We're really excited to have gotten to interview Lisa Pearl recently! Dr. Pearl is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the director of their Computation of Language Laboratory. She’s published numerous articles on how to use statistical models to check different hypotheses about what kids do to learn language, as well as about natural language processing and textual analysis. We’ve been talking about her work since our very first episode! We got to ask her about a lot of great topics, including: - what statistical models can tell us about how kids acquire language - what's under our control in our writing, and what we unconsciously show as our write-print - why computers are so bad at detecting tone and picking out the right meanings of words - how statistical models and Universal Grammar interact - a question from one of our viewers about how to approach modeling for second language acquisition And more! Hope you all enjoy it, and thanks to Dr. Lisa Travis and the Department of Linguistics at McGill University for letting us film there. Our previous interviews: Daniel Dennett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30eOI6pL-lU Steven Pinker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piJBmPh5jFU Some related videos: How do computers understand our speech?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI9IJteS-5Yda What principles and parameters lie at the core of our language?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbK0ls7YVN4 Why are babies so good at language learning?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLNFGWJOXjA Find us on all the social media worlds: Tumblr: http://thelingspace.tumblr.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheLingSpace Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thelingspace/ And at our website, http://www.thelingspace.com/ ! You can also find our store at the website, http://thelingspace.storenvy.com/ We also have forums to discuss this interview, and linguistics more generally. Looking forward to next week!