-native speech, and for perception more broadly.
*RSVP on Facebook: **https://www.facebook.com/events/1399840486799971/
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1399840486799971/>*
*Speaker: Naomi Feldman (University of Maryland; Visiting Professor at MIT)*
*Title: How phonetic learners should use their input*
*When: Thursday, Dec 7, 5:30pm*
*Where: **Life Sciences and Engineering (24 Cummington Mall) Room B01*
*Abstract: *Children have impressive statistical learning abilities. In
phonetic category acquisition, for example, they are sensitive to the
distributional properties of sounds in their input. However, knowing that
children have statistical learning abilities is only a small part of
understanding how they make use of their input during language acquisition.
This work uses Bayesian models to examine three basic assumptions that go
into statistical learning theories: the structure of learners' hypothesis
space, the way in which input data are sampled, and the features of the
input that learners attend to. Simulations show that although a naïve view
of statistical learning may not support robust phonetic category
acquisition, there are several ways in which learners can potentially
benefit by leveraging the rich statistical structure of their input.
*RSVP on Facebook: **https://www.facebook.com/events/846247092203474/
<https://www.facebook.com/events/846247092203474/>*
Looking forward to seeing you there!
===
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Linguistics website: http://ling.bu.edu