HOME / ACADEMICS / UNDERGRADUATE / CONCENTRATORS' CORNER /

Research Opportunities

Current Research Opportunities for Undergraduates

 

Currently we do not have any ongoing research which can be an opportunity for undergrads to take place in; however, we are going to announce  new research here. If you are interested in participating in one of the current research projects as a Research Assistant, please contact the Principal Investigator.

 

Previous Linguistics Research Projects

1. Experimental Syntax/Semantics

  • Principal Investigator: Hayley Ross, hayleyross@g.harvard.edu
  • What is involved: Create sentences with specific syntactic/semantic phenomena (crossover, control/raising, ...) for use in experiments on humans and computational language models, help set up the experiments (for humans) in Qualtrics, and process the resulting data in R.
  • Prerequisites: Working knowledge of syntax, LING 102 (Sentence Structure) or above.
  • What can be offered: Course credit, experience designing experiments, experience with Qualtrics and R.

 

2. Semantic changes in Romance      

  • Principal Investigator: Lukas Kahl, kahl@g.harvard.edu; Gunnar Lund, gunnarlund@g.harvard.edu
  • What is involved: Look for and catalog interesting semantic changes in Romance languages using an etymological dictionary.
  • Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of German or Latin strongly preferred.
  • What can be offered: Course credit and research experience.

2. Development of the Polarity Subjunctive in Romance        

  • Principal Investigator: Laurence B-Violette, lbviolette@fas.harvard.edu
  • What is involved: Finding relevant examples in some of the Romance languages in articles and online corpora
  • Prerequisites: Structural knowledge of at least one of the Romance languages, including Latin or medieval languages, would be preferred
  • What can be offered: Funding or Research Experience

3. Learning unnatural phonology

  • Principal Investigator: Gasper Begus, begus@fas.harvard.edu
  • What is involved: Annotate some data with Praat
  • Prerequisites: None
  • What can be offered: Funding

4. Use of spatial height for domain restriction in Japanese Gesture

  • Principal Investigator: Kate Davidson, kathryndavidson@fas.harvard.edu
  • What is involved: Carefully code videos of Japanese speakers telling stories, for their use of gestures for different set sizes
  • Prerequisites: Working knowledge of Excel, and fluent or native knowledge of spoken Japanese, including having lived in Japan for most of childhood
  • What can be offered: Research experience, or Credit, or Funding

5. Investigating vowel quality in Belarusian

  • Principal Investigator: Lena Borise, borise@fas.harvard.edu
  • What is involved:  Making measurements of the acoustic properties of vowels (pitch, intensity, duration) in Belarusian acoustic data using ELAN and Praat
  • Prerequisites: None
  • What can be offered: Research Experience, including training in ELAN and Praat and experience working on an understudied language

6. Psycholinguistic studies

  • Principal Investigator: Yujing Huang, yujinghuang@fas.harvard.edu
  • What is involved: Generating stimuli, setting up experiments for online and in-lab studies, collecting in-lab data with adult participants.
  • Prerequisites: None, some basic knowledge of linguistics is preferred.
  • What can be offered: Research experience