James W. MINETT
B.Sc.
(Leeds); M.Sc. (Claremont); Ph.D. (CityUHK); MIEEE
Postdoctoral Fellow
Room: 228 Ho Sin Hang Engineering Building Tel: (+852) 3163-4346 Fax: (+852) 2603-5558 Email: jminett@ee.cuhk.edu.hk
James Minett completed the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mathematics at the University of Leeds, UK in 1991 and the Claremont Graduate School, USA the following year, respectively. After spending a couple of years teaching English to high school students in Hong Kong, in 1994 he moved to the Electronic Engineering Department of the City University of Hong Kong to conduct research on applications of fuzzy logic to signal detection and communication theory, completing the Ph.D. degree in 2000. During this time, he developed an interest in computational modeling of language, which led to him spending two years working as a research fellow at the Language Engineering Laboratory under the direction of Prof. William S-Y. Wang, also then at City University. In September 2004, the Language Engineering Laboratory moved to the Department of Electronic Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong where James continues to pursue research on evolutionary linguistics.
James is currently working on various aspects of both
evolutionary and historical linguistics. In evolutionary linguistics,
he has been investigating linguistic diffusion processes, his current
focus being on modeling the dynamics of language competition and the
viability of strategies for language maintenance, taking particular
account of the effects of both bilingualism and social structure. He
is also collaborating with other researchers in the group to develop
computational models for the phylogenetic emergence of language, with
the aim of describing how the lexicon and syntax might plausibly have
co-evolved from a holistic signaling system. In historical
linguistics, his main aim has been to develop algorithms that can be
used to detect language contact and borrowing, and has proposed both
cladistic and lexicostatistical methods for this purpose.
Evolutionary Linguistics; Dynamics of Language
Competition; Computational Methods in Historical Linguistics;
Multi-agent Systems; Network Theory
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Last updated: August 30, 2006. |