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What fabricated languages can teach us about real ones
Gareth Roberts.

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.

Marilyn Perkins

The language of loneliness and depression, revealed in social media
Person sitting in the dark, leaning on a desk, staring at a cell phone. A coffee cup and pile of papers sit nearby.

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.

Marilyn Perkins

Singing, speech production, and the brain
A person standing up adjusting a headset over a person sitting in a soundproof room. Barely visible in front of the sitting person is a computer screen and keyboard. A fire alarm sits above a window behind both people.

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.

Michele W. Berger

Who, What, Why: Kimeze Teketwe brings Luganda to Penn
Kimeze "Dickson" Teketwe 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

    • 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.

    Michele W. Berger

    New journal focuses on how the mind and brain process language
    A cartoon drawing of two silhouetted heads facing each other, with lines to indicate speaking, moving from the mouths to the brains around in a circle.

    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.

    Michele W. Berger

    People imitate accent features they expect to hear, even without hearing them
    An illustration of many different-colored heads with many different-colored talking bubbles.

    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.

    Michele W. Berger

    Interrupting to show we care
    Slate.com

    Interrupting to show we care

    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.