Richard Sproat

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Richard William Sproat

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| fields = Computational linguistics

| workplaces = Google (2012–present)

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| alma_mater = University of California, San Diego (B.A., 1981)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1985)

| thesis_title = On Deriving the Lexicon

| thesis_url = http://mitwpl.mit.edu/catalog/spro01

| thesis_year = 1985

| doctoral_advisor = Ken Hale

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{{short description|Computational linguist}}

Richard Sproat is a computational linguist currently working for Sakana AI as a research scientist. Prior to joining Sakana AI, Sproat worked for Google between 2012 and 2024 on text normalization{{Cite book |last1=Sodimana |first1=Keshan |last2=Silva |first2=Pasindu De |last3=Sproat |first3=Richard |last4=Theeraphol |first4=A. |last5=Li |first5=Chen Fang |last6=Gutkin |first6=Alexander |last7=Sarin |first7=Supheakmungkol |last8=Pipatsrisawat |first8=Knot |title=6th Workshop on Spoken Language Technologies for Under-Resourced Languages (SLTU 2018) |chapter=Text Normalization for Bangla, Khmer, Nepali, Javanese, Sinhala and Sundanese Text-to-Speech Systems |date=2018 |chapter-url=https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/SLTU_2018/pdfs/Keshan2.pdf |pages=147–151|doi=10.21437/SLTU.2018-31 |s2cid=53333966 }} and speech recognition.

Linguistics

Sproat graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985, under the supervision of Kenneth L. Hale.{{cite web |last1=Sproat |first1=Richard |title=On Deriving the Lexicon |url=http://mitwpl.mit.edu/catalog/spro01 |website=MITWPL |access-date=29 November 2020 |ref=thesis}} His PhD thesis is one of the earliest work that derives morphosyntactically complex forms from the module which produces the phonological form that realizes these morpho-syntactic expressions, one of the core ideas in Distributed Morphology.{{cite book |last1=Wiltschko |first1=Martina |title=The Universal Structure of Categories: Towards a Formal Typology |date=24 July 2014 |publisher=Cambridge |isbn=9781107038516 |page=83 |ref=wiltschko}}

One of Sproat's main contributions to computational linguistics is in the field of text normalization, where his work with colleagues in 2001, Normalization of non-standard words,{{cite journal |last1=Sproat |first1=Richard |last2=Black |first2=Alan W. |last3=Chen |first3=Stanley |last4=Kumar |first4=Shankar |last5=Ostendorf |first5=Mari |authorlink5=Mari Ostendorf |last6=Richards |first6=Christopher |title=Normalization of non-standard words |journal=Computer Speech & Language |date=1 July 2001 |volume=15 |issue=3 |pages=287–333 |doi=10.1006/csla.2001.0169}} was considered a seminal work in formalizing this component of speech synthesis systems.

He has also worked on computational morphology{{cite book |last1=Sproat|first1=Richard|title=Morphology and Computation|date=1992|publisher=MIT Press|isbn=9780262527026}} and the computational analysis of writing systems.{{cite book |last1=Sproat|first1=Richard|title=A Computational theory of Writing Systems|date=2000|publisher=Cambridge|isbn=9780521663403}}

References

{{reflist|refs=

[https://rws.xoba.com/ Richard Sproat]

[https://rws.xoba.com/newindex/cv.pdf Curriculum vitae]

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Sproat, Richard}}

Category:Google people

Category:Living people

Category:MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

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