News

It's a funny time to be working on language and AI. A year ago, this might have seemed like a niche interest, but these days ‘large language model’ is practically a household term. I recently had the chance to speak about language and AI at an event run by the Centre for Science and Policy, and I thought I would write a summary, because it seems a …

The new Cambridge Global Humanities: Multilingualism website is part of the Global Humanities initiative set up by the School of Arts and Humanities in 2020.The site offers information about research and events in languages, multilingualism and language contact at Cambridge.It also features related research projects on themes including endangered l…

A workshop organised by Cambridge Language Sciences (CLS) brought together language researchers and local clinicians for an afternoon of networking and knowledge exchange.The aim was to learn more about each other’s work and explore opportunities for collaboration as a route to research impact.The workshop was attended by speech and language therap…

We are delighted to announce that four projects have been awarded funding through the newly established Language Sciences Impact Fund.The Fund, which ran for the first time this year, supports impact-related activities in the language sciences. The aim is to increase engagement with non-academic partners such as health and education practitioners, …

We are delighted to announce that two new projects have been awarded seed funding through the Language Sciences Incubator Fund.The successful applicants from the latest call were announced on 29 March 2023.We would like to congratulate all concerned and thank the reviewers for giving their time to evaluate the proposals. Posters on the funded resea…

In a paper selected for the front cover of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) James Burridge and Bert Vaux present a new method for the low dimensional measurement of vowels using machine perception.This method could eventually improve our ability to measure how the set of vowel sounds varies between different people, allowing …

The interdisciplinary Cambridge Festival will take place from 17 March - 2 April 2023 with a mixture of on online, on-demand and in-person events covering all aspects of the world-leading research happening at Cambridge.The folllwing is a selection of language sciences-related events at this year's festival. For a full list of events and to book pl…

What does language diversity mean for the past, present and future of humankind?This ‘moonshot’ question was the focus of this year’s Language Sciences Annual Symposium which took place at Cripps Court, Magdalene College on Thursday 24 November.The moonshots are ambitious questions of societal importance developed as part of Cambridge Language Scie…

Esther-Miriam Wagner is the Executive Director of the Woolf Institute and an Affiliate Lecturer at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge.Her main research interests include the Cairo Genizah, Judaeo-Arabic, historical linguistics of Arabic and Yiddish, sociolinguistics, scribal practise, and Jewish-Muslim relation…

How can people with diverging views be supported to successfully communicate and negotiate? This ‘moonshot’ question was the focus of Deliberation4Good, a workshop co-supported by the Language Sciences Workshop Fund and ‘Opening Up Minds’, and which took place on 14th October at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. The ‘moonshots’ are ambitious question…

How different could alien language and intelligence be from ours? How might we communicate with intelligent exo-beings?These were just two of the questions considered at the inaugural meeting of the Cambridge Institute of Exo-Language (CIEL) which took place on Saturday 22 October at the University of Cambridge’s Sidgwick site, in conjunction with …

Daniel Weston is Assistant Professor of English of at Hong Kong University (HKU).His research interests include bilingual pragmatics (code-switching), World Englishes (specifically English dialect development), and the discourse analysis of gatekeeping encounters.He is currently collaborating with the University of Cambridge on a project examining …

Laura Wright is a historical sociolinguist and Professor of English Language at the University of Cambridge.She works on the history of Standard English and the London dialect, including mixed-language texts written in Anglo-Norman, Medieval Latin and Middle English, as well as 17th, 18th and 19th century London English. She has published on histor…

Raymond Hickey is Adjunct Professor at the University of Limerick and former Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Duisburg and Essen. His research has centred around the sociolinguistics of varieties of English within the language variation and change paradigm and around issues in language contact and areal linguistics. He is also …

Arik Kershenbaum is a behavioural ecologist in the Department of Zoology, and Director of Studies at Girton College, University of Cambridge.He researches vocal communication in animals including wolves, dolphins, whales and hyraxes. He is particularly interested in the role of communication in the evolution of cooperation in intelligent and social…