Linguistics: making sense from noise
with Prof. Susan Lin
Thursday March 14, 2019
Doors at 6:00 PM, Talk at 7:00 PM
Cafe Leila, 1724 San Pablo Ave. Berkeley, CA
Space is limited!
Audience will be admitted until the venue reaches capacity.
East Bay Science Cafe is back in a new location! Join us at Cafe Leila on San Pablo Avenue for an evening of science, conversation, and community. Cafe Leila specializes in fresh California cuisine and artisanal tea drinks. BYOB (wine and beer) is welcome with purchase of menu item.
Language is a ubiquitous part of our lives, yet most of us give little conscious thought to the many linguistic choices we make every day. Why do we sound the way we do, and choose the words we say? How do other people perceive our speech? What’s so difficult about adopting a universal language? Is it ‘octopi’ or ‘octopuses’? ‘Laurel’ or ‘Yanny’? In this talk, Professor Lin will present an overview of the world of language research as viewed through the eyes of a linguist. With a mixture of live demonstration and lecture, we’ll discuss two methods linguists commonly employ to study human language, then use these methods to explore the challenges and virtues of linguistic diversity.
Linguistics: Making sense from noise
Susan Lin
Susan Lin is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on phonetics – the study of speech sounds – with an emphasis on individual variation in speech articulation and implications of said variation for speech perception and sound change. Before studying Linguistics at the University of Michigan (PhD 2011), Prof. Lin spent four glorious years studying math and computer science at Cal (BA 2002).
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