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Statistics workshop for linguists

I frequently teach (invited) statistics courses for linguists focusing on generalized additive modeling.This technique, which is also able to take into account subject- and item-related variability (i.e. similar to mixed-effects regression) is important as it allows to model complex non-linear relationships between predictors and the dependent variable (e.g., time-series data such as EEG data). I've been invited to teach these courses at (e.g.,) Cambridge, Montréal and Toulouse. Slides (which are regularly updated) of these courses can be found here. If you are interested in this type of statistics course (generally ranging from two to five days), you are welcome to contact me. Note that I do ask a fee for teaching these courses.

Upcoming presentations

  • June 14-15, 2018: Co-organizer of TABU Dag 2018, Groningen, Netherlands.
  • July 8 - 11, 2024: TBA (invited), 12th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE, Vienna, Austria.

Past invited presentations

  1. Public engagement in speech research: Some examples and (potential) benefits (invited presentation). Summer School on Coping with the complexity in speech production and perception, Chorin, Germany, July 8, 2022.
  2. Approaches to investigating language variation and supporting minority languages (invited presentation). University of Helsinki, (online), April 15, 2021.
  3. GAM consultation (invited course). Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (Stephanie Kuchinsky), (online), March 21 - June 2, 2021.
  4. GAM Workshop (invited course). Universität Zürich, (online), December 7, 2020.
  5. Generalized additive modeling (invited course). University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria, November 21 - 22, 2019.
  6. The beauty of dialect variation (invited presentation). Festival della Scienza, Genua, Italy, October 27, 2019.
  7. Investigating pronunciation variation from an aggregate perspective: from dialectometry to articulography (keynote) (invited presentation). Conference on Experimental Approaches to Perception and Production of Language Variation (ExAPP), Münster, Germany, September 26 - 28, 2019.
  8. Dialectometry: modeling the influence of geography in dialect variation (invited presentation). University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany, July 4, 2019.
  9. Dialectometry (invited course). University of Malta, Malta, June 27 - 28, 2019.
  10. Generalized aditive modeling to analyze time series (invited presentation). Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussel, Belgium, October 2, 2018.
  11. Dialectometry (invited course). Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, September 10 - 14, 2018.
  12. Generalized additive modeling for phonetics (invited course). Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik, Berlin, Germany, August 30 - 31, 2018.
  13. (Mixed-effects) regression and generalized additive modeling (invited course). Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany, May 3 - 4, 2018.
  14. Statistics for Linguistics (invited course). LOT Winter School, Amsterdam, January 8 - 12, 2018.
  15. Generalized additive modeling (invited presentation). Institut für Phonetik und Sprachverarbeitung, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany, December 20, 2017.
  16. Generalized additive modeling (invited presentation). Winter School on Multilingualism, Groningen, November 9 - 10, 2017.
  17. Quantitative analyses of dialect variation (invited presentation). Meertens Instituut, Amsterdam, October 24, 2017.
  18. Discovering articulatory patterns using generalized additive modeling (invited presentation). Dynamic Modeling III workshop, Cologne, Germany, July 18 - 19, 2017.
  19. Generalized additive modeling as a useful tool for dialectometry (invited presentation). Sociolectometry Panel, ICLaVE, Málaga, Spain, June 6 - 9, 2017.
  20. Statistics for linguists in R (invited course). Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa, Italy, May 2 - 5, 2017.
  21. Mixed-effects regression and generalized additive modeling (invited course). Centre de Recherche Cerveau & Cognition, Toulouse, France, March 30 - 31, 2017.
  22. Using generalized additive modeling for analyzing articulography data (and other time series data) (invited presentation). 5th International Winterschool "Speech Perception and Production", Chorin, Germany, January 9 - 13, 2017.
  23. Modeling the influence of geography in dialect variation (invited presentation). FLAMES-colloquium "Topics for Spatial Statistics", Leuven, Belgium, November 28, 2016.
  24. Investigating language variation quantitatively (invited presentation). EuroScience Open Forum 2016, Manchester, United Kingdom, July 23 - 27, 2016.
  25. Pronunciation variation on the tip of the tongue (invited presentation). BCN Winter meeting, Groningen, February 11, 2016.
  26. Investigating language variation using articulography (invited presentation). Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, October 13, 2015.
  27. Generalized additive modeling (invited course). McGill, Neurocognition of Language Lab, Montréal, Canada, March 20 - 22, 2015.
  28. Mixed-effects regression and generalized additive modeling for linguists (invited course). Universität Tübingen, Englisches Seminar, Tübingen, Germany, February 9 - 10, 2015.
  29. Mixed-effects regression and generalized additive modeling for linguists (invited course). Universität Oldenburg, Institut für Niederlandistik, Oldenburg, Germany, February 2 - 3, 2015.
  30. Mixed-effects regression and generalized additive modeling for linguists (invited course). University of Cambridge, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Cambridge, United Kingdom, January 13 - 14, 2015.
  31. Methods in Dialectometry (invited presentation). Ghent University, Department of Linguistics, Ghent, Belgum, October 16, 2014.
  32. Comparing pronunciations on the basis of transcriptions and articulography (invited presentation). Radboud University, Centre for Language Studies, Nijmegen, October 15, 2014.
  33. What the tongue can tell us about dialects? (invited presentation). Frontiers of Language Variation Workshop, Methods in Dialectology XV, Groningen, August 11 - 14, 2014.
  34. Generalized additive modeling for linguists (invited course). University Leiden, Center of Linguistics, Leiden, July 10 - 11, 2014.
  35. Mixed-effects regression and generalized additive modeling for linguists (invited course). Universität Oldenburg, Institut für Niederlandistik, Oldenburg, Germany, June 30 - July 1, 2014.
  36. Introduction to mixed-effects regression for (psycho)linguists (invited presentation). IMS Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany, December 16, 2013.
  37. Integrating traditional dialectology and sociolinguistics: generalized additive modeling (invited presentation). New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 42, Pittsburgh, USA, October 17 - 20, 2013 [with R. Harald Baayen].
  38. Inducing and using phonetic similarity (invited presentation). Language Diversity Conference, Groningen, July 20, 2013 [with John Nerbonne].
  39. A sociolinguistic analysis of linguistically sensitive dialectal word pronunciation distances (invited presentation). Workshop on Computational Approaches to the Study of Dialectal and Typological Variation, ESSLLI 2012, Opole, Poland, August 6 - 10, 2012.
  40. Mixed-effects regression analyses of eyetracking data (invited presentation). Eye-tracking and EEG workshop, Groningen, July 7, 2011.
 
 
 
 

Past presentations

  1. SPRAAKLAB: a mobile laboratory for collecting speech production data (presentation). 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic, August 7 - 11, 2023.
  2. Van Old noar Jong: an app en teaching programme to teach children about the regional language (presentation). Oldenburg-Groningen scientific exchange, Oldenburg, June 16, 2022.
  3. A novel paradigm to investigate phonetic convergence in interaction (poster presentation). 12th International Seminar on Speech Production, online, December 18, 2020.
  4. The influence of alcohol on L1 vs. L2 pronunciation (poster presentation). 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, August 5 - 9, 2019.
  5. The beauty of language variation (presentation). AGM Global Young Academy, Halle, Germany, May 2, 2019.
  6. Generalized additive modeling (guest lecture). University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, December 12, 2018.
  7. Tutorial on generalized additive modelling to analyze time-series data (course). 17th Speech Science and Technology Conference, Coogee, Australia, December 4, 2018.
  8. Generalized additive modeling (guest lecture). Centre for Language Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, December 3, 2018.
  9. Generalized additive modeling to analyze articulatory data (guest lecture). Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, November 5, 2018.
  10. Introductory course on Advanced Regression Methods for Linguistics (course). ESSLLI 2018, Sofia, Bulgaria, August 6 - 10, 2018.
  11. Articulatory differences between L1 and L2 speakers of English (presentation). Conference on Multilingualism, Groningen, November 6 - 9, 2017.
  12. Articulatory differences between L1 and L2 speakers of English (presentation). 11th International Seminar on Speech Production, Tianjin, China, October 16 - 19, 2017.
  13. Dialect-specific articulatory settings (presentation). Methods in Dialectology XVI, Tokyo, Japan, August 7 - 11, 2017.
  14. Articulatory differences between L1 and L2 speakers of English (poster presentation). 7th International Conference on Speech Motor Control, Groningen, July 5 - 8, 2017.
  15. Determinants of English Accents (presentation). 6th Conference on Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics, Tübingen, Germany, November 4 - 6, 2015.
  16. Taalvariatie: patronen in uitspraak en tongbewegingen (guest lecture). De Jonge Akademie meeting, Groningen, September 21, 2015.
  17. Investigating dialectal differences using articulography (poster presentation). 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Glasgow, United Kingdom, August 10 - 14, 2015.
  18. Analyzing time series data using generalized additive modeling (course). LSA Institute, Chicago, USA, July 6 - 17, 2015 [with Jacolien van Rij].
  19. Measuring foreign accent strength (guest lecture). University of Cambridge, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Cambridge, United Kingdom, January 13, 2015.
  20. Patterns of language variation (guest lecture). Digital Humanities Day 2014, Groningen, October 31, 2014.
  21. Gabmap tutorial (guest lecture). Ghent University, Department of Linguistics, Ghent, Belgium, October 15, 2014.
  22. Comparing dialect and accented pronunciations on the basis of transcriptions and articulography (guest lecture). McGill, Center of Research on Brain, Language and Music, Montréal, Canada, September 18, 2014.
  23. Analyzing linguistic time-series data with generalized additive modeling in R: a case study using ERP data (guest lecture). McGill, Motor Control Laboratory, Montréal, Canada, September 17, 2014.
  24. Comparing dialect and accented pronunciations on the basis of transcriptions and articulography (guest lecture). Linguistic Data Consortium, Philadelphia, USA, September 12, 2014.
  25. Generalized additive models in R (guest lecture). Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, USA, September 9, 2014.
  26. Validating and using the PMI-based Levenshtein distance as a measure of foreign accent strength (poster presentation). Methods in Dialectology XV, Groningen, August 11 - 15, 2014 [best poster award].
  27. Accessing large dialect databases on RADAR (presentation). Methods in Dialectology XV, Groningen, August 11 - 14, 2014 [with Clive Upton].
  28. Large-scale analysis of articulatory trajectories using generalized additive modeling (poster presentation). 10th International Seminar on Speech Production, Cologne, Germany, May 5 - 8, 2014.
  29. Comparing pronunciations on the basis of transcriptions and articulography (guest lecture). University College London, Department of Speech Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, London, United Kingdom, April 8, 2014.
  30. Articulography for studying language variation (guest lecture). Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, USA, October 24, 2013.
  31. Articulography for studying language variation (guest lecture). City University New York, Speech Production, Acoustics and Perception Laboratory, New York, USA, October 16, 2013.
  32. A cognitively grounded measure of pronunciation distance (presentation). Donders Workshop, Radboud University, Nijmegen, September 23, 2013 - March 29, 2024.
  33. A cognitively grounded automatic measure of pronunciation distance (presentation). 5th Conference on Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics, Leuven, Belgium, September 12 - 14, 2013.
  34. Hierarchical spectral partitioning of bipartite graphs to cluster dialects and identify distinguishing features (guest lecture). Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa, Italy, July 17, 2013.
  35. Comparing pronunciation on the basis of transcriptions and articulography (guest lecture). Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica, Pisa, Italy, July 16, 2013.
  36. Mixed-effects regression and generalized additive modeling in linguistics (course). LOT Summer School, Groningen, June 24 - 28, 2013 [with Jacolien van Rij].
  37. Co-clustering varieties and linguistic features using bipartite spectral graph partitioning (poster presentation). Forum Sprachvariation, Erlangen, Germany, October 14 - 15, 2012.
  38. Lexical differences between Tuscan dialects and standard Italian: a sociolinguistic analysis using generalized additive mixed modeling (presentation). Leuven Statistics Days, Leuven, Belgium, June 7 - 8, 2012.
  39. A quantitative investigation of English accents (poster presentation). BCN New Year's Meeting, Groningen, February 2, 2012 [best poster award].
  40. Segment distances and foreign accents (guest lecture). LOT Winter School, Tilburg, January 12, 2012.
  41. Gabmap tutorial (guest lecture). Göteborgs Universitet, Gothenburg, Sweden, October 26, 2011 [with John Nerbonne and Therese Leinonen].
  42. Inducing a measure of phonetic similarity from dialect variation (presentation). Workshop on Comparing Approaches to Measuring Linguistic Differences, Gothenburg, Sweden, October 24 - 25, 2011.
  43. A sociolinguistic analysis of aggregate dialect distances (presentation). Methods in Dialectology XIV, London (ON), Canada, August 1 - 5, 2011.
  44. A sociolinguistic analysis of dialect distances (poster presentation). BCN New Year's Meeting, Groningen, February 17, 2011.
  45. On the sublinear distribution of linguistic variation with respect to geography (presentation). Forum Sprachvariation, Erlangen, Germany, October 14 - 15, 2010.
  46. Dialectometry and hierarchical bipartite spectral graph partitioning (guest lecture). Makerere University, Department of Machine Learning, Kampala, Uganda, September 23, 2010.
  47. Text Manipulation and Hidden Markov Models (course). Makerere University, College of Computing and Information Sciences, Kampala, Uganda, September 20 - 22, 2010.
  48. Modelling geography's influence on language variation: calibrating linguistic measurements (presentation). Cultural Evolution in Spatially Structured Populations Conference, London, United Kingdom, September 13 - 15, 2010.
  49. Dialectometry in Groningen (guest lecture). University of Alberta, Department of Linguistics, Edmonton, Canada, August 11, 2010.
  50. Hierarchical bipartite spectral graph partitioning to cluster dialect varieties and determine their most important linguistic features (presentation). TextGraphs-5 ACL Workshop, Uppsala, Sweden, July 16, 2010.
  51. A graph-theoretic analysis of English dialects (presentation). Bloomsday 2010: Echoes of Albion Workshop, Groningen, June 16, 2010.
  52. On the sublinear distribution of linguistic variation with respect to geography (presentation). 31st TABU Dag, Groningen, June 3 - 4, 2010.
  53. Co-clustering varieties and linguistic features using bipartite spectral graph partitioning (presentation). Computational Linguistics in The Netherlands 20, Utrecht, February 5, 2010 - March 29, 2024.
  54. Understanding Séguy's law: on the sublinear distribution of linguistic variation with respect to geography (presentation). Past and Present Processes of Dialect Convergence: Data and Methods, Amsterdam, February 4, 2010 [with John Nerbonne].
  55. Bipartite spectral graph partitioning to co-cluster varieties and sound correspondences in dialectology (presentation). TextGraphs-4 ACL Workshop, Singapore, August 7, 2009.
  56. Tools for detecting geographical and structural affinities (presentation). Workshop on Small Tools for Cross-Linguistic Research, Utrecht, June 15 - 16, 2009.
  57. Evaluating the pairwise string alignment of pronunciation (presentation). EACL Workshop on Language Technology and Resources for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities, and Education, Athens, Greece, March 30, 2009.
  58. Evaluation of pairwise string alignment methods (presentation). Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands 19, Groningen, January 22, 2009.
  59. Dialect pronunciation comparison using the Goeman-Taeldeman-Van Reenen-project data (presentation). Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands 17, Leuven, Belgium, January 12, 2007.
  60. Parsing partially bracketed input (presentation). Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands 16, Amsterdam, December 16, 2005.
  61. Gabor filtering augmented with surround inhibition for improved contour detection by texture suppression (poster presentation). 27th Annual Meeting of the European Conference on Visual Perception, Budapest, Hungary, August 22 - 26, 2004.