menu

Effi Georgala


PhD, Cornell University, 2012

effi(dot)georgala(at)nuance(dot)com




Research

I am a Senior Linguistic Engineer in the Dragon Research department of Nuance Communications. At Nuance, my work is primarily centered around language modeling for speech recognition. The languages I currently work on are Greek, German, Danish, and Norwegian.

I have a PhD in linguistics and cognitive science with a concentration in theoretical syntax from Cornell University. Before joining Nuance, I was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Geneva. My previous research focuses on the syntactic theory of applicative constructions, computational grammar development, statistical parsing, and corpus linguistics.



Dissertation

Georgala, Effi (2011) Applicatives in their Structural and Thematic Function: A Minimalist Account of Multitransitivity. Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University. Please email me for a copy.



Papers

Cooper, Adam and Effi Georgala. 2012. "Dative Loss and its Replacement in the History of Greek." In: Historical Linguistics 2009. Selected Papers from the 19th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Nijmegen, August 10-14, 2009. A. van Kemenade and N. de Haas (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Georgala, Effi (submitted) "Short Object Shift and Ditransitive Structure in Greek." In: Current Issues in Mediterranean Syntax. S. Özsoy and A. Gürel (eds). (pdf)

Georgala, Effi (2011) "Scrambling Verb-final Languages and the Underlying Order of Objects in Ditransitive Constructions." Working Papers in Linguistics 17.1: Proceedings of PLC 34. L. Friedman (ed), 105-114. http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol17/iss1/13 (pdf)

Georgala, Effi (2011) "Why German is not an Exception to the Universal Base Order of Double Object Constructions." In: Proceedings of the 28th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 28). M. Byram Washburn, K. McKinney-Bock, E. Varis, A. Sawyer, and B. Tomaszewicz (eds), 96-105. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. (pdf)

Georgala, Effi and John Whitman (2009) "Ditransitives and Applicative Structure in Greek." In: Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 43:1. N. Adams, A. Cooper, F. Parrill, and T. Wier (eds), 77-91. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society. (pdf)

Georgala, Effi, Waltraud Paul and John Whitman (2008) "Expletive and Thematic Applicatives." In: Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 26). C. B. Chang and H. J. Haynie (eds), 181-189. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. (pdf)

Bowers, John and Effi Georgala (2007) "The Syntax of Goals and Beneficiaries in Modern Greek." In: Studies in the Morpho-syntax of Greek. Artemis Alexiadou (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. (pdf)

Georgala, Effi (2003) "A Statistical Grammar Model for Modern Greek: The Context-Free Grammar." In: Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Thessaloniki, Greece.

Georgala, Effi (2000) "The Translational Correspondence between the Modern Greek Formations Ending in -tos and -menos and their Equivalent Forms in German." In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Greek Linguistics (ICGL). Nicosia, Cyprus.



Presentations

"Operational Ordering Asymmetries in Ditransitive Constructions," invited talk presented at the Linguistics Department Research Seminar, University of Geneva, May 22, 2012.

"Datives at Large: An Economy Approach," Swiss Workshop in Generative Grammar 2011 (SWIGG 11), University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, April 15-16, 2011.

"Evidence for an Articulated Applicative Structure in German," 41st Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 41), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, October 22-24, 2010.

"Scrambling Verb-final Languages and the Underlying Order of Objects in Ditransitive Constructions," 34th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium (PLC 34), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, March 19-21, 2010.

"Why German is not an Exception to the Universal <IO, DO> Base Order of Double Object Constructions," 28th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 28), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, February 19-21, 2010.

"The Base Word Order of German Double Object Constructions Revisited," 84th Annual Meeting of the LSA, Baltimore, MD, January 7-10, 2010.

"Raising/Thematic Applicative Hypothesis and the Hierarchical Order of Objects," invited talk presented at the Linguistics Department Research Seminar, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, November 24, 2009.

With Adam Cooper, "On the Loss of Dative in Greek," XIXth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, August 10-14, 2009.

"Short Object Shift and Ditransitive Structure in Greek," Mediterranean Syntax Meeting II, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey, October 16-18, 2008.

With Adam Cooper, "On the loss of Dative in Greek," poster presented at the 10th Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS) Conference, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, August 7-9, 2008.

With John Whitman, "Ditransitives and Applicative Structure in Greek," 43rd Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 43), University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, May 3-5, 2007.

With Waltraud Paul and John Whitman, "Expletive and Thematic Applicatives," 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 26), University of California, Berkeley, CA, April 27-29, 2007.

With John Whitman. "Expletive and Thematic Applicatives," Graduate Student Workshop Mellon "Humanities Corridor" in Central New York, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, April 21, 2007.

"Two Distinct Sources for the Dative Alternation," 81st Annual Meeting of the LSA, Anaheim, CA, January 4-7, 2007. 4-7.

With John Bowers, "The Syntax of Goals and Beneficiaries in Modern Greek," Workshop on the Morpho-Syntax of Modern Greek, LSA Summer Institute, MIT and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, July 22-23, 2005.

"Creation of Lexical Semantic Resources," Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE), Grenoble, France, July 9, 2004.

"A Statistical Grammar Model for Modern Greek," invited talk presented at the XRCE Seminar Series, Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE). Grenoble, France, June 9, 2004.

"Using Morphosyntactic Diagnostics to Automatically Measure the Degree of Transitivity," invited talk presented at the NLP Reading Group, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, March 21, 2003.

"Using Morphosyntactic Diagnostics to Automatically Measure the Degree of Transitivity," Colloquium of the Graduiertenkolleg "Linguistic Representations and their Interpretation," University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany, February 13, 2003.



Teaching

TA for Introduction to Linguistics, Fall 05 (Instructor: Amanda Miller)

TA for Introduction to Linguistics, Spring 06 (Instructor: Molly Diesing)

TA for Introduction to Syntax, Fall 06 (Instructor: Julie Legate)

TA for Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics, Spring 07 (Instructor: Dorit Abusch)

Grader for Semantics I, Spring 07 (Instructor: Dorit Abusch)

TA for Exploring German Contexts, Fall 07 (Instructor: Gunhild Lischke)

TA for Theory and Practice of Linguistics, Spring 08 (Instructors: John Whitman and Teresa Galloway)

TA for Introduction to Cognitive Science, Fall 08 (Instructor: Breton Bienvenue)



Service

Paper and Abstract Reviewer for Syntax, Linguistik Aktuell (John Benjamins), Proceedings of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 18, and the LSA Annual Meeting

Member, NELS 39 Organizing Committee

Paper Reviewer for COLING/ACL 2006

Co-editor (with Jonathan Howell), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) XV (2005)

Student Coordinator of the Cornell Linguistics Circle (CLC) Speaker Series (2004-2006)






Last updated October 21, 2012.