SCIO Studievereniging

Podiumavond XXL! 🎤
2023-06-29 19:00 - 22:00 (Europe/Amsterdam) | Kapitein Zeppos, Gebed Zonder End 5, Amsterdam, 1012 HS
Het is zover. Podiumavond XXL komt dit jaar terug! Samen met studieverenigingen Helios, Ragtime en Etcetera houden we een avond vól talent! 🎤🥳
Alles is mogelijk! Wil jij laten zien wat je kan? Schrijf je dan hier in.✍️

ACLC Seminar | Odette Scharenborg: Inclusive automatic speech recognition: Quantifying and mitigating bias in automatic speech recognisers
2023-06-23 16:15 - 17:30 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Organized by the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication! (ACLC)

Speaker: Odette Scharenborg
Location: P.C. Hoofthuis
Room: 1.15
Title: Inclusive automatic speech recognition: Quantifying and mitigating bias in automatic speech recognisers
Abstract: Automatic speech recognition (ASR) is increasingly used, e.g., in emergency response centers, domestic voice assistants, and search engines. Because of the paramount relevance spoken language plays in our lives, it is critical that ASR systems are able to deal with the variability in the way people speak (e.g., due to speaker differences, demographics, different speaking styles, and differently abled users). ASR systems promise to deliver objective interpretation of human speech. Practice and recent evidence however suggests that the state-of-the-art SotA ASRs struggle with the large variation in speech due to e.g., gender, age, speech impairment, race, and accents. The overarching goal in our project is to uncover bias in ASR systems to work towards proactive bias mitigation in ASR. In this talk, I will present systematic experiments aimed at quantifying, identifying the origin of, and mitigating the bias of state-of-the-art ASRs on speech from different, typically low-resource, groups of speakers, with a focus on bias against gender, age, regional accents and non-native accents.

Algemene Ledenvergadering + Afsluitingsborrel 🥂
2023-06-21 17:00 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Op woensdag 21 juni (17:00 uur, PCH1.04) is de laatste ALV van het jaar.
Direct hierna sluiten we het jaar feestelijk af met een Afsluitingsborrel (ook welkom voor niet-leden)! 🍺

Laatste Loodjes BBQ ☀️🍴
2023-06-15 17:30 - 19:30 | Rembrandtpark, Postjesweg, Amsterdam
Donderdag 15 juni willen we iedereen (ook niet-leden) uitnodigen voor de Laatste Loodjes BBQ. ☀️🍽
Wij zorgen voor heerlijk eten (ook vegetarisch) en drinken (zowel alcoholisch als non-alcoholisch).
Neem zelf mee: een kleedje en eventueel je favoriete drankje.

Laten we gezellig met z’n allen dit mooie jaar afsluiten!

ABC Lecture | Sabine Kastner: Neural dynamics of the primate attention network
2023-06-14 16:00 - 18:00 | Amsterdam Science Park, Science Park 904, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, 1098 XH, Nederland
Organized by the Amsterdam Brain and Cognition! (ABC)

Speaker: Sabine Kastner
Location: Science Park 904
Room: SP C0.110
Title: Neural dynamics of the primate attention network
Abstract: The selection of information from our cluttered sensory environments is one of the most fundamental cognitive operations performed by the primate brain. In the visual domain, the selection process is thought to be mediated by a static spatial mechanism – a ‘spotlight’ that can be flexibly shifted around the visual scene. This spatial search mechanism has been associated with a large-scale network that consists of multiple nodes distributed across all major cortical lobes and includes also subcortical regions. To identify the specific functions of each network node and their functional interactions is a major goal for the field of cognitive neuroscience. In my lecture, I will give an overview on the neural basis of this fundamental cognitive function and discuss recently discovered rhythmic properties that set up alternating attention states.

ACLC Seminar | Lauren Fonteyn: Methods of semi-automatic data annotation with contextualized word embeddings
2023-06-09 16:15 - 17:30 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Organized by the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication! (ACLC)

Speaker: Lauren Fonteyn (Meertens Instituut)
Location: P.C. Hoofthuis
Room: 1.15
Title: Methods of semi-automatic data annotation with contextualized word embeddings
Abstract: In corpus linguistics, the collection and annotation of data commonly involve a relatively balanced combination of computer-aided and manual labour. It is still common practice, for instance, to first retrieve data representing a particular linguistic phenomenon from an electronic corpus (e.g. by means of a concordancer tool or query script) and subsequently manually categorize the collected examples into different groups (e.g. animate/inanimate; literal/figurative; agent/patient/instrument/…). However, as the range of research questions that linguists aim to address by means of corpus data has expanded in complexity, there is a growing need for larger data samples, which is difficult to meet when we continue to approach data annotation manually. As such, it has become an important practical challenge in corpus linguistics to determine how data annotation practices can evolve along with the needs of researchers. In this talk, I suggest one way of approaching corpus data annotation (semi-)automatically by relying on Large Language Models (LLMs). More specifically, I will present a number example case studies to highlight how an LLM like BERT can be employed to annotate corpus data. The presentation focusses on the BERT-based models MacBERTh (Manjavacas & Fonteyn 2022a) and GysBERT (Manjavacas & Fonteyn 2022b), which – unlike the vast majority of available models – have been pre-trained to process historical English and Dutch respectively (date range: 1500-1950). What makes the approach I will discuss appealing is that it is fully customizable to the researcher’s needs. Of course, some corpora have been enriched with part-of-speech tags, or, more exceptionally, syntactic parsing and semantic tagging. Yet, not only are high-quality parsed (historical) corpora quite rare and limited in size, the extent to pre-set tags map onto the categories a researcher is interested in may also vary. The procedure presented in my case studies, then, offers a means of automatically classifying morphosyntactic structures in large, unparsed (and/or untagged) corpora following a custom annotation scheme. As such, the procedure can help to scale up the data set for (historical) corpus studies where a small portion of the data has been manually annotated, or to replicate a data annotation scheme adopted in prior work and apply it to new data.

Lab Tour in Bushuis! 🧠
2023-06-08 16:00 - 17:30 | Bushuis – Oost-Indisch Huis, Kloveniersburgwal 48, Amsterdam, Nederland
Altijd al eens in het Spraaklab willen kijken? Kom met ons mee! Alle CLC’ers (ook niet-leden) zijn welkom. 🧠
Geef aan dat je meegaat in het formulier. ✍️

ACLC Seminar | Tineke Snijders: Neural tracking of speech in infants and their later language development
2023-06-02 16:15 - 17:30 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Organized by the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication! (ACLC)

Speaker: Tineke Snijders
Location: PC Hoofthuis
Room: 5.60
Title: Neural tracking of speech in infants and their later language development
Abstract: Neuronal groups in the brain process information in a rhythmical way, and can also track the speech rhythm. Using EEG, the coherence between the speech amplitude envelope and the electrophysiological response can be identified. This rhythmical neural tracking enables forming temporal predictions about salient events in the input, ensuring the brain is most excitable at times when the speech signal carries the most information. This helps in grouping information in analyzable units such as words and phrases, and this facilitates speech processing. I will discuss research showing that just like in adults, neural oscillations in the infant brain track the rhythm of speech at different frequencies. I will report results of our studies relating speech-brain coherence in infants to word segmentation and further language development, both in typically developing infants and in infants with a family history of autism. I will argue that rhythmic neural speech tracking reflects infants’ attention to specific parts of the speech signal (e.g. stressed syllables), and simultaneously acts as a core mechanism for maximizing temporal attention onto those parts.

ACLC Seminar | Eva van Lier: Alternation in argument coding across languages: lexical and other factors
2023-05-26 16:15 - 17:30 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Organized by the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication! (ACLC)

Speaker: Eva van Lier
Location: P.C. Hoofthuis
Room: 3.01
Title: Alternation in argument coding across languages: lexical and other factors
Abstract: In this talk, we give an overview of the research carried out so far in our Vidi project ‘Exceptions rule! Lexical restrictions on grammatical structure’. This project is about alternations, that is, situations in language where more than one morpho-syntactic construction can be used to express an event. Focusing on alternations in argument marking (case and agreement), we study how the choice between constructions is influenced by lexical and other factors, the latter including semantic factors (like animacy) and pragmatic factors (like topicality). We will discuss cross-linguistic data, as well as case studies of alternations in three specific languages: Kamang (Timor-Alor-Pantar), Chechen (Nakh-Daghestanian), and Persian (Indo-Iranian). These studies involve a mix of typological, corpus-based and experimental methods.

Borrel 🍻
2023-05-24 20:00 - 23:30, 2023-05-10 20:00 - 23:30 | Café de Gaeper, Staalstraat 4, Amsterdam, Nederland
Lekker borrelon bij Café de Gaeper!

SCIO in de Biblio 📚
2023-05-23 12:00 - 16:00 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Heb je ook een rustige plek nodig om te leren? Kom in de middag van donderdag 23 maart langs bij [PCH-lokaal volgt nog] om je goed voor te bereiden op de tentamens. 📚
Kom naast het leren ook genieten van pannenkoeken. 🥞

Picknick met Jamsessie! 🎵🥪
2023-05-15 13:30 - 16:00
Op maandag 15 mei houden we potluck picknick met een jamsessie, dus breng je instrumenten/zangkunsten mee! Meer informatie volgt nog. 🎵

ACLC Seminar | Markus Steinbach: Is there anything special about special signs? A cross-modal study of a special class of parts of speech in spoken and sign languages
2023-05-12 16:15 - 17:30 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Organized by the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication! (ACLC)

Speaker: Markus Steinbach
Location: P.C. Hoofthuis
Room: 5.59
Title: Is there anything special about special signs? A cross-modal study of a special class of parts of speech in spoken and sign languages
Abstract: A special class of lexical items frequently used in many different signs languages are so-called special signs, a particularly interesting part of speech that has not yet received much attention in linguistic research (Brennan 1992, Johnston & Schembri 1999, Johnston & Ferrara 2012, Konrad 2011, 2014, Schütte 2014). Special signs, which are sometimes also called multi-channel signs, ‘Gebärdenwendungen’, ‘(sign language) idioms’, or idiomatic signs, form a relatively small open class of conventionalized expressions (approx. 200 signs in German Sign Language, DGS) with unique formal properties different from lexical signs and gestural demonstrations. In addition, the meaning of special signs is flexible and highly context dependent and often translated into spoken languages with the help of complex idiomatic expressions. Based on examples taken from the DGS corpus, we discuss modality-independent and modality-dependent properties of special signs and argue that both their flexible ‘idiomatic’ meaning and their special formal properties show interesting similarities with ideophones in spoken languages (Dingemanse 2012, 2019; Dingemanse & Akita 2019; Barnes et al. 2022). We argue that the defining properties of ideophones discussed in the literature also apply (to a certain degree) to special signs in DGS. One result of this cross-modal comparison is that sign languages just like many spoken languages seem to have a special open class of marked lexical expressions that depict sensory imagery. Unlike ideophones in spoken languages, the depiction with special signs in sign languages is not auditory but visual. And unlike other iconic lexical expressions in sign languages, special signs can be analyzed as ‘idiomatic’ depictive context-dependent expressions with an expressive meaning component.

Koningsdag-spelletjesborrel 🎲👑
2023-04-26 17:30 - 21:00 | Diemen
Ga feestelijk de Koningsnacht in tijdens onze Koningsdag-spelletjesborrel! Deze zal om 17:30 aanvangen. 🎲👑
Neem je eigen drankjes en snackjes mee! Het zal plaatsvinden in Diemen, bij Dewi thuis! Stuur ons een berichtje voor de exacte locatie. Tot dan! 👋

ACLC Seminar | Hielke Vriesendorp: Exemplars vs. allophones: the role of lexical frequency and listener experience in sociolinguistic processing
2023-04-21 16:15 - 17:30 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Organized by the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication! (ACLC)

Speaker: Hielke Vriesendorp
Location: P.C. Hoofthuis
Room: 1.15
Title: Exemplars vs. allophones: the role of lexical frequency and listener experience in sociolinguistic processing
Abstract: Do we recognise a Northern English speaker saying ‘way’ as Northern because we have memories of other times we’ve heard Northern speakers say ‘way’ before, or because we recognise the abstract concept of a monophthongal FACE vowel (/eɪ/ realised as [e:]) in their pronunciation of ‘way’? Work on exemplar theory suggests that the way listeners are able to recognise the social meaning of linguistic variation is because social information is a part of the detailed (episodic) memories of words – exemplars – we use to process speech. However, as new innovations within the theory open up the possibility that listeners may generalise across these exemplar memories to create differently sized or differently abstract representations (hybrid exemplar theory). This raises the question of whether it is detailed exemplars that carry social meaning or more abstract linguistic representations like allophones. I discuss two accent recognition tasks which provide evidence that both are used, but partly depending on listener experience: the findings suggest that all listeners are able to rely on sublexical representations for accent recognition, as accent recognition was far above chance in non-word stimuli. However, it was found that inexperienced listeners of an accent benefited significantly less from hearing real word stimuli rather than non-word stimuli compared to experienced listeners, this suggests that lexical representations are more dominant in sociolinguistic processing for experienced listeners, whilst sub-lexical representations are more dominant in inexperienced listeners who may not have access to similarly strong lexical representations

Open Vergadering!
2023-04-19 11:00 - 13:00 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Word jij deel van het nieuwe SCIO bestuur? 🙌
De Bestuursaanmelding is geopend tot 8 mei. Wij houden op woensdag 19 april een open vergadering (11:00-13:00)! Zo kun je een kijkje nemen achter de schermen bij SCIO.

Bowlen 🎳
2023-04-11 18:45 - 21:00 | Aloha Bowling & Restaurant, De Ruijterkade 151, Amsterdam
Treed gezellig met SCIO de nieuwe periode in en ga voor die strike! 🎳
Schrijf je nu snel in! ✍️
Op dinsdag 11 april gaan we samen met onze kookcommissie bowlen bij Aloha (De Ruijterkade 151), en SCIO trakteert! (excl. drankjes). Zorg ervoor dat je om 18:45 aanwezig bent.
Bowl-ervaring is geen vereiste. Een kluisje huren kan voor €2,-. Hopelijk tot dan! 👋

SCIO in Dubio: Specialisatie-editie II 📚🤔
2023-04-04 17:00 - 19:00 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Bij deze SCIO in Dubio worden de specialisaties/tracks toegelicht door CLC’ers. Kom op 4 april om 17:00 langs bij PCH 1.05 en laat je inspireren! Dit evenement is verdeeld over twee avonden: dit is de tweede. 🙌
Wij gaan hiervoor pizza halen! Mocht je mee willen eten, vul dan het (nieuwe) formulier in, door hier te klikken. Je kunt daar ook je dieetwensen/allergieën doorgeven. 🍕

Cognitalks: Neuroscience, Cognition, and Beyond!
2023-04-03 19:30 - 22:00 | Pakhuis de Zwijger, Piet Heinkade 179, Amsterdam
Registration is open, click here to reserve your spot!
Organized by Cognito!
CogniTalks is an annual event organized by the student union Cognito of the University of Amsterdam. The event consists of several outstanding neuroscientists who will be sharing their inspiring and relevant research during a 15-minute-talk, covering topics from the biology of language to human consciousness. After the talks, you’ll have the opportunity to ask the speakers questions and maybe even discuss their ideas at the bar of Pakhuis de Zwijger.

Location: Pakhuis de Zwijger, Piet Heinkade 179, Amsterdam.
Time: 19:30 – 22:00

ACLC Seminar | Ivan Yuen: The effect of predictability on the duration of phrase-final syllables and pause
2023-03-31 16:15 - 17:30 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Organized by the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication! (ACLC)

Speaker: Ivan Yuen
Location: P.C. Hoofthuis
Room: 5.60
Title: The effect of predictability on the duration of phrase-final syllables and pause
Abstract: The abstract can be found here.

ACLC Seminar | Astrid De Wit: The present perfective paradox across languages
2023-03-24 16:15 - 17:30 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Organized by the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication! (ACLC)

Speaker: Astrid De Wit
Location: P.C. Hoofthuis
Room: 3.08
Title: The present perfective paradox across languages
Abstract: This talk starts from the observation that, in many genetically and geographically unrelated languages, there is a remarkable restriction on the use of the present tense to refer to dynamic or perfective situations that are happening at the time of speaking – a phenomenon called the ‘present perfective paradox’ (Malchukov 2009; De Wit 2017). With stative and imperfective situations, on the other hand, there are no such alignment problems. In English, for instance, it is ungrammatical to employ the simple present to refer to present-time events (e.g., *Be quiet, I write), whereas present-time states do allow the use of the simple present (e.g., I feel sick). Similar interactions between the present tense and aspect have been attested in language-specific studies of, among others, various Slavic languages, creole languages, Bantu languages, Niger-Congo languages and Japanese. In these languages, the so-called present tense (when combined with perfective/dynamic verbs) is primarily used to report future, past or habitual rather than present-time events.In this presentation, I will analyze the manifestation of this present perfective paradox in English, French, the English-based Surinamese creole language Sranan, and a variety of Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Czech, and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian), thereby adopting an epistemic approach to temporal and aspectual categories (e.g. Langacker 1991). The analysis starts from the assumption that there is a cognitive constraint on the alignment of bounded situations in their entirety with the time of speaking, and that this constraint is linguistically reflected in the fact that is difficult to use present perfective constructions with dynamic verbs to report present-time events. On the basis of a detailed study of corpus data and native-speaker elicitations, I argue that languages have developed a variety of strategies to tackle this alignment problem. One solution is to insert a construction that, like the progressive, has the capacity to imperfectivize originally perfective situations. Another solution is to assign a non-present interpretation to present perfective constructions: a past interpretation (‘retrospective strategy’), a future interpretation (‘prospective strategy’), or a habitual/generic interpretation (‘structural strategy’). I will propose a variety of diachronic, contact-related, and cognitive explanations to account for which specific strategy is chosen and for the cross-linguistic variation in this respect.

UvA Data Science Centre | The Societal Impact of AI & Data Science
2023-03-24 10:00 - 12:30 | Het Trippenhuis, Kloveniersburgwal 29, Amsterdam, Nederland
Organized by the UvA Data Science Centre! For more information on the event, click here.
Click here to register! Registration is free and everyone (UvA and non-UvA) is welcome to join!
How does data science inform environmental policy? Why is it important that we value research outputs in a future-proof way? And how can we foster true-to-life and ethical data science? Some important discussions on the way we conduct research are taking place in the world of data science today. Exciting topics that will be addressed by 3 world-leading data scientists on Friday 24 March 2023!

Date: Friday 24 March 2023
Time: 10:00 – 12:30 (doors open at 09:30)
Format: In-person only
Location: Het Trippenhuis, Kloveniersburgwal 29, Amsterdam

ACLC Seminar | Sonja Riesberg: Word order and discourse prominence in western Austronesian symmetrical voice languages
2023-03-17 16:15 - 17:30 | P.C. Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam, Nederland
Organized by the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication! (ACLC)

Speaker: Sonja Riesberg
Location: P.C. Hoofthuis
Room: 5.60
Title: Word order and discourse prominence in western Austronesian symmetrical voice languages
Abstract: the abstract can be found here.

CognitieCafé met Jelle Zuidema 🧠
2023-03-14 19:45 - 21:00 | Café ‘t Gasthuys, Grimburgwal 7, Amsterdam, 1012 GA, Nederland
De definitieve titel en abstract worden nog bekendgemaakt.
Inloop: 19:45-20:00
Locatie: Café ’t Gasthuys (Grimburgwal 7)
Tijdens het Cognitie Café verzamelen wij in een gezellige, informele setting, om te luisteren naar een spreker in het CLC-gerelateerde veld. Voor deze avond: Jelle Zuidema! 🧠
