Students will have access to a research-minded group of faculty linguists.

B.J. Koubaroulis

2009-04-14T13:58:45Z

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Visit <a href="../../">Linguistics.gmu.edu</a>

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This fall, George Mason University will offer, for the first time, a PhD in linguistics, giving students another avenue along which they can explore language. The main objective of the PhD program will be to train students to be research scientists in academia, industry and government. “For the last 10 years, we have noticed that more than 15 of our graduates have gone on to receive a doctorate in linguistics at other universities,” said program director Steven Weinberger. “Quite a few of them are now professors of linguistics. Moreover, almost all of these students who have gone on elsewhere expressed their desire to stay with us for a PhD. But alas, we had no such program.” After four years of planning and consulting, organizers have unveiled a PhD program that will welcome its first class this fall. Upon program completion, graduates will work in other areas such as administration of language, speech pathology, learning programs, government-funded research and be qualified to work as research and teaching professors at universities around the world. George Mason currently houses three undergraduate programs in linguistics: the undergraduate English concentration in linguistics, the undergraduate Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) certificate, and the interdisciplinary minor in linguistics.  In 2008, there were 65 students studying linguistics at Mason and the university typically grants 15 master’s degrees each year. Located in the suburbs of Washington D.C., Mason is positioned in the heart of a language mixing bowl, with many different native languages. This local demand for qualified ESL teachers and other language professionals and the university’s proven track record in teaching and molding linguistics professionals, prompted George Mason to develop a new educational avenue for aspiring linguists. “I believe it is a logical step for Mason to follow since it will provide a capstone opportunity for the foundational material learned during the M.A. program,” said John Pope, a 1996 Mason M.A. and TESL graduate who is now a Professor at Mason and Director of the English Language Institute (ELI). “Obviously, (Mason’s) Linguistics program helped prepare me professionally for my career at the ELI by providing a clear understanding of the total language process, as well as the myriad challenges faced by second language learners. The program at Mason balanced ‘pure’ linguistics theory with applied linguistics theory and practical application, which is essential preparation for [English as a Second Language] instructors.” The PhD program in Linguistics will require 72 credit hours in a wide range of topics, including phonology, syntax and semantics and will also focus on second language acquisition. There will be fundamental courses in research methods, seminars in the core theoretical areas and electives, qualifying papers and dissertation research. “My linguistics degree was the foundation that allowed me to move my career ahead,” said Kathy Trump, a 1982 graduate of the M.A. program who since has co-authored two ESL vocabulary textbooks, served as the Director of Mason’s ELI and is currently University Life’s Associate Dean for International Education and Programs. “The courses I took gave me the linguistic background I needed to be more effective in the classroom, taught me how to be a more critical thinker, and turned me into a life-long learner.”

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2009-04-14T13:58:45Z

I believe it is a logical step for Mason to follow since it will provide a capstone opportunity for the foundational material learned during the MA program.

John Pope,(1996 M.A. and TESL)Professor at Mason and Director of the English Language Institute (ELI

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Published

This fall, George Mason will provide another avenue for the exploration of language as it offers for the first time a PhD in linguistics.

Mason to Launch Linguistics Ph.D. Program

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Students will have access to a research-minded group of faculty linguists.

2009-04-14T16:46:25Z

B.J. Koubaroulis

2009-02-19T13:57:12Z

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<ul> <li><a href="http://accent.gmu.edu/">The Speech Accent Archive</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7696195">NPR Story</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/28/technology/online-diary.html?sec=technology&&n=Top%2FNews%2FTechnology%2FColumns%2FOnline Diary">New York Times Story</a></li> </ul>

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In 1999, Professor Steven Weinberger’s phonetics students started a project. Each student would bring in an audio tape of a non-native speaker talking in English.  The class would analyze and transcribe the speech and “It was quite instructive,” Weinberger said. “Most of my English phonetics students are interested in teaching English to non-natives.” In examining the different accents of non-native speakers, these students learned how to best teach them English and soon the number of transcripts began to multiply. “Then, the university provided server space and I had to learn HTML,” said Weinberger. “We posted the phonetic transcriptions on the site for everyone to see and comment upon and soon we began to get noticed.” More than 10 years later, the former class project has been renovated by professional web-builders, earned funding and relied on a collaborative effort from students, faculty and others to grow into a unique learning tool and internationally-recognized database called the “The Speech Accent Archive.” The online database has 1,111 different language samples -- audio clips that are paired with a transcript. The archive receives more than one million hits per month, according to Weinberger. “The goal is to continue to gather accents from non-natives and natives alike,” said Weinberger. “It's free, it’s accessible and it provides valuable data. I think the most unique part of it is that it has more than 1,000 talkers speaking their accents with the same paragraph. This way, anyone can do an instant and systematic comparison.” The archive is particularly useful for English teachers, actors who need to learn an accent for an upcoming role in a film, engineers who train speech recognition machines, linguists, phoneticians, speech pathologists and others. “We would like to demystify the speech accent,” Weinberger said. “When we listen to somebody talk to us, we immediately and automatically determine if their speech is like ours or not. We may not be able to geographically place their speech, but we can tell how different the speech is from our own. At the same time, and not so automatically, we make certain biased social judgments about this talker. When listening to how they speak English, we may judge a British English speaker as ‘intelligent’, or a French speaker as ‘alluring,’ or a German speaker as ‘unfriendly.’ These types of judgments are learned from our society. “ The archive is due for a renovation, which will include a Google mapping system and an upgraded user-friendly search function that will enable users to search for individual sounds. “We are also in the process of designing a computational tool for automatically comparing two different accents,” said Weinberger. “The output of such a device will allow us to instantly analyze various accents and we will be able to tell the precise differences between, say, a Zulu accent and a Vietnamese accent.” <h4>Accent Archive Transcript</h4> “Please call Stella.  Ask her to bring these things with her from the store:  Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.” --Each of 1,111 audio clips feature a native speaker sampling this text Click here to visit <a href="http://accent.gmu.edu">The Speech Accent Archive</a>.

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2009-02-19T13:57:12Z

It's free, it’s accessible and it provides valuable data. I think the most unique part of it is that it has more than 1,000 talkers speaking their accents with the same paragraph. This way, anyone can do an instant and systematic comparison.

Steven Weinberger, Professor and Director of Linguistics in the Department of English

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Professor Steven Weinberger’s 1999 class project has grown into one of the world’s most heralded and visited language databases. The “Speech Accent Archive” is an online database that has 1,111 different audio samples that explore languages from across the globe.

More than a Decade Later, Accent Archive Continues to Grow

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With 1,111 unique audio samples, The Speech Accent Archive receives more than one million hits per month

2009-04-06T14:48:43Z