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Cambridge Language Sciences

Interdisciplinary Research Centre
 
Read more at: Cambridge to launch new institute for Automated Language Teaching and Assessment (ALTA)

Cambridge to launch new institute for Automated Language Teaching and Assessment (ALTA)

18 April 2013

Following on from the English Profile programme, Cambridge English Language Assessment will fund a new institute to undertake research on Automated Language Teaching and Assessment (ALTA), to be launched in October 2013. The institute will be administered by the Computer Laboratory but includes principal investigators from...


Read more at: John Trim, 1924 - 2013
John Trim, 1924 - 2013

John Trim, 1924 - 2013

25 January 2013

John Trim, the founder of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and its first Director from 1958-1978, died peacefully on 19 January at the age of 88. Among the many achievements in a long and distinguished career he was Director of the Centre for Information on Language Teaching from 1978-1987, and...


Read more at: Listen up! at the Science Museum
Listen up! at the Science Museum

Listen up! at the Science Museum

21 January 2013

Being able to hear small acoustic differences between spoken words is vital for comprehension. Although this may be effortless in your native language it can be very difficult to hear similar differences between spoken words in a second language, particularly if you learn that language in adulthood. In order to learn more...


Read more at: Voiceprints aren't fingerprints
Voiceprints aren't fingerprints

Voiceprints aren't fingerprints

13 December 2012

Professor Francis Nolan and Dr Kirsty McDougall from the Phonetics Laboratory (DTAL) and other forensic speech experts discuss their research on speaker characteristics in a recent BBC Radio 4 programme. The programme considers the increasing role played by forensic phonetics in the digital age, and looks at new...


Read more at: New evidence supports Anatolia hypothesis for origins of English
New evidence supports Anatolia hypothesis for origins of English

New evidence supports Anatolia hypothesis for origins of English

30 August 2012

A recent study published in Science , and reported by news agencies including the BBC, backs a hypothesis about the origins of the Indo-European languages (including English) first proposed by the distinguished Cambridge archaeologist Professor Colin Renfrew (Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) in 1987. Professor Renfrew's...


Read more at: Making sense of noisy speech
Making sense of noisy speech

Making sense of noisy speech

13 August 2012

Recent research by scientists at the MRC-CBU has shown how subtitles not only aid our understanding of speech, but also provide the illusion that the speech is actually clearer. We are all familiar with the huge benefit that television subtitles provide to hearing-impaired individuals, and their use in aiding comprehension...


Read more at: Milton Keynes to Cardiff (via New Zealand)
Milton Keynes to Cardiff (via New Zealand)

Milton Keynes to Cardiff (via New Zealand)

13 July 2012

Research by David Willis in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics into syntactic variation in present-day Welsh has recently been in the spotlight in Wales. As part of a long-term collaboration with researchers at Newcastle University and the University of Essex, Dr. Willis has been seeking Welsh speakers...


Read more at: Reading between the Lines
Reading between the Lines

Reading between the Lines

31 May 2012

Professor Usha Goswami , Professor of Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience in the Department of Experimental Psychology, discusses her research into developmental dyslexia with the author Michael Morpurgo in the BBC Radio 4 programme Reading between the Lines which aired on Tues, 29 May. She describes how research has...


Read more at: Predicting sounds helps the brain to recognise words
Predicting sounds helps the brain to recognise words

Predicting sounds helps the brain to recognise words

22 May 2012

New research on listening shows how the human brain uses its own form of predictive text. In a recent study published in the journal Current Biology , three Cambridge researchers at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit , Pierre Gagnepain, Rik Henson and Matt Davis, show that the brain is constantly using knowledge of...


Read more at: Breaking new ground in Natural Language Processing
Breaking new ground in Natural Language Processing

Breaking new ground in Natural Language Processing

3 May 2012

An interdisciplinary research collaboration on computational semantics by the computer science departments of Cambridge, Oxford, Sussex, York and Edinburgh has just been awarded a three-year EPSRC grant of c. £1.5M from October 2012. The research will exploit the strengths of two different computational modelling...


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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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