Linguists and their Research at UIC
Click a name below to view a linguist's contact info and research interests.
Department of Linguistics
Email: rcameron@uic.edu
I work primarily in Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics, in Spanish and English, with additional interests in language instruction and learning. In sociolinguistics, I pursue quantitative dialect research with the goal of applying or testing linguistic and social theory. Among linguistic theories that have proven useful to me, I would include psycholinguistic work in Accessibility and Spreading Activation theory as well as research from Syntax, Historical Linguistics and Language Philosophy. From social research, I would include research into Age, Class, Gender, and Segregation along with differing conceptions of what counts as a social fact. In my recent research, I have attempted to draw on work from Social Psychology and Dialectology in order to describe and explain the effects of age and gender segregation on degrees of statistical difference between female and male speakers across the life span in Puerto Rican Spanish. Unlike class or ethnic differences, gender-based differences are assumed to result from social difference, not social distance. Yet much research reveals that females and males, both as children and adults, will segregate themselves or will be segregated to varying degrees. Such separation creates social distance. Social distance leads to linguistic difference. I am currently extending this by investigating the increasing degrees of statistical difference between girls and boys in two English-speaking Chicagoland elementary schools as they grow up within the framework of school.
Department of Computer Science
Email: bdieugen@uic.edu
My main area of research is Natural Language Processing (NLP), and its application to human-computer interaction, educational technology, and multimedia systems. My goal is to use NLP to support both education and instruction, and collaboration between human or artificial agents. The theoretical aspects of my research concern the linguistic analysis, and the knowledge representation and reasoning that support the understanding and generation of NL discourse and dialogue. All my research has its empirical foundations in both qualitative and quantitative corpus analysis, including data mining techniques.
Department of Psychology & Department of Curriculum and Design
Email: sgoldman@uic.edu
Research interests: Language and text processing, discourse psychology, learning from multimedia materials, redesign of learning environments (curriculum, instruction, and assessment), teacher learning, instructional technology.
Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies
Email: kgv@uic.edu
Research interests: Bilingualism, Code-Switching in syntax, morphology and phonology, syntax-semantics-interface, compositional semantics, Romance and Germanic languages. Methodology, Philosophy of Science, Cognition and Language
For more information about Kay's Research, please visit the website for the Bilingualism Research Lab
Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies
Email: luislope@uic.edu
Link to websiteCurrent areas of interest: Syntactic theory and comparative syntax. Interfaces of syntax with phonology and information structure. The linguistic ideologies of linguists.
My main interest is the study of the syntactic structure of natural language and how a structure is interpreted. My approach is mostly comparative/contrastive and is inserted within a theoretical framework loosely labeled "transformational-generative". I am particularly intrigued by the set of hypotheses that constitute the Minimalist Program.
For more information about Luis' Research, please visit the website for the Bilingualism Research Lab
Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures
Email: cmcquill@uic.edu
Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies
Emai: karams@uic.edu
The primary aim of Kara's research is to elucidate the neurocognitive processes underlying late-learned second language acquisition and use.
Informed by the fields of linguistics, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, her research explores the effects of explicit (classroom-like provision of rules) and implicit (immersion-like provision of meaningful examples) training conditions on adult second language acquisition and processing.
In addition, her research considers how second language acquisition may be moderated by the linguistic form being acquired (e.g., vocabulary, aspects of grammar), by learners’ level of proficiency (e.g., low, intermediate, high), or by learners’ individual cognitive abilities (e.g., working memory).
For more information about Kara's research, please visit the website for the Cognition of Second Language Laboratory
Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies
Email: nunez@uic.edu
Research interests: Spanish phonology, morphology, dialectology, and the acquisition of Spanish phonology.
Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies
Email: kimpotow@uic.edu
I am interested in Spanish use in the United States. This includes quantitative questions
Who uses Spanish, with whom, how often, and for what purposes?
What does U.S. Spanish look like, for example, regarding the use of discourse markers?
Also, qualitative inquiries into the roles of Spanish in enacting U.S. Latino identities. I am particularly interested in language and identity configurations of mixed ethnicity Latinos such as “MexiRicans”.
These language use patterns and attitudes have implications for heritage language learning, for best practices in heritage language teaching, and in the professional development of heritage language teachers. I am particularly interested in dual (two-way) immersion schools as sites of K-8 Spanish heritage language development and of Spanish L2 learning. This interest in language maintenance has also led me to edit a book (in progress) of the top 11 non-English languages spoken in the U.S. with an eye toward understanding how minority languages can be preserved. This interest in language maintenance led me to edit a book (Cambridge, 2010) of the top 12 non-English languages spoken in the U.S. with an eye toward understanding how minority languages can be preserved.
Department of Psychology
Email: geraney@uic.edu
Research interests: Psychology Department Chairperson. Language processing and reading, organization of memory, bilingualism, metacognition, attention, eye movements and event-related brain potentials.
Department of Germanic Studies and Department of Linguistics
Email: srott@uic.edu
Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures
Email: subacius@uic.edu
Research interests: Editing annual scholarly journal Archivum Lithuanicum (see at: www.lki.lt). I am also working on the project: History of European Standard Languages.
School of Literatures, Cultural Studies and Linguistics
Email: jessicaw@uic.edu
My research interests include second language writing and the effect of instruction in second language acquisition.
Department of Linguistics
Email: xxiang@uic.edu
My research interests lie in linguistic-sociolinguistic work and second language studies. I am particularly interested in such areas as inter-language semantics/pragmatics, contrastive analysis (with a focus on pragmatic and semantic phenomena), interaction and grammar, second language writing, and Chinese as a second/heritage language. I am currently working on inter-language and L1 concept transfer in advanced ESL learners' written texts. From a discourse-pragmatic perspective, I am also engaged in research on interactional particles as well as preverbal particals in Southeast Asian languages, particularly Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, and Shishan (Hainan Island, China). My research in this area focuses on the linguistic marking of emotivity, evidentiality, and epistemic modality.
Past Members of the UIC linguists research community
Department of Economics
Email: brchis@uic.edu
Barry R. Chiswick couducts research on the determinants of dominant language proficiency among immigrants and linguistic minorities, and the consequences of this proficiency. A bibliography of his language research is on his web page. His most recent book is The Economics of Language (Routledge 2007), with Paul W. Miller.
Dr. Judd's research interests: Language Policy, especially in the United States; TESOL methodology and materials/curriculum design.
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Email: iolmedo@uic.edu
Irma Olmedo conducts research on children's bilingual development in the context of the school and the ways they use their two languages to interact with peers and adults. She also examines their metalinguistic and metacommunicative awareness and the meanings they give to their bilingualism, including the views they express about being bilingual. She has conducted research in two Chicago Schools with large numbers of Spanish/English bilingual children, focusing on the ways that they serve as language brokers for their less fluent peers. Irma is an Associate Professor in the College of Education and teaches two of the bilingual/ESL teacher education courses.
Emerita, Department of Slavic and Baltic Language and Literature
Email: bibi@uic.edu