News

Chancellor's visit

21 March 2014

The Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, and the Vice Chancellor Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, both paid a visit to the Dept. of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics on 20 March to learn more about cross-disciplinary research in language sciences at the University. The two-hour...

The missing structural pattern in human languages

10 February 2014

Linguists working at Cambridge and Newcastle have discovered that a certain combination of words is impossible in all languages, despite it being quite easy to understand what it would mean. Linguists have known for many years that, among the world’s languages, roughly half are like English in that they put the object of...

Mapping how Americans talk

11 December 2013

Research by Dr. Bert Vaux (Dept. of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics) into regional variations in American English as part of the 2003 Harvard Dialect Survey has been used as the basis for a short film called Soda Pop Coke. Find out more here. http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2013/11/soda-vs-pop-vs-coke-mapping-...

Mapping How Americans Talk

27 November 2013

A film based on a 2003 survey of U.S. dialects by Dr. Bert Vaux in the Dept. of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics has just been published. The film uses heat maps to show the distribution of regional variants in pronounciation and vocabulary (for example, the differnt ways to prounce the word 'pecan'; 'soda' versus 'pop...

English for the Future: assessing, learning, teaching and using the global language

25 September 2013

Cambridge English Centenary Conference English language learning is experiencing one of its most dramatic periods of growth, and English is now one of the primary curriculum subjects for many children around the world. It is vital that the assessment community understands this landscape so that it can develop the right...

Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics

25 September 2013

Professor Geoffrey Khan in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies is celebrating the publication of the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics , for which he was Editor-in-Chief. This is now the most authoritative and comprehensive reference tool for research on the Hebrew language. http://www.brill.com/...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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