Research Interests or Specialties

  • Mathematical and computational models of language

Socio-cultural and linguistic contact and theory of linguistic variation and change:

  •   Geolinguistic variation, linguistic distance and socio-cultural contact

Research projects

Romanian Online Dialect Atlas
Principal Investigator: Sheila Embleton, York University
Co-Investigators: Dorin Uritescu, York University
Collaborator: Eric Wheeler, York University
Duration of project : on-going
Description: This is an audio-visual on line document whose aim is fourfold: a) to give researchers from around the world access to the data of the New Romanian Linguistic Atlas: Crisana , vol. I-II, and the possibility of interactively analyzing it, b) to provide audio clips illustrating phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical phenomena of the area(s), c) to provide a dialectometrical analysis of the geolinguistic variation based on multidimensional scaling, and 4) to establish and analyze the relation between dialectometrical results (linguistic distance) and geographical and socio-cultural induced variation. More detailed information on the above-summarized research project can be found on the following web page: http://ericwheeler.ca Publications: Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. Forthcoming. “The Stability of Multidimensional Scaling with Large Data Sets”. To appear in Mélanges Juhani Härmä, Helsinki (série des Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki). Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. Forthcoming. “Identifying Dialect Regions: Specific features vs. overall measures using the Romanian Online Dialect Atlas and Multidimensional Scaling”. To appear in Proceedings of the XIIIth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, Leeds, UK, 2008. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. Forthcoming. “Data Management and Linguistic Analysis: MDS applied to RODA”. To appear in Proceedings of the International Conference of the International Quantitative Linguistics Association (IQLA), Trier, Germany, 2007. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2008. Digitalized Dialect Studies: North-Western Romanian (with Sheila M. Embleton and Eric S. Wheeler), Bucharest: Romanian Academy Press (Romanian Academy Lecture Series). Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2008. “Defining User Access to the Romanian Online Dialect Atlas”. In Dialectologia et Geolinguistica, vol. 16, pp. 27-33 (and online, under Dialectologia et Geolinguistica) Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2007. “Romanian online dialect atlas: Data capture and presentation”. In P. Grzybek and R. Köhler (eds.), Exact Methods in the Study of Langauge and Text, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter, pp. 87-96. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2006-2007. “Data Capture and Presentation in the Romanian Online Dialect Atlas”. In Papers from Methods XII: 12th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology. Linguistica Atlantica 27-28, pp. 35-39. Embleton, Sheila, Dorin Uritescu, and Eric Wheeler. 2004. “Romanian Dialect Atlas. An exploration into the Management of High Volumes of Complex Knowledge in the Social Sciences and Humanities”. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 11/3, p. 183-192.