Gareth Roberts is an associate professor of linguistics in the School of Arts & Sciences.
(Image: Eric Sucar)
What fabricated languages can teach us about real ones
Linguist Gareth Roberts of the School of Arts & Sciences uses “alien” languages and interactive games to show how social pressures shape our communication.
The language of loneliness and depression, revealed in social media
By analyzing Facebook posts, Penn researchers found that words associated with depression are often tied to emotions, whereas those associated with loneliness are linked to cognition.
Are you a busybody, a hunter, or a dancer? A new book about curiosity reveals all
Dani S. Bassett of the School of Arts & Sciences speaks on their new book, “Curious Minds: The Power of Connection,” co-authored with identical twin Perry Zurn, which investigates the foundations of curiosity.
Eiffert situates a headset on participant Maggie Compton. The metal contraption holds an ultrasound probe in place under Compton’s chin, to capture images of her tongue placement in the mouth.
Singing, speech production, and the brain
This summer, rising second-years Audrey Keener and Nicholas Eiffert worked in the lab of Penn linguist Jianjing Kuang studying vowel articulation in song, running an in-person experiment and built a corpus of classical recordings by famous singers.
Kimeze “Dickson” Teketwe is a master’s student in the International Education Development program at the Graduate School of Education. He is also a graduate fellow in the Center for Africana Studies and lecturer in the Penn Language Center in the School of Arts & Sciences.
Who, What, Why: Kimeze Teketwe brings Luganda to Penn
The GSE master’s student from Uganda taught the first ever course on this language in the spring of 2022. This fall the program continues with another intro class, followed by an advanced class next spring.
What makes us subconsciously mimic the accents of others in conversation
Lacey Wade of the School of Arts & Sciences writes about a phenomenon called “linguistic convergence” when people copy word choices, mirror sentence structures, or mimic pronunciations.
New journal focuses on how the mind and brain process language
The open-access, online-only Glossa Psycholinguistics recently published its inaugural issue after more than two years of effort from Penn linguist Florian Schwarz and colleagues around the world.
People imitate accent features they expect to hear, even without hearing them
Research from postdoc Lacey Wade confirmed this idea, what she calls expectation-driven convergence, in a controlled experiment for the first time. The work reveals just how much the subconscious factors into the way people speak.
Nicole Holliday of the School of Arts & Sciences interviewed experts about cooperative overlapping, which some cultures perceive as a sign of engagement and others view as a sign of disrespect.
Kimeze “Dickson” Teketwe is a master’s student in the International Education Development program at the Graduate School of Education. He is also a graduate fellow in the Center for Africana Studies and lecturer in the Penn Language Center in the School of Arts & Sciences.
