Home Resources Research Research Groups

The following is a list of research groups and projects involving BYU Department of Linguistics and English Language faculty. Undergraduate and graduate students are welcome to meetings, and participation in ongoing or new work is usually encouraged. Participation is usually on a volunteer basis, but part-time paid positions are sometimes available.

Analogical Modeling Research Group

• Project Leader: Royal Skousen
• Phone: (801) 422-3482
• Email: royal_skousen(at sign)byu.edu
• Website: http://humanities.byu.edu/am/
• Meetings: Weekly: TBA
• Focus: An exemplar-driven, non-rule-based method for language modeling that predicts behaviors from a feature-oriented specification of instances. We work on applications, studying and modifying the algorithm (especially in terms of quantum computing), and comparing the approach to other architectural methods of language modeling.

Automated Essay Scoring Research Group

• Project Leader: Diane Strong-Krause
• Phone: (801) 422-3970
• Email: diane_strong-krause(at sign)byu.edu
• Website:
• Meetings:
• Focus: Developing automatic computer-based methods for rating and scoring ESL learners' written English essays.

Data Extraction Group

• Project Leader: David Embley
• Phone:
• Email:
• Website: http://www.deg.byu.edu
• Meetings: Weekly
• Focus: Conceptual modeling, extraction and structuring of data from unstructured and semi-structured electronic documents, such as those found on the Web and in many different data warehouses. Note: Linguistics students should contact Deryle Lonsdale (422-4067, lonz@byu.edu) for information

Electronic Film Review Group

• Project Leader: Alan Melby
• Phone: (801) 422-2124
• Email: akm(at sign)byu.edu
• Website:
• Meetings:
• Focus: Using feature films in DVD format to support the improvement of listening comprehension in second language acquisition.

Emily Dickinson Lexicon Project

• Project Leader: Cynthia Hallen
• Phone: (801) 422-2020
• Email: cynthia_hallen(at sign)byu.edu
• Website: http://linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/hallenc/EDLexicon/index.html
• Meetings:
• Focus: Lexical content of Emily Dickinson's poetry.

Metacognition and ESL Writing

• Project Leader: Neil Anderson
• Phone: (801) 422-5353
• Email: neil_anderson(at sign)byu.edu
• Website:
• Meetings: Irregularly / as we can
• Focus: The role of metacognition and writing (although we're interested in expanding this to other skill areas).

PSST! (Pedagogical Software and Speech Technology)

• Project Leaders: Ray Graham and Deryle Lonsdale
• Phone: (801) 422-2208
• Email: ray_graham(at sign)byu.edu
• Website: http://linguistics.byu.edu/psst
• Meetings: Weekly: Fridays at noon in 4068 JFSB
• Focus: Use of speech technology in language learning: existing speech technology, pedagogical needs, and technological tools development for language learning.

REAL (Research in Empirical Approaches to Language)

• Project Leader: Mark Davies
• Phone: (801) 422-9168
• Email: mark_davies(at sign)byu.edu
• Website:
• Meetings: Weekly: TBA
• Focus: Data-driven and corpus-based approaches to linguistic description, analysis, production, and modeling.

Soar and NL-Soar

• Project Leader: Deryle Lonsdale
• Phone: (801) 422-4067
• Email: lonz(at sign)byu.edu
• Website: http://linguistics.byu.edu/nlsoar
• Meetings: Weekly: Thursdays from 3-4 pm in 4068 JFSB
• Focus: Intelligent agent architectures, cognitive modeling of language use, parsing, semantics and pragmatic/discourse processing.

Statistical Natural Language Processing

• Project Leaders: Eric Ringger, Irene Langkilde-Geary, Deryle Lonsdale
• Phone: (801) 422-4067
• Email: lonz(at sign)byu.edu
• Website:http://nlp.cs.byu.edu
• Meetings: Weekly: Fridays from 4-5 pm
• Focus: Statistical methods of processing natural language, including parsing, generating, and machine translation.

Translation Research Group

• Project Leader: Alan Melby
• Phone: (801) 422-2124
• Email: akm(at sign)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).

Utah English Project

• Project Leader: Wendy Baker
• Phone: (801) 422-4714
• Email: wendy_baker(at sign)byu.edu
• Website: http://linguistics.byu.edu/utep/startpage.html
• Meetings:
• Focus: The Utah English Projects proposes to understand dialect change in Utah due to both social and religious characteristics. We have used an acoustic phonetic methodology in analyzing language data.