New Teacher Comes to Linguistics Dept.
Article by Nate Blaylock

In an attempt to create a stronger Computational Linguistics program at BYU, the Linguistics department has hired Deryle Lonsdale, a recent graduate from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Lonsdale brings with him a rich background in Computer Science and Linguistics, as well as a vision for Computational Linguistics at BYU.

He was born in British Columbia, Canada, and then moved to Alberta, where he grew up. Living in Canada, he learned French as well as English, his first language. He attended the University of Alberta for one year, enrolling in honors Computer Science. He was then called to the France Paris mission, during which he decided that he had an interest in Linguistics as well as Computer Science. Upon returning home, he enrolled in Linguistics classes in addition to Computer Science, despite the protest of his friends that Computational Linguistics would never become a viable field. While at the University of Alberta, he took Linguistics and Math classes at the French campus, and Computer Science classes at the English campus, graduating with a Bachelor degree in Computers with Linguistics.

After graduation, Dr. Lonsdale started working for Alps (later Alpnet) as a (senior) computational linguist. His first year was spent in Ottowa, advising the Canadian government on Machine Translation. He was then transferred to Provo and worked eight years in research and development. During his nine years at Alps, great strides were being made in the fields of Linguistics and Computer Science, so he and his wife decided to go to graduate school. He chose Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh because, out of the top three Computational Linguistics schools in the U.S., 'it was the cheapest.'

At CMU, he received his Masters and Doctorate degrees. While studying, he participated in several research projects, including: an integrated grammar checking, machine translation system for Caterpillar; semantics of superlatives in formal logic; and a cognitive natural language system for the Defense Department. His doctoral dissertation involved working with a cognitive simultaneous translation system from English to French. Dr. Lonsdale has now been hired by BYU, starting this semester, working in the Linguistics Department. His goals here at BYU include making BYU into a first-rate Natural Language Processing research school. He feels that in Utah Valley, there is a tremendous wealth of experience in both computers and Linguistics. Also BYU has well known Computer Science and Linguistics programs. He would like to see more collaboration between the two departments to foster computational linguistic research as well as allow more opportunities for students who wish to study Computational Linguistics.

Dr. Lonsdale's experience and vision make him an excellent addition to the Linguistics Department faculty.

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