Dr. Nurit Melnik is a linguist in the Department of Language, Literature, and the Arts. Her research focuses on syntax; particularly the syntax of Modern Hebrew. Her work spans theoretical, computational, and corpus linguistics and addresses a wide range of topics, including grammar engineering, constructions and the relationship between form and function, agreement alternation, lexical and syntactic flexibility of multi-word expressions, and the cognitive aspects of language change. Melnik tests the limits of the formal approach to language, acknowledging and even celebrating the fuzziness and imperfections of real language use.
Melnik's current research project is funded by a Ministry of Science grant in the field of digital humanities, and is a collaboration with Dr. Gabriel Stanovsky from the School of Computer Science & Engineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It harnesses state-of-the-art computational tools and methods to conduct a data-driven exploration of the creative aspects of language with the goal of advancing our understanding of the nature of the language system. The project has close ties to
UniDive Cost Action, an interdisciplinary scientific network devoted to universality, diversity, and idiosyncrasy in language technology. Melnik is a management committee member and the Grant Awarding Coordinator of the Action.
Melnik, together with Dr. Zef Segal, has developed an introductory course in digital humanities "Who's Afraid of Numbers? Math and Computation for the Humanities" (in Hebrew).