Kathleen Currie Hall
University of British Columbia
Kathleen Currie Hall's research focuses on the formational patterns of languages (phonology) using techniques from a wide variety of areas, including phonetics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and semantics. She is particularly interested in how phonological categories and processes can be objectively quantified using tools from probability, statistics, and information theory. Recently, her work has focused on the phonology of sign languages in particular, understanding how phonological patterns apply and arise in the visual modality. She has developed two open-source software tools to aid in phonological research: Phonological CorpusTools (PCT) and Sign Language Phonetic Annotator / Analyzer (SLP-AA). Dr. Hall is also especially interested in promoting good pedagogy in the linguistic classroom, helping students feel included and reach their potential as scholars.