Joe Pater
For more than 25 years, UMass Amherst Professor of Linguistics Joe Pater has dedicated himself to the field of phonology—the study of the sound patterns of languages. Phonology aims to explain why, for example, the word “center” has two syllables in English but only one in French. (The answer, according to Pater, is that the “R” sound can be a vowel in English but not in French.)
This simple explanation belies the immense complexity of phonology, a branch of linguistics. Linguistics is a deeply interdisciplinary field, and Pater’s research—which uses experimental and computational approaches to understand how people learn phonological systems—lies at the intersection of linguistics, psychology, and computer science.
“By understanding how languages work, we’re gaining new insights into how the human mind works, as well as the intricacies of human society,” says Pater. “Studying the details of social groups’ phonological systems allows us to understand the unique history of communities.”
At a practical level, phonology informs fields ranging from speech-language pathology to second-language learning. Pater, who was raised primarily in Kingston, Ontario, explored several related fields before landing on an academic career in linguistics. He studied philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto and later earned a certificate and a master’s degree in English as a second language from Concordia University (Montreal). While teaching English as a second language, he learned about the field of linguistics and was “quickly hooked,” he says. “It’s a really interesting discipline in that it marries formal mathematical work with very humanistic work on languages.”
By understanding how languages work, we’re gaining new insights into how the human mind works, as well as the intricacies of human society.
Pater went on to earn a PhD in linguistics from McGill University (Montreal) and completed a post-doc in linguistics and psychology at the University of British Columbia. He held a position in linguistics at the University of Alberta before joining the faculty in UMass Amherst’s Department of Linguistics—consistently ranked among the best in the world—in 2000.
Early in his tenure at UMass, Pater delved into a branch of study that was new to him, computational linguistics, which applies techniques from computer science to linguistic analysis.
“Linguists often study languages in terms of constraints. For example, the constraint that in French, the “R” sound cannot be a vowel. By putting numerical weights on those constraints, we can analyze the way they interact to determine the form of a language. Computational methods are extremely useful in doing this sort of analysis, and also in modeling how humans learn phonology.”
Working in computational linguistics has inspired Pater to connect with students and colleagues with expertise in computational methods, particularly in UMass’s Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), for productive collaborations. Pater’s research has been continually funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) since 2008.
In a current collaboration, Pater and research fellow Virginia Partridge at CICS’s Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence are developing a program to automatically transcribe speech into the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which provides a unique symbol for each distinctive sound in a language.
“Currently, transcribing speech into the IPA requires special training and is very slow, time-consuming work,” Pater says. “Creating an automated system will be immensely helpful in transcribing the vast amounts of data we now have accessible for many varieties of English, as well as other languages that haven’t been sufficiently studied. Automatic IPA transcription would not only be useful for linguistics, but also for other disciplines like speech pathology or teaching second languages.”
This automated transcription program will help facilitate another one of Pater’s current research projects: analyzing a corpus of oral histories recorded in the 1970s and 1980s of former residents of the four Massachusetts towns that were flooded when the Quabbin Reservoir was created in the 1930s, as well as other residents from around western Massachusetts.
“They’re really interesting linguistically,” says Pater, noting that two migration patterns brought people to this region, each with a distinctive accent. “I think there’s a lot of potential in this work to better understand the history of communities in this area by studying the ways people speak, both today and in the past.”
As computer science becomes ever more ingrained in the study of linguistics, UMass Amherst recently introduced a new Bachelor of Arts in Computational Linguistics degree program. Pater was one of the faculty members integral to establishing the program, which provides rigorous training in linguistics, mathematics, and computer science, drawing on teaching and advising resources from both the Department of Linguistics and CICS.
“Students who go through this degree program are equipped to work in the burgeoning language technology industry, in fields such as speech recognition, natural language processing, and generative AI,” says Pater. “This area has really taken off over the last 10 years. Most people wouldn’t have predicted how far along these fields would be today.”
Pater has also worked on enhancing scholarly communication in computational linguistics and phonology. In 2013, he helped to found the Annual Meeting on Phonology, and in 2017, he played a role in founding the Society for Computation in Linguistics. He is currently managing editor for the open-access proceedings for both conferences, which are published by UMass Amherst Libraries.
Reflecting on his career to date, Pater is most proud of his work mentoring students and supporting their diverse career and life trajectories. Whether they’ve chosen to pursue a traditional path as a linguistics professor or have sought work in language technology or other industries, these students were able to conduct serious academic research that helped them meet their goals at UMass, thanks to Pater’s support.
And a quarter century into his work as a professional linguist, Pater says, “I still get to work in new areas where I’m not totally comfortable and learn new things. I love that feeling of still being a student.”