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Alvin Cheng-Hsien Chen

Associate Professor

National Taiwan Normal University

Biography

I am a corpus linguist, teaching at the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan. I am a full-time faculty member in the Linguistics track.

I got into linguistics long time ago, when I was in my Pronunciation Class as a freshman in college. It was novel to me at that time that sounds could be organized in such a systematic way and how these categories had been effectively applied to the learning of human speech sounds. So I continued with my lingusitic studies ever since ( tribute to my mentor, Cherry Li).

Now I don't really work on the so-called traditional linguistics. Rather, most of my research revolves around the methodology of quantitative corpus linguistics. I am quite interested in the inter-relationship between language, interaction and cognition. A long-time question that I've been working on is how repeated or recurrent language use motivates the emergence of systematic linguistic structures, and how this usage-based view of language is connected to the computational modeling of language processing, language acquisition and learning, and the mental representation of the speakers.

I have published corpus-based works in several academic journals, such as Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, Journal of Phonetics, Language Learning, System, Language and Speech and continue to be active in research on a computational approach to language processing. Now I am also on the editorial board of Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, which has been a very important journal for me throughout my career. Relatedly, I have witnessed the paradigmatic shift, i.e., the quantitative and computational turn, in corpus linguistics in the past few decades, and also spent an enormous amount of time adjusting myself to this computational mainstream. I won't say it's easy but it is fun.

And, oh yes, I am a fan of and , the two artificial languages that revolutionize the way we process human languages .

Finally, a few things I do if I have extra time: , , , .

Interests

  • Quantitative Corpus Linguistics
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Speech Prosody
  • Language and Cognition
  • Language Learning

Education

  • PhD in Computational Linguistics, 2006-2012

    National Taiwan University & Academia Sinica (TGIP-CLCLP)

  • MA in Linguistics, 2003-2006

    National Taiwan University

  • BA in English, 1999-2003

    National Taiwan Normal University

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Associate Professor

National Taiwan Normal University

Aug 2021 – Present Taipei, Taiwan
Courses offered: Corpus Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Introduction to Programming Languages for Linguistic Analysis, Topics on Quantitative Corpus Linguistics
 
 
 
 
 

Assistant Professor

National Taiwan Normal University

Aug 2016 – Jul 2021 Taipei, Taiwan
 
 
 
 
 

Assistant Professor

National Changhua University of Education

Feb 2013 – Jul 2016 Changhua City, Taiwan

Skills

R

80%

Statistics

80%

Java

20%

Python

40%

HTML

40%

CSS

40%

Recent News

To Prospective Graduates

A Message to Prospective Graduates I am happy to announce an opportunity for motivated and enthusiastic graduates to become a valuable part of our COMPUS team through project-based Assistantship. Our research group is actively seeking dedicated graduates who have a keen interest in corpus linguistics or computational linguistics and eager to gain hands-on experience, work closely with faculty, and contribute to exciting research projects. Specifically, we are recruiting new members of the group in the form of part-time project-based assistant roles.

Recent Talks & Presentations

Invited Talks/Presentations Chen, Alvin Cheng-Hsien. 2024. “語料庫語言學:語言的數據之旅“, 第十七屆語言學沙龍(The 17th Linguistics Salon), held by LST Student Committee, NTNU, Taipei, November 20. Chen, Alvin Cheng-Hsien. 2023. “語料庫語言學:語言的數據之旅“, 師大沃格語言學研究社社課, NTNU, Taipei, November 20. Chen, Alvin Cheng-Hsien. 2023. “Multiword Units in Language Processing (語言處理中的多字詞組)”, National Academy for Educational Research, Taipei, October 25. Chen, Alvin Cheng-Hsien. 2023. “語料庫研究方法:資料、假設、量化與詮釋”, 語言學門研究增能論壇系列:研究議題之構思與研究方法之佈局. NSTC, Taipei, June 27. Chen, Alvin Cheng-Hsien.

Courses

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ENC2055

Introduction to Programming Languages for Linguistic Analysis

ENU0341

Digital Scholarship in Humanities: Text Analytics with R (Under Preparation)

ENC2045

Computational Linguistics

ENC2036

Corpus Linguistics

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