Steven Abney

Steven Abney is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Michigan, affiliated with the Computer Science and Engineering department and the Michigan Institute for Data Science. He holds a Ph.D. from MIT (1987) and has held positions at Bellcore, Tübingen University, and AT&T Labs before joining U-M in 2002.

His research focuses on computational linguistics, including language technology, digital documentation of endangered languages (e.g., Ojibwe), semantics, and parsing. He has developed software tools like CLD for language digitization and Selkie for corpus editing. His work bridges linguistics, computer science, and data science, emphasizing computational models for language analysis.

Abney teaches courses such as Mathematics of Language, Computational Linguistics, and Machine Learning for NLP. His expertise spans semisupervised learning, information extraction, and bidirectional grammar systems. Current projects include inductive general grammar and musicolinguistics, applying parsing techniques to musical analysis.

His affiliations include cross-disciplinary collaborations, and he has contributed to workshops on language documentation and revitalization. While no specific awards are listed, his extensive publications reflect significant contributions to computational linguistics theory and applications.