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Cambridge Language Sciences

Interdisciplinary Research Centre
 
Language Sciences Incubator Fund banner_883x431px

Since launching the Incubator Fund, over £120,000 has been awarded to the following projects.

Awards in 2024

'Exploring novel figurative language to conceptualise Large Language Models' Prof. Ann Copestake (Computer Science and Technology), Dr Lucy Duggan (writer, translator), Dr Aurelie Herbelot (computational semanticist and entrepreneur), Amira Moeding (History), Dr Eva von Redecker (writer, philosopher)

'Neural encoding of AI-generated speech prosody by L1 and L2 speakers' Dr Julia Schwarz (Psychology), Linda Bakkouche, Stephanie Cooper, Xinbing Luo, Maddy Rees, Brechtje Post (Theoretical and Applied Linguistics), Charles McGhee (Engineering), Dr Kai Alter (Medical Sciences, Newcastle University)

'Generative Speech Corpora for Ecological Speech Perception Assessment'* Dr Lidea Shahidi, Dr Tobias Goehring, Jacqueline Von Seth (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit), Dr Marina Salorio-Corbetto (Clinical Neurosciences), Dr Calbert Graham, Madeleine Rees (Theoretical and Applied Linguistics)

* with funding from AI@Cam to support research into language equity and inclusion 

Awards in 2023

'Developing a Psychologically Grounded Corpus for Measuring Sensationalism in the News' Tiancheng Hu (Theoretical and Applied Linguistics), Prof. Kiran Garimella (School of Communications and Information, Rutgers University), Prof. Nigel Collier (Theoretical and Applied Linguistics)

'Methods for Evaluating Short-cut Learning in Transformer-based Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Systems and its implications' Dr Calbert Graham (Theoretical and Applied Linguistics), Dr Luca Scimeca (Harvard University), Nathan Roll (UC Santa Barbara)

Awards in 2022

'DEliData Annotation: Understanding Argument Transactions' Dr. Andreas Vlachos (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology), Mr. Georgi Karadzhov (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology), Dr. Tom Stafford (Dept. of Psychology, University of Sheffield)

'Collecting a Corpus of Metaphor Meanings' Prof Simone Teufel (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology), Prof Francis Bond (Dept. of Asian Studies, Palacký University Olomouc), Rowan Hall Maudslay (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology)

'Generalising Native Language Articulation to Non-Native Contexts: A Benchmark and Evaluation Framework' Dr Calbert Graham (Theoretical and Applied Linguistics), Konstantinos Voudouris (Dept. of Psychology & Student Fellow, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence), Dr Yasuaki Shinohara (Faculty of Science & Engineering, Waseda University, Japan).

'Predicting and mitigating contract clause conflict using AI' Felix Steffek (Faculty of Law), Ahmed Izzidien (Psychometric Centre), Rune Nyrup (Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence), Holli Sargeant (Faculty of Law)

'Flexible processing in multilingualism: The case of innovative denominal verbs' Dr Margreet Vogelzang (Theoretical & Applied Linguistics), Prof. Ianthi Tsimpli (Theoretical & Applied Linguistics), Prof Robyn Carston (Division of Psychology & Lang Sciences, UCL)

Awards in 2021

'Using tone to predict code-switching in English-Vietnamese/Cantonese/Mandarin' Dr Christopher Bryant (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology), Dr Li Nguyen (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology and Theoretical & Applied Linguistics), Kayeon Yoo (Amazon Alexa Text-to-Speech Group and Theoretical & Applied Linguistics), Katrina Li (Theoretical & Applied Linguistics)

'Accents as honest signals of in-group membership' Jonathan R Goodman (Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies), Professor Emeritus Robert A Foley (Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies), Professor Emeritus Francis Nolan (Phonetics Lab), Dr Emma Cohen (Social Body Lab, University of Oxford)

'A linguistically-driven task on multi-modal spatial reasoning' Fangyu Liu (Language Technology Lab, Theoretical & Applied Linguistics), Dr Guy Emerson (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology), Prof. Nigel Collier (Language Technology Lab, Theoretical & Applied Linguistics)

'Developing an Old English lemmatiser' Dr Marieke Meelen (Theoretical & Applied Linguistics), Dr Andrew Caines (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology & ALTA Institute)

'Live voice vowel inference web app' Dr Bert Vaux (Theoretical & Applied Linguistics), Dr James Burridge (Reader in Probability and Statistical Physics, University of Portsmouth), Dr Michal Gnacik (Senior Lecturer in Mathematics and Physics, University of Portsmouth)

'Empirical evaluation of Graham's hierarchy of disagreement' Dr Andreas Vlachos & Christine de Kock (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology), Dr Tom Stafford (Dept. of Psychology, University of Sheffield)

'PerMaSC: Speech Perception through Masks in School Contexts' Dr Kirsty McDougall (PI), Julia Schwarz, Katrina Kechun Li, Jasper Hong Sim, Yixin Zhang & Prof. Brechtje Post (Phonetics Laboratory); Dr Lizzie Buchanan-Worster & Dr Lorna Halliday (MRC-CBU); Dr Jenny Gibson (Faculty of Education)

'DEliData: Deliberation Enhancing Data' Dr Andreas Vlachos (PI) & Georgi Karadzhov (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology), Dr Tom Stafford (Dept. of Psychology, University of Sheffield)

'Listening practice for English learners: towards an intelligent tutoring system' Dr Andrew Caines (PI) & Prof. Paula Buttery (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology), Dr Mirjana Bozic (Dept. of Psychology), Mark Elliott & Dr Hye-won Lee (Cambridge Assessment)

Awards in 2020

'Crosslinguistic influence in L2 word processing and learning' Dr. Francesca Branzi (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit), Dr. Ya-Ning Chang (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit), Dr. Dora Alexopoulou (Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, MMLL)

'The evolution of speech: insight from variation in primate laryngeal anatomy' Professor Marta Lahr & Dr Jacob Dunn (Archaeology), Dr Andrew Gillis (Zoology), Professor Tecumseh Fitch (University of Vienna)

Awards in 2019

'Developing a large scale online study of L1 and L2 speech perception' Dr Brechtje Post (Theoretical & Applied Linguistics), Dr Elaine Schmidt (Cambridge Assessment English), Dr Matt Davis & Dr Becky Gilbert (MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit)

'Named-Entity Recognition in Tibetan and Mongolian Newspapers' Dr Hildegard Diemberger, Dr Thomas White (Mongolian & Inner Asian Studies Unit, Dept. of Social Anthropology), Dr Marieke Meelen (Theoretical & Applied Linguistics). Collaborators: Dr Robert Barnett (Visiting Scholar, Pembroke College), Dr Nathan Hill (SOAS) 

'Collecting a Dialogue Corpus for Language Learning' Dr Andrew Caines, Dr Helen Yannakoudakis, Dr Paula Buttery (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology); Dr Pascual Pérez-Paredes (Faculty of Education); Prof. Bill Byrne (Dept. of Engineering) 

'Talk about mind and space: paternal and maternal contributions to school readiness' Dr Elian Fink (Centre for Play in Education, Development & Learning), Prof. Claire Hughes (Centre for Family Research), Dr Henriëtte Hendriks (Linguistics)

'Cognitive differences between bilingual and monolingual 'struggling learners'' Curtis Sharma (Linguistics), Dr Joni Holmes (Centre for Attention, Memory & Learning, MRC-CBU), Dr Napoleon Katsos (Linguistics), Dr Jenny Gibson (Faculty of Education), Dr Jacalyn Guy (Centre for Attention, Memory & Learning, MRC-CBU)

'The costs of faking it: exploring the role of accent in human social signalling' Prof. Robert Foley (Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies), Jonathon Goodman (Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies), Prof. Ian Roberts (Linguistics), Prof. Francis Nolan (Phonetics Lab, Linguistics)

'Automatically standardising two multilingual code-switched corpora' Dr Theresa Biberauer (Computer Science & Technology/Linguistics),  Christopher Bryant (Computer Science & Technology), Li Nguyen (Linguistics), Sana Kidwai (Linguistics)

'Computational psycholinguistic investigations of semantic graph representations' Dr Andrew Caines (Computer Science & Technology), Dr Mirjana Bozic (Psychology), Giulia Boloventa (Linguistics), Dr Paula Buttery (Computer Science & Technology)

Awards in 2018

'Language, Brains & Machines: an initial literature review' Anna Samuel, Dr Andrew Caines, Dr Paula Buttery (Dept. of Computer Science & Technology)

'Learning a language at your brain's pace' Dr Henriëtte Hendriks (Linguistics), Prof. Zoe Kourtzi (Psychology), Dr Vicky Leong (Psychology), Dr John Williams (Linguistics) 

'Neural encoding of semantic and syntactic information in bilingualism' Dr Mirjana Bozic (Language Brain and Bilingualism Lab, Psychology), Andrea Olguin (Language, Brain and Bilingualism Lab, Psychology), Tristan Bekinschtein (Cambridge Consciousness & Cognition Lab, Psychology) 

''Bhavishya Shakti'- Constructs of a novel education intervention in urban slums' Prof. Sumantra Ray (NNEdPro Global Centre for Nutrition and Health), Prof. Ianthi Tsimpli (Linguistics), Dr Minha Rajput-Ray (NNEdPro), Ms Ananya Ria Roy (NNEdPro) 

'Multilingualism and subjective wellbeing in the family: a systematic review' Dr Napoleon Katsos (Linguistics), Dr Jenny Gibson (Education) 

'A personalised literacy and numeracy teaching app for mobile devices' Dr Andrew Caines (Linguistics/ALTA); Dr Paula Buttery, Russell Moore, Dr Andrew Rice (Computer Science & Technology); Prof. Ianthi Tsimpli (Linguistics) 

'A collaborative game-based approach to documenting linguistic variation in Brazil' Dr Ioanna Sitaridou (Spanish & Portuguese), Dr Paula Buttery (Computer Science & Technology), Dr Andrew Caines (Linguistics/ALTA)

Awards in 2017

'Historical codeswitching and language mutability in the history of English' Dr Laura Wright (English) & Professor Ian Roberts (Linguistics). 

'Multisensory semantic integration in inferential comprehension' Dr Ana Pérez, Dr Elaine Schmidt, Dr Luca Cilibarasi, Prof. Ianthi Tsimpli (Linguistics); Dr Andrew Welchman, Prof. Zoe Kourtzi (Psychology) 

'Multi-word expressions in spoken learner English' Dr Paula Buttery (Computer Lab) & Dr Andrew Caines (Linguistics) 

Awards in 2016

'Neural correlates of selective attention in bilingualism' Dr Mirjana Bozic, Andrea Olguin, Dr Tristan Bekinschtein (Psychology); Dr Napoleon Katsos (Linguistics) 

'Crowdsourcing an error-annotated corpus of spoken learner English' Dr Andrew Caines (Linguistics) & Dr Marek Rei (Computer Laboratory) 

'Towards a parsed corpus of historical Welsh' Dr David Willis (Linguistics), Dr Sheila Watts (German & Dutch), Prof. Paul Russell (Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic) 

'The relationship between vision and reading in global and local language processing' Dr Elaine Schmidt, Dr Luca Cilibrasi, Dr Ana Pérez, Prof. Ianthi Tsimpli (Linguistics); Dr Andrew Welchman, Prof. Zoe Kourtzi (Psychology) 

What we do

Cambridge Language Sciences is an Interdisciplinary Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. Our virtual network connects researchers from five schools across the university as well as other world-leading research institutions. Our aim is to strengthen research collaborations and knowledge transfer across disciplines in order to address large-scale multi-disciplinary research challenges relating to language research.

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