Anne Abeillé (Université Paris Diderot/Paris 7) will be teaching the Constraint-Based Formalisms course at the 2019 Summer Linguistic Institute. Here is an interview with Professor Abeillé.
Can you please tell us about your linguistic background?
I started as a computational linguist in Paris 7, and a research stay at U Penn working with A Joshi, I then built the French treebank, and has been working mostly on the syntax of French and Romance languages, using LTAG and HPSG.
When did you first join the LSA?
I joined the LSA in 1995, I had a presentation at the Winter Institute I also taught in two previous LSA summer institutes: 1997 (Cornell), 2017 (Lexington)
Can you tell us about the course you are teaching at the Institute?
My plan is to introduce Head-driven Phrase structure grammar (HPSG), which is a theory belonging to Unification based grammars and show what kind of syntactic and semantic analyses it permits; the course will be based on English examples but also data from other languages like French and French-based creoles.
What research are you currently working on?
I’m coordinating a big French grammar (with Danièle Godard) I’m also doing experimental syntax (testing syntactic theories with psycholinguistic experiments)
What is your favorite hobby or pastime?
bicycle, movies, reading
Quarter or Semester system?
Semester
Would you rather teach a three-hour graduate seminar for only once a week or an hour and a half class but twice a week?
2 classes a week
What is unique about Davis?/What are you excited to see in Davis?
A good university, a good team in linguistics
What advice would you give to graduate students interested in pursuing a career in linguistics?
To learn about theories and test them with real data
Learn more about Professor Abeillé here: www.llf.cnrs.fr/Gens/Abeille