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Masato Nakamura awarded NSF grant
2/27/23

Big congratulations to Masato Nakamura, whose dissertation on "Sources of argument role insensitivity in verb processing" has received a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant (2240434) from the National Science Foundation, with the support of advisor Colin Phillips. Abstract below, along with links to some of the past awards made to our dissertators.

Sources of argument role insensitivity in verb processing

Humans generally understand utterances quickly and accurately, even in noisy or degraded environments for listening or reading. Many researchers have attributed this success to people’s ability to rapidly predict upcoming words. Previous studies have demonstrated various kinds of evidence for prediction mechanisms, e.g., more predictable words are read more quickly. But less is known about the mechanisms by which predictions are generated. This project investigates these mechanisms, by focusing on situations where people appear to make inappropriate predictions. A useful test case is “role reversed” sentence pairs, such as “the customer that the waitress had served” and “the waitress that the customer served”, in which who did what to whom is reversed. Some psycholinguistic measures of prediction, particularly those involving comprehension, suggest that the verb “served” is equally expected in both sentences, despite being inappropriate in the second. This has been taken as evidence that humans ignore the roles of nouns when generating expectations. However, some other measures of prediction suggest that humans generate appropriate expectations in those same sentences, making full use of role information. This project seeks to resolve this discrepancy.

The project combines computational and experimental methods to investigate why different measures indicate a greater or lesser role for semantic roles in moment-by-moment prediction in language. The project will develop a computational model of linguistic prediction that seeks to capture how a shared set of cognitive processes maps onto different experimental measures. The model will be extended based on results from new experiments. In order to understand the time course of predictions and the contributions of different task elements, the experiments will systematically vary whether or not participants are shown anomalous continuations, and what kind of response participants are required to give. The project also develops and refines a scalable pipeline for semi-automatic analysis of spoken language data in psycholinguistic experiments, which can be used by other researchers.

NSF Grant Funds Research at Planet Word Museum
10/8/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Starting next summer, University of Maryland language scholars will have a new place to conduct their research and a new source of participants for their studies: the Planet Word museum in downtown Washington, D.C. and its visitors.

A new $440,000 grant from the National Science Foundation funds a partnership between UMD, Howard University and Gallaudet University and Planet Word to advance research and public understanding about the science of language.

For example, experiments may look at what non-signing people believe about what makes various American Sign Language signs hard or easy to learn, why it’s easier to understand the speech of people we know rather than strangers, or whether we think differently when reading a text message versus formal writing.

The experiments will be interactive and fun, said Assistant Research Professor in UMD’s Maryland Language Science Center Charlotte Vaughn, who is leading the project.

“Language is already the topic of conversation at the museum, so there’s an unparalleled opportunity for our studies and activities about language science to be a seamless and memorable part of visitors’ experience,” she said.

Planet Word, opened in late 2020 and housed in the historic Franklin School building, aims to show the depth, breadth and fun of words, language and reading. Faculty from UMD’s Maryland Language Science Center, the Department of Linguistics, the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences and the Department of English were involved in shaping the museum’s vision and programming. It has been a hope of the museum’s founder, Ann Friedman, to also have it be a space for research and discovery.

In addition to Vaughn, the lead project team includes Associate Professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences Yi Ting Huang and postdoc affiliate in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences Julie Cohen at UMD, as well as Assistant Professor of Psychology at Howard University Patrick Plummer and Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Gallaudet University Deanna Gagne. Other personnel include Jan Edwards and Rochelle Newman, both professors in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at UMD; Colin Phillips, professor in the Department of Linguistics at UMD; and Laura Wagner, professor in the Department of Psychology at the Ohio State University.

Vaughn said the opportunity to partner with a historically Black university and the world's only liberal arts university for Deaf and hard-of-hearing people will allow for significant progress on issues central to the field.

“Engaging the diverse Planet Word audience in our activities will make our research stronger, more representative, and more widely accessible,” Vaughn said. “At the same time, our collaborative partnership, plus offering unique research experiences to students underrepresented in the field, works toward diversifying the future of the language sciences.”

The grant also funds the development of a training course in public-facing research, which will be offered for the first time at Planet Word next summer. Though offered through UMD, the course will be open to students from across the region. Those who take part will help lead the research studies, set to begin around the same time.

“Participating in public-facing research is an excellent opportunity for students,” said Huang. “Communicating science to broad audiences involves developing ways to hook people into engaging with questions when they have limited familiarity with the topic and unraveling scientific puzzles through the format of conversations.”

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