Aris Xanthos

I am a replacement senior lecturer in Computer Science for the Humanities at the University of Lausanne. I received my Master of Arts in general linguistics in 2001 and my Doctorate in Arts in 2007. My thesis, which is entitled "Apprentissage automatique de la morphologie: le cas des structures racine-schème" ("The automatic learning of morphology: the case of root-and-pattern structures"), was partially written during a stay as a visiting scholar at the department of linguistics at the University of Chicago in 2005-2006 (thanks to a prospective researcher fellowship of the SNF).

During the autumn term 2008, I will be teaching a new course entitled "Programmation Perl pour le traitement du texte" ("Perl programming for text processing"). This course is intended for students in IMM (BA 2nd part or MA). It is both an introduction to Perl and an introduction to basic programming techniques for textual data (import, sampling, segmentation, counting, etc.).

Since 2007, I have been teaching a course entitled "Traitement informatique des corpus textuels" ("Computer analysis of textual corpora"), which is part of the studies in IMM and linguistics. In the context of the option program, the course is also attended by students of other sections of the Faculty of Arts, and it provides them with a methodological formation for their own research.

Between 2001 and 2007, I have been responsible for the lab work related to Professor Remi Jolivet's course in morphological and syntactic analysis (department of linguistics), and I have been involved in the lab work associated with Professor François Bavaud's courses in mathematical methods (1-4)

My research focuses on the development of computer tools and mathematical methods for modeling language acquisition, with a special interest in phonology and morphology. This raises such questions as:

• How can we develop methods that can learn automatically certain aspects of the phonology and morphology of an unknown language, based only on a corpus of that language (in audio, phonetic or orthographic form) ?

• Can we use such methods to represent or evaluate the learning processes that are involved in first language acquisition ?

• Can we enrich these methods on the basis of theories and observations stemming from the psycholinguistic study of language acquisition ?

Most of my publications are available online, and more information about my work can be found on my Unisciences page.

I am actively collaborating with:

• the Linguistica group, which is directed by professor John Goldsmith at the University of Chicago;

• the Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition, which is directed by professor Wolfgang Dressler at the University of Vienna;

• the research in textual statistics and information theory conducted by professor François Bavaud at the University of Lausanne;

• Dr Marianne Kilani-Schoch, from the School of French as a foreign language at the University of Lausanne.

• professor Steven Gillis, from the Center for Dutch Language and Speech at the University of Antwerp.