Natural Language Processing at Notre Dame

Natural language processing (NLP) aims to enable computers to use human languages – so that people can, for example, interact with computers naturally; or communicate with people who don't speak a common language; or access speech or text data at scales not otherwise possible. The NLP group at Notre Dame is interested in all aspects of NLP, with a focus on machine translation and connections with formal language theory.

The NLP group co-sponsors NL+, the Natural Language Processing Lunch Seminar.

Current Members

David Chiang

Associate professor

translation, syntax, formal language theory, programming languages
Darcey Masters

PhD student

generation from language models, probabilistic models
Stephen Bothwell

PhD student

NLP for classical languages, computational historical linguistics
Ken Sible

PhD student

retrieval-augmented translation
Aarohi Srivastava

PhD student

dialects, noisy text, zero-shot transfer
Chihiro Taguchi

PhD student

computational linguistics, language documentation, syntax
Andy Yang

PhD student

neural network expressivity, formal logic
Katsumi Ibaraki

PhD student

multilingual, multimodal NLP

Former Members

Brian DuSell (PhD 2023 → ETH Zürich)
Colin McDonald (BA 2023 → CMU)
Patrick Soga (BS 2022 → UVA)
Xing Jie Zhong (MS 2021 → Google)
Toan Q. Nguyen (PhD 2021 → Amazon → Zoom)
Justin DeBenedetto (PhD 2021 → asst. prof. Villanova)
Chan Hee (Luke) Song (BS 2020 → OSU)
Kenton Murray (PhD 2020 → JHU)
Antonios Anastasopoulos (PhD 2019 → postdoc CMU → asst. prof GMU)
Arturo Argueta (PhD 2019 → Apple)
Tomer Levinboim (PhD 2017 → Google)
Xiang Zhou (summer intern 2017 → UNC → Google DeepMind)
Cindy Xinyi Wang (BS 2017 → PhD CMU → Google DeepMind)
Ashish Vaswani (PhD 2014 at USC → USC ISI → Google Brain → Adept AI → Essential AI)

Projects

Expressivity of neural sequence models Relating neural sequence models to automata, grammars, circuits, and logics. Collaboration with Peter Cholak and Anand Pillay. Sponsored by NSF.

Speech and language processing for dialects and language varieties Collaboration with Antonis Anastaspoulos (GMU), Sachin Kumar (OSU), and Yulia Tsvetkov (UW).

Technologies for documentation of endangered languages Collaboration with Antonis Anatasopoulos and Geraldine Walther (GMU).

Differentiable, probabilistic programming with recursive structured models Collaboration with Chung-chieh Shan (IU).

NLP for ancient languages Analysis of Latin texts, reconstructing proto-Italic from Latin, and modeling Biblical Hebrew. Collaborations with Brian Krostenko, Hildegund Müller, and David Smiley.

Recent Publications

Andy Yang, Pascal Bergsträßer, Georg Zetzsche, David Chiang, and Anthony W. Lin. Length generalization bounds for transformers. 2026. arXiv:2603.02238. PDF BibTeX

@misc{yang-etal-2026-length,
    author = {Yang, Andy and Bergstr{\"a\ss}er, Pascal and Zetzsche, Georg and Chiang, David and Lin, Anthony W.},
    title = "Length Generalization Bounds for Transformers",
    year = "2026",
    note = "arXiv:2603.02238",
    url = "https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.02238"
}

Chihiro Taguchi, Yukinori Takubo, and David Chiang. Automatic speech recognition for documenting endangered languages: case study of Ikema Miyakoan. In Proc. Language Resources and Evaluation Conference. 2026. To appear. PDF BibTeX

@inproceedings{taguchi-etal-2026-automatic,
    author = "Taguchi, Chihiro and Takubo, Yukinori and Chiang, David",
    title = "Automatic Speech Recognition for Documenting Endangered Languages: Case Study of {I}kema {M}iyakoan",
    booktitle = "Proc. Language Resources and Evaluation Conference",
    year = "2026",
    note = "To appear",
    url = "https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.26248"
}

Stephen Bothwell, Kaitlin Stephan, Hildegund Müller, and David Chiang. From paginā to webpage: on developing and documenting a digitized Latin collection. Journal of Open Humanities Data, 2026. To appear. BibTeX

@article{bothwell-etal-2026-pagina,
    author = {Bothwell, Stephen and Stephan, Kaitlin and M{\"u}ller, Hildegund and Chiang, David},
    title = "From Pagin{\=a} to Webpage: On Developing and Documenting a Digitized {L}atin Collection",
    journal = "Journal of Open Humanities Data",
    year = "2026",
    note = "To appear"
}

Akriti Dhasmana, Aarohi Srivastava, and David Chiang. Dialect matters: cross-lingual ASR transfer for low-resource Indic language varieties. In Proc. Workshop on NLP for Similar Languages, Varieties and Dialects. 2026. PDF BibTeX

@inproceedings{dhasmana-etal-2026-dialect,
    author = "Dhasmana, Akriti and Srivastava, Aarohi and Chiang, David",
    title = "Dialect Matters: Cross-Lingual {ASR} Transfer for Low-Resource {I}ndic Language Varieties",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.vardial-1.12/",
    booktitle = "Proc. Workshop on NLP for Similar Languages, Varieties and Dialects",
    year = "2026"
}

Andy Yang, Anej Svete, Jiaoda Li, Anthony Widjaja Lin, Jonathan Rawski, Ryan Cotterell, and David Chiang. Probability distributions computed by autoregressive transformers. In Proc. ICLR. 2026. To appear. PDF BibTeX

@inproceedings{yang-etal-2026-probability,
    author = "Yang, Andy and Svete, Anej and Li, Jiaoda and Lin, Anthony Widjaja and Rawski, Jonathan and Cotterell, Ryan and Chiang, David",
    title = "Probability Distributions Computed by Autoregressive Transformers",
    year = "2026",
    booktitle = "Proc. ICLR",
    note = "To appear",
    url = "https://openreview.net/forum?id=gZIcyx1tQY"
}

Yotaro Kubo, Richard Sproat, Chihiro Taguchi, and Llion Jones. Building tailored speech recognizers for Japanese speaking assessment. 2025. arXiv:2509.20655. PDF BibTeX

@misc{kubo-etal-2025-building,
    author = "Kubo, Yotaro and Sproat, Richard and Taguchi, Chihiro and Jones, Llion",
    title = "Building Tailored Speech Recognizers for {J}apanese Speaking Assessment",
    year = "2025",
    note = "{arXiv}:2509.20655",
    url = "https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20655"
}

Andy Yang, Christopher Watson, Anton Xue, Satwik Bhattamishra, Jose Llarena, William Merrill, Emile Dos Santos Ferreira, Anej Svete, and David Chiang. The transformer cookbook. Transactions on Machine Learning Research, January 2026. PDF BibTeX

@article{yang-etal-2025-cookbook,
    author = "Yang, Andy and Watson, Christopher and Xue, Anton and Bhattamishra, Satwik and Llarena, Jose and Merrill, William and Dos Santos Ferreira, Emile and Svete, Anej and Chiang, David",
    title = "The Transformer Cookbook",
    journal = "Transactions on Machine Learning Research",
    month = "January",
    year = "2026",
    url = "https://openreview.net/forum?id=sPshCSvDrX"
}

Katsumi Ibaraki and David Chiang. Frustratingly easy data augmentation for low-resource ASR. 2025. arXiv:2509.15373. PDF BibTeX

@misc{ibaraki-chiang-2025-frustratingly,
    author = "Ibaraki, Katsumi and Chiang, David",
    note = "{arXiv}:2509.15373",
    year = "2025",
    title = "Frustratingly Easy Data Augmentation for Low-Resource {ASR}",
    url = "https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15373"
}

Chihiro Taguchi, Seng Mai, Keita Kurabe, Yusuke Sakai, Georgina Agyei, Soudabeh Eslami, and David Chiang. Languages still left behind: toward a better multilingual machine translation benchmark. In Proc. EMNLP, 20142–20154. 2025. doi:10.18653/v1/2025.emnlp-main.1018. PDF BibTeX

@inproceedings{taguchi-etal-2025-languages,
    author = "Taguchi, Chihiro and Mai, Seng and Kurabe, Keita and Sakai, Yusuke and Agyei, Georgina and Eslami, Soudabeh and Chiang, David",
    title = "Languages Still Left Behind: Toward a Better Multilingual Machine Translation Benchmark",
    year = "2025",
    booktitle = "Proc. EMNLP",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-main.1018/",
    doi = "10.18653/v1/2025.emnlp-main.1018",
    pages = "20142--20154"
}

Chihiro Taguchi, Seiji Maekawa, and Nikita Bhutani. Efficient context selection for long-context QA: no tuning, no iteration, just adaptive-\(k\). In Proc. EMNLP, 20116–20141. 2025. doi:10.18653/v1/2025.emnlp-main.1017. PDF BibTeX

@inproceedings{taguchi-etal-2025-efficient,
    author = "Taguchi, Chihiro and Maekawa, Seiji and Bhutani, Nikita",
    title = "Efficient Context Selection for Long-Context {QA}: No Tuning, No Iteration, Just Adaptive-{$k$}",
    year = "2025",
    booktitle = "Proc. EMNLP",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-main.1017/",
    doi = "10.18653/v1/2025.emnlp-main.1017",
    pages = "20116--20141"
}

Andy Yang, Michaël Cadilhac, and David Chiang. Knee-deep in C-RASP: a transformer depth hierarchy. In Proc. NeurIPS 38. 2025. To appear. PDF BibTeX

@inproceedings{yang+:2025,
    author = {Yang, Andy and Cadilhac, Micha{\"e}l and Chiang, David},
    title = "Knee-Deep in {C-RASP}: A Transformer Depth Hierarchy",
    booktitle = "Proc. NeurIPS 38",
    note = "To appear",
    url = "https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16055",
    year = "2025"
}

Andy Yang, Lena Strobl, David Chiang, and Dana Angluin. Simulating hard attention using soft attention. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 14:147–166, 2026. doi:10.1162/TACL.a.597. DOI BibTeX

@article{yang-etal-2025-softmax,
    author = "Yang, Andy and Strobl, Lena and Chiang, David and Angluin, Dana",
    title = "Simulating Hard Attention Using Soft Attention",
    year = "2026",
    volume = "14",
    pages = "147--166",
    journal = "Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics",
    doi = "10.1162/TACL.a.597"
}

Aarohi Srivastava and David Chiang. We're calling an intervention: exploring fundamental hurdles in adapting language models to nonstandard text. In Proc. Workshop on Noisy and User-Generated Text. 2025. Best Paper Award. PDF BibTeX

@inproceedings{srivastava-chiang-2025,
    author = "Srivastava, Aarohi and Chiang, David",
    title = "We're Calling an Intervention: Exploring Fundamental Hurdles in Adapting Language Models to Nonstandard Text",
    booktitle = "Proc. Workshop on Noisy and User-Generated Text",
    year = "2025",
    url = "https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.07304"
}

David Chiang. Transformers in uniform TC\(^0\). Transactions on Machine Learning Research, January 2025. PDF BibTeX

@article{chiang:2025,
    author = "Chiang, David",
    title = "Transformers in Uniform {TC$^0$}",
    journal = "Transactions on Machine Learning Research",
    year = "2025",
    month = "January",
    url = "https://openreview.net/forum?id=ZA7D4nQuQF"
}

Lena Strobl, Dana Angluin, David Chiang, Jonathan Rawski, and Ashish Sabharwal. Transformers as transducers. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 13:200–219, 2025. doi:10.1162/tacl_a_00736. DOI BibTeX

@article{strobl-etal-2025-transducers,
    author = "Strobl, Lena and Angluin, Dana and Chiang, David and Rawski, Jonathan and Sabharwal, Ashish",
    title = "Transformers as Transducers",
    journal = "Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics",
    volume = "13",
    pages = "200--219",
    year = "2025",
    doi = "10.1162/tacl\_a\_00736"
}

Chihiro Taguchi and David Chiang. Language complexity and speech recognition accuracy: orthographic complexity hurts, phonological complexity doesn't. In Proc. ACL. 2024. Outstanding Paper Award and Senior Area Chair Award. PDF BibTeX

@inproceedings{taguchi-chiang-2024-complexity,
    author = "Taguchi, Chihiro and Chiang, David",
    title = "Language Complexity and Speech Recognition Accuracy: Orthographic Complexity Hurts, Phonological Complexity Doesn't",
    year = "2024",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.acl-long.827/",
    booktitle = "Proc. ACL"
}

Fahim Faisal, Orevaoghene Ahia, Aarohi Srivastava, Kabir Ahuja, David Chiang, Yulia Tsvetkov, and Antonios Anastasopoulos. DIALECTBENCH: a NLP benchmark for dialects, varieties, and closely-related languages. In Proc. ACL. 2024. Social Impact Award. PDF BibTeX

@inproceedings{faisal+:2024,
    author = "Faisal, Fahim and Ahia, Orevaoghene and Srivastava, Aarohi and Ahuja, Kabir and Chiang, David and Tsvetkov, Yulia and Anastasopoulos, Antonios",
    title = "{DIALECTBENCH}: A {NLP} Benchmark for Dialects, Varieties, and Closely-Related Languages",
    year = "2024",
    booktitle = "Proc. ACL",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.acl-long.777/"
}

David Chiang, Colin McDonald, and Chung-chieh Shan. Exact recursive probabilistic programming. PACMPL, 2023. doi:10.1145/3586050. PDF BibTeX

@article{chiang+mcdonald+shan:2023,
    author = "Chiang, David and McDonald, Colin and Shan, Chung{-}chieh",
    title = "Exact Recursive Probabilistic Programming",
    journal = "PACMPL",
    volume = "7",
    number = "OOPSLA1",
    article = "98",
    xmonth = "April",
    url = "https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3586050",
    year = "2023",
    doi = "10.1145/3586050"
}

All papers →

Language and Computation at Notre Dame

Research

People

Meng Jiang: summarization and generation
Toby Li: human-computer interaction
Walter Scheirer: digital humanities and handwriting recognition
John Lalor (ITAO): NLP and biomedical informatics

Courses

CSE 40657/60657, Natural Language Processing, Prof. David Chiang
CSE 40982, Interactive Dialogue Systems, Prof. Collin McMillan
ITAO 40250, Unstructured Data Analytics, Prof. John Lalor
AL 20301, Introduction to Linguistics, Prof. Hana Kang