Language Science Group

The Language Science Minor provides students with the knowledge of how sounds, structure, and meaning work in human language, and the skills needed to apply that knowledge in disciplines such as computing, psychology, interpreting, and engineering. Students are encouraged to pursue their individual career interests in language, from the relationship between language and culture to the cognitive underpinnings of language to the tools and methods powering language technology in artificial intelligence. Housed in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures. Contact: zxcgsl@rit.edu

The language science immersion prepares students in the interdisciplinary scientific study and analysis of human language. Language science is directly applicable to students interested in computing and media, human-computer interaction, brain and cognition, language acquisition, human health, interpreting, relevant branches of engineering, and policy studies. Students can complete the immersion irrespective of their skills in languages other than English. Besides a core course on linguistic principles, students choose electives covering the technology of language, philosophy of language, and language in culture and society. Electives allow students to customize the immersion to their interests and needs, with the support of a faculty adviser. Housed in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures. Contact: zxcgsl@rit.edu

The Human Language Technology and Computational Linguistics Immersion provides exposure to computational linguistics and relevant language science course work. Students gain knowledge and practical skills in computational natural language processing and technical linguistic analysis, useful for analytics and modeling with language data and for developing, evaluating, and maintaining language technology software. Housed in the Department of Psychology. Contact: coagla@rit.edu

A cognitive science Ph.D. that provides an interdisciplinary study of the human mind and cognition, through the lens of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, language science, vision science, philosophy, and computer science.

Many software applications involve processing natural language text or speech data. This application domain provides exposure to computational linguistics and language science. Students gain knowledge and practical skills in computational natural language processing and technical linguistic analysis, useful for analytics and modeling with language data and for developing, evaluating, and maintaining language technology software. Students can earn a minor in language science with two additional electives.

• Coursework serving Ph.D. students in Computing and Information Sciences
• NLP Concentration in Human-Centered Computing BS
• Electives in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences BS

Awarded annually to undergraduate and graduate students for demonstrated excellence in language science/computational linguistics, with attention to project/research achievements. Nominations are made by the Language Science Faculty and juried by the Language Science Curriculum Committee (LCC) in Spring. Students currently enrolled in undergraduate or graduate programs at RIT are eligible for nomination. The award includes a certificate of achievement and a monetary gift.

2024-25

Christopher Potts
Finding Linguistic Structure in Large Language Models

2023-24

Martha Palmer
Uniform Meaning Representations

2022-23

John Hale
Parsing in the Brain

2021-22

Marie-Catherine de Marneffe
Can Neural Networks Identify Factuality?

2020-21

Katrin Erk
Describing Word Meaning Is Like Nailing Jelly to the Wall. Can Embeddings Help?

2019-20

Rada Mihalcea
From Words to People and Back Again

2018-19

Carolyn Penstein Rosé
Modeling Social Meaning as a Reflection of the Human Experience

2017-18

Dr. Saif M. Mohammad
The Search for Emotions in Language

2016-17

Dr. Hal Daumé III
Natural Language Processing on Creative Content

2015-16

Dr. Joel Tetreault
Analyzing Formality in Online Communication

2014-15

Dan Roth
Learning and Inference for Natural Language Understanding

Language Science is represented at the annual College of Liberal Arts Minor and Immersion Fair.

Language science faculty and postdoctoral scientists connect to present and discuss scholarly work.