Department of Linguistics

Two Yup’ik engineers are trying to push the Yugtun language into the future using technology. Their latest project opens the door for Yugtun autocorrect, grammar checkers and automatic subtitles on Yup’ik videos. Lonny Alaskuk Strunk developed the technology for Yugtun.com during his master’s program in computational linguistics at the University of Washington.

Dr. Emily M. Bender, a professor of linguistics, discusses the potential effects of natural language processing technology.

Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics, has co-authored a new study with Angelina McMillan-Major, a doctoral student in linguistics, about language-learning technologies.

Big Tech has used its power to control the field of AI ethics and avoid accountability. Now, the ouster of Timnit Gebru from Google is putting the movement for equitable tech in the spotlight. Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

College of Arts & Sciences Dean Stacey explains that there is an important civic, political, social, and cultural element to an education and that you can get that in a wide variety of majors.

Interested in the College of Arts & Sciences but don’t know what to study? Here are six majors that you may not have discovered yet.

Battles of grammar, for the most part, play out in English classrooms and in the pages of style guides. Rarely do arguments over split infinitives and Oxford commas venture beyond the walls of academia. But one linguistic phenomenon lands in the limelight every so often, and it’s a word you know well: the pronoun “they” — along with its derivatives “them” and “their.” Kirby Conrod, a lecturer in linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

Adam Werle (BA International Studies & Linguistics 1998), now teaches Nuu-chah-nulth to Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellows.

On Wednesday, several of Timnit Gebru's former colleagues wrote a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai asking that she be reinstated, saying her departure has "had a demoralizing effect on the whole of our team." Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

Google’s decision to part ways with a prominent researcher laid bare divisions within the company’s artificial intelligence unit and subjected its leader, the lauded software engineer Jeff Dean, to widespread scorn. Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

Alicia Wassink, Associate Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Sociolinguistics Laboratory at the University of Washington, has been elected to the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA).

 

Emily M. Bender, a professor of computational linguistics explains virtual learning algorithms.

Naja Ferjan Ramirez, assistant professor of linguistics, has written a study on how parents talk to their children.

The College honors four exceptional graduates representing eight Arts & Sciences majors.

Emily Bender, professor of linguistics, explains how major AI conferences are starting to force computer scientists to think about the societal impacts of artificial intelligence.