Robert F. Port
Professional
Information
B.A., Social Relations, Johns Hopkins University,
1965
M.A, Linguistics, Columbia University,
1972
Ph.D., University of Connecticut,
1976. My thesis work was conducted at Haskins
Laboratories , New Haven, Connecticut.
Personal
Information
My wife Diane
Kewley-Port and I were on sabbatical for academic year 1995-1996
and
spent 5 months at ATR Labs, Human Information
Processing (Kyoto Prefecture, Japan). We lived only three miles from
the awesome 16 meter high (from knees to curly head) Daibutsu
(Great Buddha) of Nara completed in 751 AD.
Afro Hoosier Intl.
A band playing popular music from Africa and the African diaspora. The
band was founded in 1999 and plays weddings, parties, festivals and
clubs that emphasize local music in Bloomington and central
Indiana. At our webpage you can sign up for email notices of our
upcoming gigs.
Research Topics
- Phonetics and Phonology of Languages
- Temporal Aspects of Speech and Audition
- Rhythm in Music and Language
- Dynamical Models for Perception and Motor Control
- Origin of Language
The primary focus of my work is problem of time and temporal patterns.
Temporal patterns are a major problem for cognitive science since
conventional
symbolic models deal naturally only with static systems or with
patterns
specifiable in absolute durations (like milliseconds).
Thus my research focusses on auditory pattern perception, speech and
linguistics. I have addressed such topics as the temporal structure of
words and phrases in English, Japanese, German, Arabic, etc. I am
convinced
that only models based on dynamical systems offer the right properties
for handling time in a way that will be useful for an animal living in
a physical world. Some kinds of connectionist models and other models
based
on differential equations have the right kind of dynamical properties.
This work is compatible with a view of general cognition that is
based
on dynamical systems theory rather than symbol-based computational
models.
November, 2010