WHAT'S HAPPENING AT SANTA CRUZ

The WHASC Editors recently conducted a virtual interview with Andrew Hedding,

who completed his PhD in Linguistics at UC Santa Cruz in 2022 with a dissertation titled How to Move a Focus: The Syntax of Alternative Particles. After graduating, Andrew joined the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington, where he is now an Assistant Professor.

What kind of research are you working on at present?

Since finishing at UCSC, I’ve continued to work on various aspects of the syntax of Mixtec languages (which was the main focus of my dissertation). A few of my current projects emerged more or less directly out of questions left unanswered by my dissertation (e.g., on non-interrogative uses of wh-words), but I’ve also started a few completely new projects looking at new domains of Mixtec syntax (e.g., on argument structure). One project emerging out of my dissertation is co-authored with Michelle Yuan from UCLA. In a recent NELS presentation, we compared subextraction possibilities in San Martín Peras Mixtec with apparent subextraction in Tseltalan Mayan languages (the Tseltalan data comes from a recent paper by Judith Aissen and Giles Polian). Though the languages display superficially similar patterns, we identify a number of empirical differences which we correlate with distinct syntactic properties of the languages. Ultimately, we argue that the superficially similar patterns emerge via distinct derivations.

Can you share a bit about your journey from UCSC to your current role at the University of Washington? Looking back, what was the transition from life as a graduate student to life as a faculty member like? Did you feel prepared for the transition? Was there anything unexpected that you faced?

After finishing my PhD, I got a position as a one-year visiting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. During that visiting year, I applied for (and ultimately got) a permanent tenure track position here. On the one hand, I felt prepared for life as a faculty member—I had taught or TAed versions of the same classes while at UCSC, and I had experience balancing my teaching and research responsibilities. At the same time, however, the transition was hard. Between teaching more classes (as the primary instructor), added service responsibilities, meeting new colleagues, and moving to a new city, there were times when it was very overwhelming. I’ve had to be patient with myself, but now that I am in my third academic year at UW, I feel like each quarter is getting a bit easier. 

What advice would you give to current UCSC graduate students who are aspiring to enter academia or pursue similar career paths?

At times the job market can be very frustrating and disheartening—I was on the job market for 3 years and faced a lot of rejection. Getting a job requires hard work, but it also requires luck. My advice would be to focus on the things you can control: work hard to create a few research projects that you can be proud of, present at conferences and meet people in your area, cultivate your teaching and mentorship skills, and most of all, be resilient. 

How has your research evolved since you graduated from UCSC? Are there any particular influences or experiences that played a major role in shaping your current research focus?

Since leaving grad school, I have done more theoretically-informed language description, in addition to my “strictly-theoretical” work. Ben Eischens (another UCSC alum, now at UCLA) and I recently wrote a paper describing the phonology of San Martín Peras Mixtec, another in Spanish that transcribes a personal narrative, and we are currently working on a third that describes the basic morphosyntax of the language. In part, these projects have emerged as we have gained a deeper understanding of the language. However, I think I have also been influenced by colleagues here at UW that have a deep commitment to language documentation and description. 

Looking ahead, what are some of the future directions for your research? Are there new areas or questions in linguistics that you’re excited to explore?

I expect that my future work will continue to focus on various aspects of Mixtec syntax and the ways that it interfaces with semantics and phonology. However, I am also excited by the prospect of collaborating more with colleagues at UW with diverse interests and backgrounds. As an example, I recently collaborated with two computational linguists here to conduct an “iconic” artificial language learning experiment while in Mexico. The artificial language we used is entirely pictographic, so it does not presuppose that participants be familiar with a particular set of sounds or even require that the participants be literate. In principle, this should make it more feasible for a diverse set of participants with varied language backgrounds to participate in this type of experiement. This summer, we ran an experiment which taught participants several different nominal modifiers, and then asked them to produce phrases with multiple modifiers, to see if participants would order them in a scope-isomorphic way. This was a completely different type of project for me, but it was fun, and I’m hoping to find more ways to collaborate with my new colleagues here in the future!

Delaney Gomez-Jackson graduated in 2023 with a BA and MA in linguistics, with a thesis entitled “Questions and indefinites in Santiago Laxopa Zapotec.” During her time at UC Santa Cruz, she was involved in the Zapotec Language Project and Nido de Lenguas, as well as the NSF grant on animacy and resumption. Since graduating, she has been employed at Motorola as a Linguistic Researcher, using her linguistics training and expertise in Zapotec to localize technologies for Indigenous communities around the world.

Recently, Delaney shared her thoughts with WHASC about her career at Motorola, how her time at UC Santa Cruz prepared her for it, and the future of linguistics in technology.

Tell us a bit about your current work as a Linguistic Researcher at Motorola and your work with Lenovo.

My work as a Linguistic Researcher at Motorola targets two areas: (1) globalization and (2) machine translation.

In the realm of globalization, I am working on Motorola’s Digital Inclusion Initiative, which aims to increase indigenous communities’ access to technology and raise awareness for language revitalization. My role has been to identify potential languages to pursue for the initiative (given parameters such as the number of speakers, dialect variants, orthographies) and make connections with linguists and community leaders. Our projects have included UI localization for Kaingang, Nheengatu, Kangri, Cherokee, Māori, and Ladin as well as the creation of a keyboard for Kuvi. We recently published a white paper with UNESCO that documents the process of localizing indigenous languages onto smartphones.

As for machine translation, my work has centered on improving the quality of our large language model (LLM) — this involves both identifying morphological and syntactic similarities between languages to better train our model, as well as staying up to date with the latest research on metrics for model performance. 

How do you see the role of linguists evolving in the tech industry, particularly in projects focused on language inclusion and AI?

The inclusion of languages in the digital realm is important since smartphone communication has become increasingly prevalent in the modern world, especially among younger generations (who play a crucial role in language revitalization). It is important that indigenous communities have the resources to participate in digital communication if they decide that it is beneficial for their community. Linguists are crucial to this digital inclusion process — they help to bridge the gap between business partners, software engineers, and the language community involved in the project by clearly communicating the language needs of the community to these corporate groups.

Linguists are equally important in the realm of AI; in particular, linguists can help to improve the performance of LLMs. Models are trained to recognize patterns from language data to generate translations; in other words, they are not explicitly taught syntax but use prediction and probability to generate translations. Linguists therefore play a role in error analysis and general output evaluation. Certain syntactic phenomenon can present challenges for LLMs, so linguists can help elaborate on these issues. 

Could you tell us a bit about your MA thesis, Questions and Indefinites in Santiago Laxopa Zapotec? What drew you to work on this particular topic?

Santiago Laxopa Zapotec has a rich and underexplored pronominal system. Before working on quexistentials in SLZ, I was interested in impersonal pronouns. My advisor, Maziar, introduced me to Hengeveld et al. (2021)’s work on quexistentials, which motivated my thesis research. Questions and indefinites in Santiago Laxopa Zapotec explores the syntax-semantics interface of quexistentials, which are interrogative pronouns derived from indefinite pronouns, in Santiago Laxopa Zapotec. I argue that indefinite and interrogative pronouns have, underlyingly, the same semantics, and the difference between the readings arise from the syntactic environments in which they appear. In short, the interrogative reading surfaces when the quexistential is bound by an interrogative operator, which then provides the semantics for the question reading. 

How did your experience in projects like the Zapotec Language Project and Nido de Lenguas influence your approach to language and your current work as a Linguistic Researcher in the tech industry?

My participation in the Zapotec Language Project was the cornerstone to my experience as a linguist, both in academia and in the tech industry. Through the Zapotec Language Project, I gained my initial experience doing fieldwork to help populate the dictionary and text databases. I learned how to collaborate with language consultants in a respectful and culturally sensitive way, which has carried over into my interactions with language consultants with whom Motorola has collaborated. Being a part of Nido de Lenguas was also an invaluable experience since it helped me bridge the gap between linguistics in an academic context and in the context of helping raise language awareness among our local community. This experience has been especially useful for interfacing with stakeholders and the public about “big picture” linguistic facts about a particular language, as well as the importance of language revitalization.