Francis Tyers – Drawn by Russia’s Linguistic Diversity
One of HSE’s newest faculty members is Francis Tyers, who will join the School of Linguistics on August 28 as an Assistant Professor. A native of Normanton on Soar, a small village in the south of Nottinghamshire in England, he joins HSE following a postdoctoral fellowship at UiT Norgga árktalaš universitehta in Tromsø in the north of Norway, where he worked on language technology for Russian and the Sámi languages. Prior to that, he completed PhD studies in the Department of Languages and Information Systems at the Universitat d'Alacant in Spain.
Like many talented new faculty members, Tyers had a number of open doors before joining HSE, but he felt drawn to the university. For him, it was ultimately HSE’s students that proved the deciding factor.
‘I had a few other options after finishing my postdoc, but the HSE offer really stood out’, he says. ‘I was fortunate enough to get a mobility grant to spend six months in Moscow at HSE last year and I really loved the university. The most amazing thing for me is the students. I have rarely met a more consistently motivated, bright, enthusiastic group of students in any university I've been to. It is a real pleasure working with them. The decision was easy’.
A rich linguistic milieu
Apart from the top quality of HSE’s students, the university also proved to be an attractive base for Tyers to pursue his research interests in language technology for marginalized and regional languages, as well as machine translation, which he taught in Cheboksary during a previous visit in 2012.
‘One of the things I like about Moscow and Russia in general is that it is very multilingual. Many people focus all their attention on English, and by those standards maybe it isn't quite like Scandinavia, but it makes up for it with diversity. Once I was in Chuvashia and I remember in one morning I had one conversation in Spanish, one in French, one in Russian and one in English. That was very much a pleasant surprise!’
‘Russia is blessed with a very linguistically-diverse territory and I am looking forward to continuing my work on all of its languages’, he says, adding that he has a personal interest in improving his own Russian-language skills. ‘My Russian, sad to say, is not wonderful, I'd probably estimate a B1 on the European scale, but it's good enough that I don't have to do day-to-day things in English. I'm looking forward to taking the classes that are on offer at HSE’.
Saving dying languages
Apart from an academic interest in linguistic diversity and marginalized languages, Tyers is also hoping that his work will bring practical benefits to people who speak minority languages.
‘Languages are dying out quickly, pretty much everyone agrees that if a language cannot be used online, and digitally in general, it significantly hastens its demise. So, I want to make it possible for anyone to use their native language online as equally as possible’, he says. ‘When Amazon starts shipping a version of Alexa that understands Chuvash and Chukchi, and when Yandex voice search works for Bashkir and Buryat, I think I'll feel that things are moving in the right direction’.
Anna Chernyakhovskaya, specially for HSE News service
See also:
Linguists from Around the World Discuss Current Academic Issues at First Eurasian Congress
HSE University partnered with the First Eurasian Congress of Linguists dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). The congress served as a platform for discussing relevant issues in linguistics related to all language groups of Eurasia and other regions worldwide. Approximately 200 researchers from 46 foreign countries and 300 Russian linguists from 50 regions of Russia participated in the event.
'Back in School, I Decided That I Would No Longer Suppress My Feelings'
Polina Makarova initially planned to pursue a career in programming but soon shifted her focus to theoretical linguistics. In this interview with the HSE Young Scientists project, she discusses her research on grammatical agreement in the names of professions, the importance of emotional intelligence, and the benefits of keeping an eublepharid, or leopard gecko, as a pet.
'Language Surrounds Us at All Times'
The most likely place to find Anton Buzanov is at the HSE building on Staraya Basmannaya Ulitsa, where the researcher spends nearly all his time. In his interview with the HSE Young Scientists project, he recounts his experience of leading a field expedition to Sami communities, shares his affection for teenage television shows, and observes that engaging solely in activities that bring joy can prevent burnout.
HSE University-Developed Linguatest System Launched in Nizhny Novgorod
Linguatest, Russia’s first foreign-language certification system, has been launched in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The system was developed by specialists from HSE University in cooperation with the National Accreditation Agency and the Prosveshchenie group of companies, who are providing certification and publishing support for the project. Nizhny Novgorod is the first city after Moscow to offer testing under the system.
'The Applied Linguistics Programme Allowed Me to Try Something I Was Interested in While Continuing What I Am Passionate About'
Austin Garrett-Sites, from the US, is a master's student of the Applied Linguistics and Text Analytics programme in Nizhny Novgorod. Students from around the world to come to Russia to get a European education in English with viable employment prospects. Austin spoke about his impressions after the first year of study and his favourite places in Nizhny Novgorod.
What’s It Like to Work as a Computer Linguist
The IT industry is rapidly developing and incorporating new professions. Zoya Mazunina and Arina Mosyagina, linguists with Seldon and graduates of the HSE University Fundamental and Applied Linguistics programme, met with university applicants to talk about the computer linguist profession, issues of automatic language processing, and how linguists use the knowledge they gain at HSE University.
Towards Finding Practical Solutions to Socially Significant Healthcare Problems
The Centre for Language and Brain in Nizhny Novgorod started operations in September 2020. Today, it is comprised of a team of linguists - teachers and students - who are researching the relations between speech and parts of the brain. The Director of the Centre, Natalya E. Gronskaya, spoke to the HSE Look about how the neuro-linguistic laboratory appeared in Nizhny Novgorod, as well as current tasks and prospects the Centre can offer the students and the region.
Predicting Grammatical Properties of Words Helps Us Read Faster
Psycholinguists from the HSE Centre for Language and Brain found that when reading, people are not only able to predict specific words, but also words’ grammatical properties, which helps them to read faster. Researchers have also discovered that predictability of words and grammatical features can be successfully modelled with the use of neural networks. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Weaving Languages Together: Why Megacities Need to Preserve Multilingualism
Moscow, like any modern big city, attracts migrants from different regions and countries. Some of them speak very little or no Russian. Their adaptation and successful integration depend in part on how fast they can learn Russian and in part on whether the city makes an effort to accommodate other languages. According to linguist Mira Bergelson, this latter factor is particularly important if the city is to benefit from immigration.
‘Reading’ with Aphasia Is Easier than ‘Running’
Neurolinguists from HSE University have confirmed experimentally that for people with aphasia, it is easier to retrieve verbs describing situations with several participants (such as ‘someone is doing something’), although such verbs give rise to more grammar difficulties. The results of the study have been published in Aphasiology.