Research Groups

Emily Dickinson Lexicon Project

Project Leader: Cynthia Hallen
Phone: (801) 422-2020
Email: cynthia_hallen@byu.edu
Website: http://linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/hallenc/EDLexicon/index.html
Meetings: by appointment; contact Dr. Hallen
Focus: Lexical content of Emily Dickinson's poetry and/or Noah Webster's 1844 "American Dictionary of the English Language". We are organizing teams to help translate all of Emily Dickinson's collected poems into the various languages of the world. If you would like to participate in translating Dickinson's poems for one or more languages, please send an email to cynthia_hallen@byu.edu

Project Leader: Alan Melby
Phone: (801) 422-2124
Email: akm@byu.edu
Website: http://www.ttt.org
Meetings: Irregularly / as necessary
Focus: Translation technology: tools for human translators, data exchange and content markup standards, tools integration from multiple vendors, support for product Globalization, Internationalization, and Localization (GIL). Examples include the TBX and ASTM F15.48 standards. Note: When contacting Dr. Melby by email include the research group name in the subject line.

Project Leader: Alan Melby
Phone: (801) 422-2124
Email: akm@byu.edu
Meetings: By appointment.
Focus: The Electronic Film Review project (using feature films in DVD format to support teaching), VAD (a format based on MPEG-7), and Video Clip Playlists. Note: When contacting Dr. Melby by email include the research group name in the subject line.

Project Leader: Alan Melby
Phone: (801) 422-2144
Email: akm@byu.edu
Meetings: By appointment.
Focus: Using EFR and TBX for language learning, QuickEnglish, and the Language Training, Assessment, and Certification consortium. Note: When contacting Dr. Melby by email include the research group name in the subject line.

Project Leader: Alan Manning
Phone: (801) 422-2974
Email: alan_manning@byu.edu
Website: http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/Ling580am
Meetings: By appointment
Focus: We're reviewing applied linguistics research with implications for editing and information design. The aim is to explore the literature and design new research projects in this area, and to help working editors develop portfolios in which editorial decisions are annotated with explanations of linguistic principles governing those decisions. Students can participate for 580R credit, but other interested faculty and students are welcome to sample our reading list and our recent published work, and/or discuss and develop new research projects.

Project Leaders: Dan Dewey and Wendy Baker Smemoe
Phone: (801) 422-6005 (Dewey), 422-4714 (Smemoe)
Email: ddewey@byu.edu, wendy_baker@byu.edu
Meetings:
Focus: We are a group of faculty and students from across the Humanities interested in various aspects of SLA. Our recent research includes investigation of the linguistic benefits of campus foreign language residences, study abroad, service learning abroad, etc. We look at connections between what people do out of the classroom (building social networks with native speakers and amount and type of language use) and language acquisition. We are also looking at relationships between fluency and proficiency development to determine if we can use simple measures of fluency to estimate second language proficiency. We conduct research on the acquisition of English, Chinese, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian.

Project Leaders: Lynn Henrichsen and Mark Tanner
Phone: (801) 422-2938 (Henrichsen), 422-8154 (Tanner)
Meetings:
Focus: Assessment of various aspects of TESOL teacher-preparation programs (especially ours) to determine their nature and worth (validity, usability, etc.). Also, investigations of the career paths that TESOL graduates follow and moderator variables (coursework completed, L1, gender, national origin, etc.) that affect their careers after graduation. The results of our recent TESOL alumni survey (with nearly 300 respondents) constitute a major data source for research in this area. This group's overall goal is to provide an empirical foundation for designing the curricula of teacher-preparation programs in TESOL.

Project Leader: Bill Eggington
Email: bill_eggington@byu.edu
Meetings: as needed
Focus: Our group is open to all students interested in the relationship between language and the law. Typical criminal law research projects may include linguistic studies in courtroom discourse, communication breakdowns in police interrogation settings (especially for non-native English speakers), and authorial attribution. Civil law cases include resolving ambiguous reference in contract disputes and trademark/trade name dilution and infringement. Previous work by students has resulted in presentations at four international conferences in forensic linguistics and three publications.

Project Leader: Cynthia Hallen
Phone: (801) 422-2020
Email: cynthia_hallen@byu.edu
Meetings: as needed
Focus: Students are invited to help edit the Early Modern English language notes of the late Dr. Arthur H. King for the play Othello by William Shakespeare.