The best teachers always somehow know when a student is confused, excited or bored by class content. Could an AI system capture what our best teachers do in the classroom every day? A new $20 milllion NSF-sponsored CU Center co-led by CU CSCI/LING professor Martha Palmer will explore this question. She and her team will develop better tools for collaborative learning through artificial intelligence. 

Dr. Alexis Palmer will join the faculty of CU Linguistics as an Assistant Professor in January 2021. Dr. Palmer, recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award, is an expert in computational discourse and semantics, computational linguistics for low-resource languages, and social analytics. Her research and teaching activities will further enhance the stature of CU Boulder as a center of scholarship and training in computational linguistics and natural language processing. 

If you are a CU undergraduate or graduate student and seek professional opportunities teaching English learners either in the US or abroad, CU Linguistics can get you there. Senior Instructor of TESOL Theory and Practice Dr. Rai Farrelly, director of the current undergraduate certificate in TESOL, now directs two programs coming online this fall: the undergraduate TESOL minor, which replaces the undergraduate certificate, and the graduate certificate in TESOL. 

In its May 15, 2020 virtual graduate recognition ceremony, CU Linguistics celebrated 23 majors, 5 BA/MA students, 18 MA students, 4 MS CLASIC students, 5 PhD students, and recipients of LURA Awards, the David Rood Scholarship, the Van Ek Scholars Award and Latin Honors. The map shows current CU graduate locations. It was made by CU LING Assistant Professor Hannah Haynie, and featured in A&S Dean James White's commencement message, It captures what chair Laura Michaelis referred to in her welcoming remarks as CU's digital diaspora. 

Students from CU’s program in Culture, Language, and Social Practice (CLASP) joined advisor Kira Hall to deliver a well received panel at the AAA/CASCA conference in Vancouver, November 2019. Entitled “Language and Middleclassness,” the panel originated from Prof. Hall's Spring 2019 CU seminar of the same name. Seven students presented papers based on work conducted in the seminar.

Colorado Research in Linguistics (CRIL), a peer-reviewed electronic journal hosted by CU Scholar, is a student-run working papers periodical that has been published by CU Linguistics since 1971. Pictured are current members of the editorial board (L-R): Jonnia Torres, Olivia Hirschey, Jared Desjardins, and Kayla Kohake. 

CU Linguistics offers a MS in Computational Linguistics, Analytics, Search and Informatics (CLASIC), an interdisciplinary degree providing a solid foundation in computer science and linguistics, as well as coursework in data-driven linguistics, computational linguistics and information processing. Apply by December 1 (international) or January 10 (domestic). For questions contact director Professor Martha Palmer. 

Researchers in the sociocultural linguistics program at CU Boulder analyze the ways that language contributes to organizations of social life in diverse contexts, whether local, regional, national, or global. Prof. Kira Hall is director of the interdisciplinary CLASP program on Culture, Language, and Social Practice, which sponsors innovative research initiatives, visiting scholars, and an internationally recognized biannual conference.

Like spoken languages, sign languages differ greatly across the globe. Nonetheless, many deaf refugees are evaluated and declared to have no language ability and/or severe mental deficiencies simply because they cannot communicate in American Sign Language (ASL). Linguistics graduate student Pamela Wright is working to help these individuals communicate in the U.S. context. To read more about this important work, check out the article in "CU Boulder Today" here.

How might universal but often arbitrary patterns arise across the languages of the world? Practitioners of Construction Grammar reject the prevailing view that they come from a genetically specified 'Universal Grammar', instead viewing them as products of cultural transmission, adapted to communicative needs and routines. CU Linguistics Professor Laura Michaelis, shown at the Tenth International Conference on Construction Grammar, is a leading proponent of Construction Grammar.