Paul S. Cohen
Encyclopedia
Paul Sheldon Cohen is an American linguist (M.A. Columbia University
, 1970), who has been professionally active in language-related areas since 1963, when he took a position as an editor on the Random House Dictionary of the English Language
. From 1965 to 1967 he worked with William Labov
and coauthored several reports on African American Vernacular English
.
He has spent the majority of his career (most of the period from 1968 to 2002) working for IBM
in such areas as automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech, and natural language processing
as a Research Staff Member, and also in development (Senior Computational Linguist) and strategy (Program Manager, Speech Technology). During that period, in addition to a stint as Senior Product Developer / Linguist (2000 to 2001) at Net2Phone, Inc., he also held various editorial and consulting positions (inside and outside IBM), and was a member of the committee that formulated the original Electric Company television series.
Cohen holds seven patents in various areas of speech processing. Since 2002, he has been a consultant and independent researcher, and has published several articles in the fields of Indo-European studies
and English etymology
and philology
.
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, 1970), who has been professionally active in language-related areas since 1963, when he took a position as an editor on the Random House Dictionary of the English Language
Random House Dictionary of the English Language
Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary is a large American dictionary, first published in 1966 as The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged....
. From 1965 to 1967 he worked with William Labov
William Labov
William Labov born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist, widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics...
and coauthored several reports on African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
.
He has spent the majority of his career (most of the period from 1968 to 2002) working for IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
in such areas as automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech, and natural language processing
Natural language processing
Natural language processing is a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human languages; it began as a branch of artificial intelligence....
as a Research Staff Member, and also in development (Senior Computational Linguist) and strategy (Program Manager, Speech Technology). During that period, in addition to a stint as Senior Product Developer / Linguist (2000 to 2001) at Net2Phone, Inc., he also held various editorial and consulting positions (inside and outside IBM), and was a member of the committee that formulated the original Electric Company television series.
Cohen holds seven patents in various areas of speech processing. Since 2002, he has been a consultant and independent researcher, and has published several articles in the fields of Indo-European studies
Indo-European studies
Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. Its goal is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European , and its speakers, the...
and English etymology
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
and philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
.
Selected publications
- 1968, (with William Labov, Clarence Robins, and John Lewis). A study of the Non-Standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican Speakers in New York City, V. 1: Phonological and Grammatical Analysis. Washington, DC: Office of Education, Bureau of Research/ERIC.
- 1968, (with William Labov, Clarence Robins, and John Lewis). A study of the Non-Standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican Speakers in New York City', V. 2: The Use of Language in the Speech Community. Washington, DC: Office of Education, Bureau of Research/ERIC.