Paola Merlo
Paola Merlo combines linguistic modelling with machine learning to study syntax, semantics, and language structure. Merlo was an associate research fellow at Penn’s Institute for Cognitive Science from 1996 to 1998. She also earned a doctorate in computational linguistics from Maryland. Merlo and collaborators pursue Quantitative Computational Syntax. Their research includes the statistical nature of language, lexical semantics of verbs, language universals, and statistical models of syntactic and semantic parsing.
Timeline
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1996–1998
Cognitive science research
Merlo was an associate research fellow at Penn’s Institute for Cognitive Science from 1996 to 1998. She also earned a doctorate in computational linguistics from Maryland.
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2011
Computational linguistics conference service
Merlo served as general chair of EMNLP in 2011. She also researches connections between linguistic proposals and empirical evaluation.
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2019
Research recognition
ACL elected Paola Merlo as a Fellow in 2019.
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2021
EACL general chair
Merlo served as general chair of EACL in 2021. She also studies compositionality through computational methods in the shared NCCR Evolving Language research program.
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As of October 2026
Quantitative computational syntax
Merlo and collaborators pursue Quantitative Computational Syntax. Their research includes the statistical nature of language, lexical semantics of verbs, language universals, and statistical models of syntactic and semantic parsing.
Sources and credits
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