News from

Linguistics

Reset All Filters
62 Results
Shooting for the moon
Schuler in the classroom

Linguistics professor Kathryn Schuler (right) wanted her students to think big. Throughout the semester, they worked on passion projects, following a Google X model to allow for unconstrained ideas to solve grand problems.

Shooting for the moon

In her Language and the Brain course, linguistics professor Kathryn Schuler asked 30 undergrads to think big about big problems—and their solutions didn’t disappoint.

Michele W. Berger

A shared past for East Africa’s hunter-gatherers
A few people stand in front of a building talking to a larger group of gathered people listening.

With the help of a local translator, Simon Thompson (in blue plaid shirt) from Sarah Tishkoff’s lab and Dawit Wolde-Meskel (in yellow shirt), a collaborator from Addis Ababa University, explain the research project on African population genetics to the Argobba population, Ethiopia. After the project is presented, the researchers answer any questions. (Credit: Tishkoff lab)

A shared past for East Africa’s hunter-gatherers

PIK Professor Sarah Tishkoff, Laura Scheinfeldt, and Sameer Soi use data from 50 populations to study African genetic diversity. Their analysis suggests that geographically far-flung hunter-gatherer groups share a common ancestry.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Philly accent: There’s a lot youse don’t know about it. Just ask these experts.

Philly accent: There’s a lot youse don’t know about it. Just ask these experts.

William Labov is best known for his decades of studying language patterns in Philadelphia, but the local accent is anything but fixed in time. Josef Fruehwald of the School of Arts and Sciences commented on the Philadelphia region’s shifting accent, alongside colleagues Meredith Tamminga and Jami Fisher.

Celebrating science
a stack of books in front of a chalkboard with math equations

Celebrating science

Eight Penn faculty share their favorite general interest books about science.

Erica K. Brockmeier

Social scientists trade academic silos for shared work space
Coren Apicella and Corey Cusimano standing to the side as Geoff Goodwin speaks at a podium.

Penn psychologists Coren Apicella and Geoffrey Goodwin (at podium) co-direct the new Social and Behavioral Sciences Initiative, part of mindCORE. Corey Cusimano (center), a grad student in Goodwin’s lab, will also participate. Cusimano studies the ways in which people hold others responsible for their attitudes. (Photo: Yevgeniy Olkhov)

Social scientists trade academic silos for shared work space

Faculty and grad students in the new Social and Behavioral Sciences Initiative have access to two state-of-the-art labs, grants, and a collaborative environment aimed at creating a vibrant research community.

Michele W. Berger

Widening the lens on language study
illustration of speech

Widening the lens on language study

Penn Arts and Sciences faculty use language to unravel mysteries of culture, cognition, and communication.

Nixon had ‘Deep Throat,’ Trump has ‘Lodestar’: An archaic word becomes a resistance hashtag

Nixon had ‘Deep Throat,’ Trump has ‘Lodestar’: An archaic word becomes a resistance hashtag

Mark Liberman of the School of Arts and Sciences provided a linguistic history of the word ‘lodestar.’ “Going back to the 14th or 15th century, there’s a metaphoric use referring to not the pole star but to any principle or person or idea or goal used for guidance,” said Liberman.

Sharing the science behind what we do, what we say, and how we learn
A two-week summer intensive workshop run by mindCORE focused on social and behavioral sciences, and on language science and technology, included a visit to Eastern State Penitentiary.

The two-week summer intensive workshop run by mindCORE, which focused on social and behavioral sciences and on language science and technology, included excursions like a visit to Eastern State Penitentiary (above) and to Spruce Street Harbor Park.

Sharing the science behind what we do, what we say, and how we learn

Through mindCORE, a two-week undergrad program through Arts and Sciences, faculty from eight departments and five schools explore the mind and the brain via disciplines like behavioral science and language acquisition.

Michele W. Berger

Two Penn professors named Guggenheim Fellows
Charles Yang and Charles Bork

Two Penn professors named Guggenheim Fellows

The School of Arts and Sciences’ Charles Yang and Charles L. Bosk, also of the Perelman School of Medicine, have been named Guggenheim Fellows.

Jacquie Posey , Jacquie Posey