Stephanie S Shih

Research

Curriculum Vitae Interests & Current Projects

• Syntagmatic relationships in phonology: rhythm, weight, tone, harmony, phonotactics
• Phonological interfaces: particularly, with morphosyntax
• Quantitative and computational modeling, statistical machine learning
• Corpus methods: particularly, with under-resourced languages
• Psycholinguistics, cognitive science
• Poetic and musical forms
• Scientometrics for issues of diversity and representation

My research--and my lab's research--deploys computational approaches towards understanding the cognitive system of language. In particular, I focus on the place of phonology within the linguistic system: what is its structure, and what is the nature of its interfaces with other components of language (and beyond)? Computation and natural language data allow us to break open these questions by making language (and its use) a tractable and quantifiable object for scientific study.

Some of my current projects include

• Phonological influences on word and constituent order:
  e.g., in Tagalog word order
• Learning of lexically-specific phonological behaviours:
  e.g., unsupervised feature discovery for (morphological) class-conditioned phonology
• Phonotactic modeling of variable surface lexical tone patterns:
  e.g., in Mende, Dioula, Hausa
• Phonological correspondences between music and language cross-linguistically:
  e.g., in Japanese and English song text-setting

I am also interested in using scientometrics (quantative meta-study of science as a field) to turn a critical eye on (gender) diversity, representation, and the consequences of collaboration for scientific development in the field of linguistics.

Recent Papers

A complete list of publications is available here.

• Shih & Rudin. 2019. On sound symbolism in baseball players' names. Download manuscript: lingbuzz/004689.
• Shih & Inkelas. 2019. Autosegmental aims in surface optimizing phonology. Linguistic Inquiry. Download PDF. Also available in preprint form lingbuzz/002520.
• Shih. 2018. Learning lexical classes from variable phonology. In Proceedings of AJL2. Download PDF preprint.
• Shih. 2017. Constraint conjunction in weighted probabilistic grammar. Phonology. Download PDF preprint.
• Shih & Zuraw. 2017. Phonological conditions on variable adjective-noun word order in Tagalog. Language: Phonological Analysis. Download PDF preprint. Also available on lingbuzz/002796
• Starr & Shih. 2017. The syllable as a prosodic unit in Japanese lexical strata: evidence from text-setting. Glossa. Download PDF.
• Shih. 2017. Phonological influences in syntactic choice. In The morphosyntax-phonology connection: locality and directionality at the interface. Download PDF.
• Shih. 2016. Super additive similarity in Dioula tone harmony. WCCFL Proceedings. Download PDF.
• Shih & Inkelas. 2016. Morphologically-conditioned tonotactics in multilevel Maximum Entropy grammar. AMP Proceedings. Download PDF.

Book

• Gribanova & Shih (eds). 2017. The morphosyntax-phonology connection: locality and directionality at the interface. Oxford University Press.
Book.

Downloadables

• Random Forests for Classification Trees and Categorical Dependent Variables: An informal quick start R guide
  last updated: 2 February 2011
• Random Forests, for Model (and Predictor) Selection
  This is a more up-to-date introduction to random forests, from a guest lecture in May 2013. The accompanying files for the data can be found at Bruce Hayes' course website here.
• Summary of Basic Statistical Tests in R
• Advice for writing a LSA abstract
• Cascadilla Proceedings Project Template for Microsoft Word (2010+)
• Agreement by Correspondence Conference Archive & Bibliography.
• Scientometrics of linguistics.
• A primer to navigating the academic job market.

Collaborators, Past & Present

• Joan Bresnan (Stanford)
• Richard Futrell (MIT)
• Jason Grafmiller (University of Birmingham)
• Vera Gribanova (Stanford)
• Sharon Inkelas (Berkeley)
• Darya Kavitskaya (Berkeley)
• Rebecca Starr (National University of Singapore)
• Kie Zuraw (UCLA)

About

Life consists of the little things;
the important matter is to see them largely.

_{-- Otto Jespersen}

• 2007 Berkeley Linguistics graduation speech
• The companion volume haiku collection to my dissertation
• A glimpse of my whiteboard
• A snapshot of the field
• Favourite work cafes in Edinburgh, in collaboration with Lauren Hall-Lew
• If you must have a photo.

home: Tunnel View, Yosemite NP || research: Vernal Falls, Yosemite NP || about: Berkeley PhonLab