Dear Alums of Yale Linguistics:
I’m writing this letter to reconnect and send you some news from the Linguistics Department. I first wrote a letter to alums in October 2020 when we were in the midst of the pandemic. I very much enjoyed reading the kind and interesting responses that you sent back – thank you! I thought I’d write again now, since almost five years have gone by. With the pandemic behind us, the department is buzzing with activity again and there have been many positive changes and developments. I’d like to share at least some of them with you.
The most recent change concerns our physical location: just last week, we left Dow Hall at 370 Temple Street and moved into our new departmental home at 37 Hillhouse Avenue. It is a historic mansion on what is perhaps the most beautiful street on campus; the existing Italianate house has been renovated and expanded through a modern addition in the back that has been integrated very thoughtfully. We have research spaces and a room for events on the ground level, a beautiful area for graduate students on the 3rd floor, and faculty offices and meeting rooms on all floors. The space is bright, cheerful and absolutely gorgeous. We feel very grateful to have such a nice new home. Please stop by if you come to New Haven, we’d love to show it to you.
Over the last few years our department has been very fortunate to have Yale’s support to expand our faculty. We have strengthened our offerings in semantics by hiring Simon Charlow, whose research aims to understand the relationship between linguistic form and meaning using tools from mathematics, logic, and computer science. We hired Edwin Ko, a historical linguist and fieldworker specializing in an Indigenous Siouan language of Montana, Crow (Apsáalooke), whose research and teaching focuses on historical reconstruction and language documentation.In computational linguistics, we recruited Tom McCoy, who studies language learning – trying to understand how people can acquire language from so little data and how we can replicate this ability in machines – and language representations – investigating what types of machines can represent the structure of language and how they do it. While Tom is a new faculty member, he is a longtime Yalie, having been a member of the 2017 class of Linguistics majors. Finally, we are soon to be joined by Athulya Aravind, a linguist and cognitive scientist who studies child language both to understand the process of language acquisition in children and to test theories of the adult state.
Turning to our academic programs, the main novelty is that we now offer our undergraduates the option of getting a degree in Linguistics or in a new major, Computing and Linguistics. The new major responds to growing interest in Natural Language Processing, AI, and computational methods in the study of language. It provides students the training required to understand the assumptions that underlie computational models through courses in areas that cross disciplinary boundaries (linguistics, math, computer science and statistics) and positions them to apply this expertise in a range of areas. We’ve been thrilled by the results: the students who have graduated have explored a diversity of topics, from systems for second language evaluation to the computational analysis of neurolinguistic data to the encoding of discourse in language models to hallucination in AI systems.
As I mentioned in my previous letter, in 2018 an effort by Linguistics faculty and students resulted in the addition of American Sign Language (ASL) as a subject of study in Yale College. This program and its lectors have been a part of our department since then. The last few years have seen an explosion of interest: we now have six lectors who together offer nearly 30 sections of ASL at levels L1-L5, with a total enrollment of over 400 students. ASL is now the third largest language program at Yale. This surge in student interest reflects a national trend and is a testament to the excellence of our lectors who, in addition to teaching, organize a number of activities that promote ASL and the visibility of the Deaf community at Yale or engage with the wider community outside of Yale.
We have also contributed to a campus-wide initiative to add a native American language to Yale’s course offerings. In 2023 we hired a Lector in Cherokee, Patrick del Percio, who has been teaching courses at the L1-L3 level, marking the first time Yale students can take a formal course in an Indigenous language of the Americas. Unfortunately. Patrick is planning to move back to Oklahoma and will not be teaching past the Fall semester. We expect to be authorized to search again to fill this position.
Speaking of departures, Edwin Ko will also unfortunately be leaving Yale; we expect to conduct a search to replace him. And our beloved emeritus colleague Larry Horn, who has been teaching one course a year since his 2015 retirement, has recently announced that he’s not planning to teach anymore. While we certainly understand this decision, we are hoping that he will change his mind and teach again, to add to the generations of students and faculty who have enjoyed his courses and his presence in the department.
There are a great many accomplishments by students and faculty that I would love to highlight but will not, for the sake of brevity. You can find out about them by looking at our recently updated departmental website. However, I cannot refrain from mentioning a great honor that will be given to our alum Jay Keyser (PhD ’62) for his outstanding achievements in the course of his long and multi-faceted career: the Wilbur Cross Medal. This is the highest honor that the Yale Graduate School bestows on its alumni for their qualities as leaders, innovators, and world-changing thinkers. Congratulations, Professor Keyser!
In closing I should note that I will soon be finishing my six years as Chair. I’m thrilled with what we have been able to accomplish together and am optimistic leaving the department in the very capable hands of its next Chair, Veneeta Dayal, who will lead it through its next chapter.
Best wishes to all of you and please stay in touch.
Sincerely,
Raffaella Zanuttini