About
I'm a doctoral student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta.
Academic Interests
My interests in linguistics lie primarily in the areas of computational and corpus linguistics, language documentation and description, and morphosyntax. I would like to think that these are complementary interests — that the use of contemporary computational tools in the archival and analysis of the kinds of linguistic data typically produced in of language documentation might aid both in linguistic description, helping us attend to a greater range of attested linguistic phenomena; and in furthering our understanding of the factors which bear upon the production and interpretation of complex utterances.
I'm currently involved in work with two languages: Plautdietsch (Indo-European: Germanic; approx. 300,000 native speakers), the traditional language of the Dutch-Russian Mennonites; and Tsuut'ina (Athapaskan; approx. 70 native speakers), the language of the Tsuu T'ina Nation, spoken in southern Alberta.
Together with Andrea Berez (UCSB), I've been helping to develop a software tool, CuPED (Customizable Presentation of ELAN Documents), which aims to provide a simple means of turning archival-quality linguistic transcripts into web-based (and other) presentation formats, allowing easier access to such materials by students, speakers, and scholars of the transcribed languages. CuPED is being made freely available under the GNU General Public License as Free and open-source software.
Please note: as of March 23, 2009, CuPED has moved! It is still hosted by the University of Alberta, but is now available under a different address. Apologies to participants in ICLDC09 and others who may have experienced difficulties accessing CuPED due to this change!
(I also harbour a now mostly dormant interest in computational studies of the evolution of language, and in particular in the use of agent-based methods to simulate interaction and population dynamics within linguistic groups. I'd like to think this is due in part to early exposure to the fascinating work being done with multi-agent systems in the MADMUC Laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan, and the contagious enthusiasm of affiliated faculty and students there. For those interested in related topics, the UIUC Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography makes for almost dangerously addictive reading.)
Contact Information
4-32 Assiniboia Hall
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
T6G 2E7
Fax: (780) 492-3434
E-mail: christopher.cox@ualberta.ca