Doctoral Alums in Academia and Industry

Kevin Gould is a senior linguist at Google Assistant in Mountain View, CA.

Sarah Moeller is an Assistant Professor of Computational Language Science at the University of Florida.

Marielle Butters is a Senior Linguistic Data Specialist at Transparent Language in Longmont, CO. 

Jill Duffield is a Language Data Researcher at Amazon in Seattle, WA.

Tao Lin is a Computational Linguist, Data Scientist and Conversation Designer at Milestone Technologies, Inc. in Flagstaff, AZ. 

Tim O'Gorman is a Senior Research Scientist at Thorn.

Kevin Stowe is a postdoctoral fellow in the Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing (UKP) lab at TU Darmstadt.

Sam Beer is postdoctoral fellow in Anthropology at the University of Virginia. 

Steve Duman is an analytical linguist specializing in Statistical Analysis and Model Evaluation at Grammarly in Seattle, WA.

Richard Sandoval is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Metro State University, Colorado. 

Nicholas Williams is an Instructional Specialist in the Linguistics Department at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey. 

Ashwini Vaidya is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at IIT-Delhi.

Michael Thomas is a lecturer at Washington State University. 

Jenny Davis is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

Joshua Raclaw is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at West Chester University.

Sean Allison is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Trinity Western University in British Columbia. 

Susanne Stadlbauer is Resident Fellow at the CU Boulder Center for Media, Religion, and Culture and adjunct faculty in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming

Georgia Zellou is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at UC Davis. 

Lal Zimman is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at UC Santa Barbara.

Les Sikos is a Language Data Researcher at Amazon in Seattle, WA. 

Susan Brown is Senior Research Associate and instructor in Linguistics and Computer Science, as well as co-director of the CLASIC program, at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Kevin Cohen is an instructor in Bioinformatics at the University of Colorado Denver Medical School.

Armik Mirzayan is Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of South Dakota. 

Vicky Tzuyin Lai is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona. 

Chad Nilep is Associate Professor in the Academic Writing Unit of the Institute of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Nagoya University. 

Weldu Weldeyesus is Instructor of English as a Second Language at the Community College of Denver.

Adam Hodges is Adjunct Assistant Professor in CU Linguistics.

Jessica Sams is an Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Kyung-Im Han is an assistant professor of English Language and Literature at Keimyung University, Daegu, South Korea.

Hartwell Francis is an assistant professor of Linguistics at the University of Western Carolina.

Kristine S. Stenzel is a professor of Linguistics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Traci Walker (née Curl) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Human Communication Sciences at the University of Sheffield. 

Makoto Hayashi is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Nagoya University, Japan.

William Styler is Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, San Diego.

Erin Shay is a research associate in Linguistics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Jule Gomez de Garcia is a professor of Linguistics at San Marcos State University, California.

2023

Ghazaleh Kazeminejad
Dissertation: Computational Lexical Resources for Explainable Natural Language Understanding 
Advisor: Martha Palmer

2022

Olivia Marrese
Dissertation: Just as a participants’ resource: Scales, stance, and action in interaction 
Advisor: Chase Raymond

2021

Ling Liu
Dissertation: Morphological Generation with Deep Learning Approaches
Advisor: Mans Hulden

Irina Wagner
Dissertation: Conversational Storytelling in Arapaho: A Grammar of Narrative Initiations
Advisor: Andrew Cowell

Sarah Moeller
Dissertation: Integrating Machine Learning into Language Documentation and Description
Advisor:  Mans Hulden

Marielle Butters
Dissertation: Negation in four languages of Indonesia
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

2020

Evan Coles-Harris
Dissertation: Phonetic Convergence and Dialect Change in Nanjing, China
Advisor: Rebecca Scarborough

Jesus Villalpando
Dissertation: Grammatical Aspect in Norogachi Rarámuri (Tarahumara; Uto-Aztecan)
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

2019

Tao Lin
Dissertation: Automatic Classification of Verb-Direction Constructions in Mandarin Chinese
Advisor: Laura Michaelis and Martha Palmer

Marcus Avelar
Dissertation: Urban Spirits: Language, Race, and Modernity among Umbandistas in São Paulo, Brazil
Advisor: Kira Hall

Yahya Aseri
Dissertation: Encoding semantic relations between the predicate and participants through Arabic verbal morphology: A systems interaction approach
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Timothy O'Gorman
Dissertation: Bringing together computational and linguistic models of implicit role interpretation
Advisors: Martha Palmer and Laura Michaelis

Kevin Stowe
Dissertation: Syntactic and semantic improvements to computational metaphor processing
Advisor: Martha Palmer

2018

Luciana Marques
Dissertation: Perception of vowel nasality contrast in Brazilian Portuguese
Advisor: Rebecca Scarborough

2017

Samuel Beer
Dissertation: Grammatical Contraction in Nyang’i: A Descriptive and Comparative Study 
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Stefanie Ramos-Bierge
Dissertation: Clause type and transitivity in Wixárika (Huichol): A Uto-Aztecan language
Advisor: Andrew Cowell

2016

Steve Duman
Dissertation: The Space-time Topography of English Speakers 
Advisor: Bhuvana Narasimhan

Maha Foster
Dissertation: Visual Speech Perception of Arabic Emphatics and Gutturals 
Advisor: Rebecca Scarborough

Niloofar Khalili 
Dissertation: Contact-induced Cross-dialectal Phonetic Variability in an Endangered Iranian Language: The Case of Taleshi
Advisor: Rebecca Scarborough

Aous Mansouri
Dissertation: Stative and Stativizing Constructions in Arabic News Reports: A Corpus-Based Study
Advisor: Laura Michaelis

Katherine Phelps Ridgeway
Dissertation: Phonetic training strategies for non-native speech perception
Advisor: Rebecca Scarborough

Richard Sandoval
Dissertation: Gesture-Speech Bimodalism in Arapaho Grammar: An Interactional Approach
Advisor: Andrew Cowell

Nicholas Williams
Dissertation: Place Reference and Location Formulation in Kula Conversation
Advisor: Barbara Fox

2015

Kevin Gould
Dissertation: Now You See It, Now You Don't: The Influence of Lexical Class, Usage Frequency, and Constructional Content on Semantic Simulation
Advisor: Laura Michaelis

William Styler
Dissertation: On the Acoustical and Perceptual Features of Vowel Nasality
Advisor: Rebecca Scarborough

Ashwini Vaidya
Hindi Complex Predicates: Linguistic and Computational Approaches
Advisors: Martha Palmer and Bhuvana Narasimhan

Roy Warnock
Dementia and Singing: A Conversation Analysis Case Study of Singing in Everyday Interactions
Advisor: Barbara Fox
 
2014

Claire Bonial
Dissertation: Take a look at this! Form, Function and Productivity of English Light Verb Constructions
Advisors: Martha Palmer and Bhuvana Narasimhan

Da Cheong (Jena) Hwang
Dissertation: Identification and Representation of Caused Motion Constructions, winner of the 2015 Robert J. Glushko Dissertation Prize, awarded by the Cognitive Science Society and the Glushko-Samuelson Foundation, for dissertations representing outstanding, original and high impact scholarship in the field of cognitive science
Advisor: Martha Palmer

David Harper
Dissertation: An Analysis of Perceptual Factors in the Evolution of Spanish Approximants
Advisor: Rebecca Scarborough

Michael Thomas
Dissertation: A Grammar of Sakun (Sukur)
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

2013

Jill Duffield
Dissertation: Beyond the Subject: The Interaction of Syntax and Semantics in the Production of English Verb Agreement
Advisor: Bhuvana Narasimhan

Joshua Raclaw
Dissertation: Indexing Inferables and Organizational Shifts:'No'-Prefaces in English Conversations
Advisor: Barbara Fox

William Corvey
Dissertation: Leveraging Pragmatic Features for Microblogged Information Extraction During Crises
Advisor: Martha Palmer

Jenny Davis
Dissertation: Learning to 'Talk Indian': Ethnolinguistic Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance
Advisor: Kira Hall

2012

Sean Allison
Dissertation: Aspects of a Grammar of Makary Kotoko
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Susanne Stadlbauer
Dissertation: Displaced Islamic Identities: Language, Time and Space in a Post 9/11 America
Advisor: Kira Hall

Georgia Zellou
Dissertation: Similarity and Enhancement: Nasality from Moroccan Arabic Pharyngeals and Nasals
Advisor: Rebecca Scarborough

Lal Zimman
Dissertation: Voices in Transition: Testosterone, Transmasculinity, and the Gendered Voice Among Female-to-Male Transgender People
Advisor: Kira Hall

2011

Kai-Yun Helen Chen
Dissertation: Sound Patterns in Mandarin Recycling Repair
Advisor: Barbara Fox

Les Sikos
Dissertation: Tipping the Balance: The Modulation of ERP Effects at the Syntax-Semantics Interface
Advisors: Laura Michaelis and Albert Kim

2010

Susan Windisch Brown
Dissertation: Finding Meaning: Sense Inventories for Improved Word Sense Disambiguation
Advisor: Martha Palmer

Kevin Cohen
Dissertation: Paradigms of Evaluation in Natural Language Processing: Field Linguistics for Glass Box Testing
Advisor: Martha Palmer

Armik Mirzayan
Dissertation: Lakota Intonation and Prosody
Advisor: David Rood

Saeko Ogihara
Dissertation: Verb Final Typology
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Jeff Stebbins
Dissertation: Usage Frequency and Articulatory Reduction in Vietnamese Tonogenesis
Advisor: Rebecca Scarborough

2009

Lori Heintzelman
Dissertation: The Re-education of Desire: The Role of Narrative in Religious-based Sexual Identity Transformation
Advisor: Kira Hall

Vicky Tzuyin Lai
Dissertation: Understanding Metaphorical Expressions: Conventionality, Mappings, and Comparison Processes
Advisor: Bhuvana Narasimhan

Chad Nilep
Dissertation: Articulating a Transnational Family: 'Hippo Family' Language Learners in Japan and the USA
Advisor: Kira Hall

Weldu Weldeyesus
Dissertation: Language Socialization and Ensuing Identity Construction Among Ethiopian Immigrants in Metropolitan Denver
Advisor: Kira Hall

2008

Jason Brenier
Dissertation: The Automatic Predictionof Prosodic Prominence from Text
Advisor: Dan Jurafsky

Adam Hodges
Dissertation: The 'War on Terror' Narrative: The (Inter)Textual Construction and Contestation of Sociopolitical Reality
Advisor: Kira Hall

Masako Hoye
Dissertation: Exploration of the Notionof Subject in Japanese
Advisor: Barbara Fox

Jessica Sams
Dissertation: A Syntactic Analysis of Written English Quotatives
Advisor: Laura Michaelis

Hiromi Sumiya
Dissertation: The Effect of Familiarity and Semantics on Early Acquisition of Japanese Numeral Classifiers
Advisor: Barbara Fox

Hui-hsin Tseng
Dissertation: The Use of Morphological Knowledge in Chinese Natural Language Processing
Advisor: Dan Jurafsky

2007

Kyung-Im Han
Dissertation: Consonant Cluster Phenomena: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison.
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Hyun-Jung Yang
Dissertation: Grammar as an Interactional Resource in Korean Spontaneous Conversations
Advisor: Barbara Fox

2006

Hartwell Francis
Dissertation: Transitivity in Arapaho: A Construction Grammar Approach
Advisors: Laura Michaelis and Andrew Cowell

Cynthia Girand
Dissertation: Prenuclear Accentual Structure in Conversational English
Advisor: Alan Bell

2005

Ayako Ikeno
Dissertation: Perceptual and AcousticCues in English Accent Variation: Accent Classification for Speaker Identification
Advisor: Barbara Fox

2003

Phyllis Bellver
Dissertation: An Investigation into the Functional Syntax of Spoken Basque
Advisor: Laura Michaelis

Holly Krech-Thomas
Dissertation: Training Strategies for Improving Listeners' Comprehension of Foreign-Accented Speech
Advisors: Lise Menn, Alice Healy (PSYC)

Kristine S. Stenzel
Dissertation: A Reference Grammar of Wanano, winner of the 2004 Mary R. Haas Award for an unpublished manuscript that “makes a significant substantive contribution to our knowledge of the indigenous languages of the Western Hemisphere”.
Advisors: Barbara Fox, Jule Gomez de Garcia

2002

Valerie Wallace
Dissertation: The Roles of Babble in Language Acquisition: Evidence from Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children
Advisors: Lise Menn, Christine Yoshinaga-Itano (SLHS)

Traci (Curl) Walker
Dissertation: The Phonetics of Sequence Organization: An Investigation of Lexical Repetition in Other-Initiated Repair Sequences in American English
Advisor: Barbara Fox

Linda Nicita
Dissertation: Cognitive Verbs in Spanish: A Discourse Profile of acordarse, creer, saber and Related Verbs
Advisor: Barbara Fox

2001

Douglas Roland
Dissertation: Verb Sense and Verb Subcategorization Probabilities
Advisor: Dan Jurafsky

Michelle Gregory
Dissertation: Linguistic Informativeness and Speech Production: An Investigationof Contextual and Discourse-Pragmatic Effects on PhonologicalVariation
Advisor: Dan Jurafsky

2000

Makoto Hayashi
Dissertation: Practices in Joint Utterance Construction in Japanese conversation
Advisor: Barbara Fox

Kristin Homer
Dissertation: A Discourse Constraint on Subject Information Questions
Advisor: Laura Michaelis

William Raymond
Dissertation: Toward a Theory of Grammatical Encoding in Speech Production: Evidence from Speech Errors
Advisors: Alan Bell, Laura Michaelis

1999

Linh-Chan Brown
Dissertation: The Grammaticalization of Directed Motion in Vietnamese
Advisor: Laura Michaelis

Erin Shay
Dissertation: A Grammar of East Dangla: The Simple Sentence
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Debra Biasca
Dissertation: Language Development in Jacobsen(11q Deletion) Syndrome: The Interaction of Language, Cognition and Genetics
Advisor: Lise Menn

1998

Andrea Feldman
Dissertation: Constructing Grammar: Fillers, Formulas and Function
Advisor: Lise Menn

Robert Jasperson
Dissertation: Repair after Cut-off: Explorationsin the Grammar of Focused Repair of the Turn-Constructional-Unit-so-far
Advisor: Barbara Fox

Maria Thomas-Ruzic
Dissertation: Language and Activity: We, you and I in Instructional Talk
Advisor: Barbara Fox

Julia Fisher
Dissertation: Mental Lexicons of Children: Multiple Routes to Lexical Access withImplications for Reading
Advisor: Alan Bell

Tilo Weber
Dissertation: Shared Background and Repair in German Conversation
Advisor: Barbara Fox

1997

Immanuel Barshi
Dissertation: Effects of Linguistic Properties and Message Length on Misunderstandings in Aviation Communication
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

1996

Barbara Diekmann
Dissertation: The Mutual Shaping of Task Context and System Interface in Directory Assistance Conversations
Advisor: Barbara Fox

1995

Harold ‘Skip’ Wilcox
Dissertation: Salience Imbalance and Metaphor
Advisor: Lise Menn

1994

Won-Ho Kim
Dissertation: Grammatical Relations and Anaphora in Korean
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Randall Sparks
Dissertation: The Structure of Self-Repair in English Conversation
Advisor: Barbara Fox

Jule Gomez de Garcia
Dissertation: Communicative Strategies in Conversational Kickapoo
Advisor: Allan Taylor

Elizabeth O’Dowd
Dissertation: Prepositions and Particles in English: A Discourse-Based, UnifyingAccount
Advisor: Barbara Fox

1993

Liang Tao
Dissertation: Zero Anaphora in Chinese: Cognitive Strategies in Discourse Processing
Advisor: Barbara Fox

Mei-Chun Liu
Dissertation: Discourse, Grammar, and Grammaticalization: Synchronic and Diachronic Analyses of Mandarin Adverbial markers JIU and CAI
Advisor: Barbara Fox

1992

Eun-Il Kim
Dissertation: Voice in Korean
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Rebecca Burns-Hoffman
Dissertation: A Discourse Analysis of Variationin Children's Language in pre-School, Small Group Settings
Advisor: Lise Menn

1990

Robert Koops
Dissertation: Aspects of the Grammar of Kuteb
Advisor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Melissa Axelrod
Dissertation: The Semantics of Temporal Categorization: The Aspectual System of Koyukon Athabaskan
Advisor: David Rood