Mark Liberman

About

Mark Liberman is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds professorships in both the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Computer and Information Science, and serves as Faculty Director of Ware College House. His academic work spans a broad range of topics within linguistics and cognitive science, including corpus-based phonetics, the phonology and phonetics of lexical tone and its relationship to intonation, and formal models for linguistic annotation. Additionally, he applies linguistic analysis to legal, medical, and political domains, demonstrating an interdisciplinary approach to language research. Professor Liberman teaches a variety of courses covering introductory linguistics, computational analysis, phonetics, big data in linguistics, and advanced topics such as deep learning and large language models in linguistic research. His research contributions reflect a commitment to integrating computational methods with linguistic theory and practical applications.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Natural Language Processing
• Speech recognition
• Psychology
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• Natural language processing methods are sensitive to sub-clinical linguistic differences in schizophrenia spectrum disorders

  Schizophrenia · 2021 · 124 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Computerized natural language processing (NLP) allows for objective and sensitive detection of speech disturbance, a hallmark of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). We explored several methods for characterizing speech changes in SSD (n = 20) compared to healthy control (HC) participants (n = 11) and approached linguistic phenotyping on three levels: individual words, parts-of-speech (POS), and sentence-level coherence. NLP features were compared with a clinical gold standard, the Scale for…

  DOI

• Automated speech and language markers of longitudinal changes in psychosis symptoms

  NPP—Digital Psychiatry and Neuroscience · 2025-06-17 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract We sought to evaluate the ability of automated speech and language features to longitudinally track fluctuations in the major psychosis domains: Thought Disorder , Negative Symptoms , and Positive Symptoms . Sixty-six participants with psychotic disorders were assessed soon after inpatient admission, at discharge, and at 3- and 6-months. Psychosis symptoms were measured with semi-structured interviews and standardized scales. Recordings were collected from paragraph reading, fluency, pi…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Social Context Matters for Turn‐Taking Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Autistic and Typically Developing Children

  Cognitive Science · 2025-10-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Engaging in fluent conversation is a surprisingly complex task that requires interlocutors to promptly respond to each other in a way that is appropriate to the social context. In this study, we disentangled different dimensions of turn‐taking by investigating how the dynamics of child–adult interactions changed according to the activity (task‐oriented vs. freer conversation) and the familiarity of the interlocutor (familiar vs. unfamiliar). Twenty‐eight autistic children (16 male; = 10…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evolution of Linguistic Markers of Agency, Centrality and Content During Metacognitive Therapy for Psychosis: A Pilot Exploratory Study

  Early Intervention in Psychiatry · 2024-11-21 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  AIM: Metacognitive Reflection and Insight Therapy (MERIT) is a form of person-centred psychotherapy that promotes recovery-oriented outcomes by targeting metacognitive capacity. Previous research has shown the feasibility and clinical benefits of MERIT. However, it is not clear whether and how the specific processes targeted by MERIT (e.g., improved sense of agency, self-reflectivity, awareness of others, etc.) are manifested in the patient-therapist communications. In this study, we used natura…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Automated, Objective Speech and Language Markers of Longitudinal Changes in Psychosis Symptoms

  medRxiv · 2024-07-21 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Background and Hypotheses We sought to evaluate the ability of automated speech and language features to track fluctuations in the major psychosis symptoms domains: Thought Disorder, Negative Symptoms , and Positive Symptoms . Study Design Sixty-six participants with psychotic disorders were longitudinally assessed soon after inpatient admission, at discharge, and at 3- and 6-months. Psychosis symptoms were measured with semi-structured interviews and standardized scales. Recordings wer…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• CI-NEW: NIEUW: Novel Incentives and Workflows in Linguistic Data Collection and Annotation

  NSF · $1.2M · 2017–2023

• EAGER: Mining a Year of Speech

  NSF · $100k · 2010–2012

Frequent coauthors

• Sunghye Cho

  Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium

  144 shared

• Naomi Nevler

  University of Pennsylvania

  115 shared

• Murray Grossman

  100 shared

• Sharon Ash

  University of Pennsylvania

  89 shared

• Christopher Cieri

  83 shared

• David J. Irwin

  University of Pennsylvania

  71 shared

• Sanjana Shellikeri

  University of Pennsylvania

  65 shared

• Neville Ryant

  55 shared

Labs

• Department of Linguistics, University of PennsylvaniaPI

Education

• Ph.D., Phonetics, prosody, natural language processing, speech communication

  MIT

  1975

Similar researchers at University of Pennsylvania

• Anna Papafragouh-44
• Charles Yangh-35
• David Embickh-34