Roger Billerey-Mosier UCLA Linguistics Department 3125 Campbell Hall Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543

Interests
My primary interests are phonetics, phonology, and the lexicon. In particular, I am interested in modeling the acquisition of phonology, morphology and the lexicon computationally, with the introduction of semantic information. I am particularly interested in exploring the effects of lexical and phonotactic statistics on learning, retrieval, lexical decision, and various other tasks, and in modeling gradiency in language acquisition.

Current work

• Knowledge-free stochastic learning of word-meaning
• Stochastic and exemplar-based phonotactic learning
• Phonetic description of Kiowa, an endangered Kiowa-Tanoan language spoken in Oklahoma
• Metrics for string similarity and machine discovery of paradigms

Teaching

• CSULB Linguistics 329, Introduction to Language Acquisition.
• Linguistics 1, Summer Session C, 2002.

Software

•  Recursive Constraint Demotion online, a web-based implementation of Prince, Smolensky and Tesar's Recursive Constraint Demotion algorithm, which lets you enter forms and constraint violations and ranks your constraints.
•  SyllableParser, a program that parses words into syllables.
•  PhonotacticParser, a multi-platform program that gathers comprehensive data on the phonotactics of a language. Useful for problem sets to make sure you're not forgetting anything, for analyzing syllable structure, and for analyzing the distribution of allophones in a language, among other things.
• GoogleMe!, a small program that lets you search Google from your desktop (Windows only). If the small version doesn't work on your machine, you need the larger version (<230KB). Version française : petit fichier, fichier plus gros (si le petit fichier ne marche pas sur votre PC).
• Plot your formants with JPlotFormants v1.4, a multi-platform program which should run on Windows, Unix/Linux, Solaris and Mac (with Java Virtual Machine).
• Click here to download Perl scripts that extract information from CHILDES database corpora, and let you clean up and merge the extracted files. The main script reads one or a bunch of CHILDES database files, and extracts all the lines by any or all of the participants into separate files, with a supervised mode and a batch mode (automatic).

Papers/conference presentations

In preparation:

• The phonetics of Kiowa stops. This paper is a preliminary study of one speaker, and will be expanded. (734KB)

To appear:

• Munro, Pamela and Roger Billerey-Mosier. "Chickasaw". To appear in a French linguistics encyclopedia. Reference TBA.

• Exemplar-based phonotactic learning. Paper given at SWOT 8, April 25, 2003.

• Using scripting languages. Tutorial on how scripting languages like Perl and PHP can be useful for linguists (UCLA phonetics seminar presentation given on May 13, 2002).

• Segment realization in relation to a carrier word's uniqueness point
  Slides of poster presented at ASA Conference (Newport Beach, CA, December 3-8, 2000).
• Lexical effects on the phonetic realization of English segments   (abstract)
  UCLA MA Thesis (November 2000), also available in UCLA's Working Papers in Phonetics vol. 100.
• Optimality and sound change: Old French codas
  Handout of a paper given at the 75th meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Chicago, IL (January 2000). A (better?) OT analysis of some coda cluster simplification data in the historical phonology of French, with an application of Hayes and Boersma's gradual learning algorithm.
• Après la fermeture du refuge municipal
  French translation and introduction of Ernst Gleicher's novel When Later Comes.
  Denoël (Format Utile); ISBN: 2207250601

• Translating humor: P. G. Wodehouse and French
  This paper explores English to French translation issues in P.G. Wodehouse's The Mating Season. Romance Linguistics and Literature Review, Fall 1997.

Unpublished things with decent ideas

French MA Thesis:

• An investigation of translation issues in P.G. Wodehouse's The Mating Season. Available upon request (email me).

• Optimality Theory: Can Onset be dispensed with? Evidence from Ilokano and Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber, and new insights on Berber syllabification
  This paper shows that Onset is necessary and plugs a little gap in Dell and Elmedlaoui's great papers on ITB.
• Phonological filters for syntax?
  This paper tentatively argues that phenomena like agreement failure in tags in English might be phonological.
  Caveat: I'm not a syntactician, so this paper should be taken with a grain of salt or three.

CV
Current CV (updated April 30, 2003)

Other activities

• I'm an American Translators' Association certified French-English translator (www.FrenchEnglishTranslator.com)
• ... and a web programmer (PHP, databases, Perl/CGI) (email me)
• ... and a linguistics lecturer at California State University, Long Beach

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