Paul Rodrigues
Ph.D Candidate,
Computational Linguistics Lab
Department of Linguistics
Indiana University


Center for Advanced Study of Language
University of Maryland






New Stuff:
  • 02/03/10 - "Error Correction for Arabic Dictionary Lookup" was accepted to be presented at LREC 2010 in Malta.
  • 01/14/10 - "Effects of listener experience with foreign accent on perception of accentedness and speaker age" was accepted to be presented at ASA 2010 in Baltimore.
  • 09/19/09 - Presented "Determining L1 & L1 Degree of Phonological Accent From Phonetic Transcription after Categorical Filtration of Speech." at TSLL 2009
  • 09/02/09 - Joined the University of Maryland faculty
  • 08/25/09 - Nominated to candidacy at Indiana University
I am a Ph.D candidate in Computational Linguistics at Indiana University, researching speaker variation & categorization, as well as syntactic and phonological acquisition & parsing. I recently joined the research faculty at University of Maryland.

Speaker Variability

I am interested in speaker variability as a complete process from the speech signal to the syntactic representation. How are speakers different from each other and at what 'level' do these differences form perceivable linguistic groups (e.g. accent/dialect)? Can these differences be measured effectively? How can these differences be used for speaker identification, group classification, and improving speech recognition systems?

Linguistic Acquisition

How, with all of these variability, can a child learn a language that is more or less the same as that spoken in their surrounding environment? What can computational models of linguistic acquisition teach us about child language acquisition, and what can naturalistic learning teach us about computational induction and parsing?

Cognitive Architecture

There are no computer systems that can beat the human brain at overall language performance. What can we learn from studies of the mind that could increase computational language performance? What can a computational model prove or disprove about the way the mind works?

I study some Central Asian languages. I posted some flashcards, pronunciation and grammar references for Arabic, Turkmen, and Uzbek.