Plenary Speakers / 基調講演者

Jesse Egbert
Associate Professor of Applied linguistics (Northern Arizona University)

Jesse Egbert is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University. Jesse specializes in register variation, quantitative methods in linguistics, and corpus linguistic approaches to legal interpretation. He is General Editor of the international peer reviewed journal Register Studies, and Technical Strand Editor for the series Cambridge Elements in Corpus Linguistics. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed papers. Recent books include Register Variation Online (Cambridge, 2018), Using Corpus Methods to Triangulate Linguistic Analysis (Routledge, 2019), and Doing Linguistics with a Corpus: Methodological Considerations for the Everyday User (Cambridge, forthcoming).

Plenary Abstract

‘Corpus Linguistics’ or ‘Linguistics with a Corpus’?

Corpus linguistics encompasses a vast array of empirical research. It appears that there is only one characteristic that holds true for all corpus linguistic studies: the use of a corpus. I propose that it is not only possible to use a corpus without doing linguistics; it is actually quite common, even in mainstream research publications. So what do I mean by using a corpus without doing linguistics? Linguistics can be defined simply as the scientific study of language. I propose that linguistics requires at least three conditions: (1) linguistically meaningful variables, (2) linguistically valid units of observation, and (3) linguistic description. In the absence of any one of these three conditions, (quantitative) corpus linguistics can quickly become nothing more than pattern hunting and number crunching. In essence, a computer can perform quantitative corpus analysis, but only a linguist can do linguistics with a corpus. Drawing on the research traditions of syntactic complexity, lexical dispersion, and keyword analysis, I will illustrate the importance of these three conditions by comparing studies that satisfy them to studies that don’t.

Sowmya Vajjala
Data scientist and NLP Research Officer (National Research Council Canada)

Sowmya Vajjala currently works as a researcher in Digital Technologies at National Research Council, Canada’s largest federal research and development organization. She has worked in the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP) over the past decade in various roles – as a software developer, researcher, educator, and a senior data scientist. Her research interests lie in multilingual computing and educational applications of NLP. She recently co-authored a book: “Practical Natural Language Processing: A Comprehensive Guide to Building Real World NLP Systems”, published by O’Reilly Media (June, 2020). She is interested in learning more about the relevance of NLP beyond research both in industry practice as well as in other disciplines, through inter-disciplinary research.

Plenary Abstract

NLP Beyond NLPers – the many faces of NLP in academia and real-world 

Natural Language Processing is an active area of research and its impact is also seen in many day-to-day applications we use, from generic tools such as email software to specialized ones such as language learning apps. Apart from being an active area of enquiry in itself, NLP methods are widely used in many disciplines, from linguistics to economics, from psychology to plant science. In this talk, I will introduce some common NLP practices, show how NLP differs between academia and industry, and discuss areas where NLP is useful beyond its home turf, including its use in corpus linguistics research. Drawing on my experiences as an NLP researcher and instructor, I will also touch upon what NLP can learn from corpus linguistics and other areas of study, and what is needed to train diverse groups interested in using NLP methods in their work.