Stephanie Shih
Associate Professor, Linguistics
Affiliate Faculty, East Asia Studies Center
University of Southern California
Research
I am a cognitive scientist and multidisciplinary artist. Housed within the USC Linguistics Department, my lab's research deploys computational approaches towards understanding the cognitive system of language as embedded in its social, physical, and cultural contexts.
In particular, much of my work in linguistics has focused on the place of phonology within the cognitive 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.
Projects include
- 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
- Poetic and musical forms
- Semiotics across art and language
- Scientometrics for issues of diversity and representation
More broadly, my work across art and science together examines the symbolic systems of human cultural experience—systems that include but are not limited to language.
- 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.
- Gribanova & Shih (eds). 2017. The morphosyntax-phonology connection: locality and directionality at the interface. Oxford University Press. Book.
- Random Forests for Classification Trees and Categorical Dependent Variables: An informal quick start R guidelast updated: 2 February 2011
- Random Forests, for Model (and Predictor) SelectionThis 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.
- 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.
- 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