Cluster on Language Research Bi-Weekly Talk

Davis Cluster

https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/91053070618 Meeting ID: 910 5307 0618

Dear Language Researchers, 

You are invited to join us for the Cluster on Language Research bi-weekly talk, which will take place next Monday. Please see the details below. 

Presenter
We are pleased to introduce and welcome the following group of interdisciplinary language researchers: Claudia Sánchez-Gutiérrez, Kenji Sagae, Agustina Carando, Sam Davidson, Paloma Fernández Mira, and Sophia Minnillo.
 
 
Talk title: COWS-L2H: How team work brings the best out of corpus research
 
Talk description: In 2017, Claudia Sánchez-Gutiérrez, Agustina Carando, Kenji Sagae  and Aaron Yamada started collecting written data from students of Spanish as a second land heritage language at UC Davis. Four years and over a million words later, the resulting COWS-L2H corpus is now the source of multiple projects that are written collaboratively between members of the team and in partnership with universities in Spain or Italy, among others. In this presentation, we aim to (1) present the structure and data collection pipeline of the corpus, (2) present ongoing projects, and (3) propose avenues for future research.

Concerning point (2), each member of the team will present the work they are currently working on.

- Paloma Fernández Mira and Claudia Sánchez-Gutiérrez will discuss their project on the effect of the topics of writing prompts on lexical diversity.
- Sam Davidson and Kenji Sagae will present the current state of several computational linguistics projects that they are working on.
- Sophia Minnillo will share with us her insights on the development of the preterit vs. imperfect distinction in learners of Spanish through the combined use of longitudinal and cross-sectional data.
- Agustina Carando will then present some insights on the development of written complexity in L2 learners and heritage speakers, an area of research that she is exploring with Sophia Minnillo.

The aim of the talk is to show the benefits of developing tools for language research that are based on team work with a group of multidisciplinary researchers at different stages of their career. We hope that this presentation may inspire other people to use the corpus, collaborate on projects with us and maybe even start their own corpora.

Documents