By Bridget Johnston
Staff Reporter
Publication Date: 11/06/09
Most people don’t have a multiple language fluency, found a linguistics program, travel the world, write scholarly books and develop natural language processing computer applications, but Victor Raskin has.
Raskin, a distinguished professor of English and linguistics with a courtesy appointment in computer science and founder of the Purdue linguistics program, is an eccentric professor – and a very busy one. He writes technical texts on his theories and continuously works on multiple research projects in many academic fields, ranging from humor research to engineering.
“I’m a Purdue professor,” said Raskin. “I wouldn’t be alive if I weren’t doing, like, a million research projects at the same time.”
His biggest interest of study is semantics, the study of meaning in language by classifying and explaining the complex relations between meaning and form, and much of his work is in that field. He is developing computer applications that better understand the content users simply type on their keyboards.
One application is similar to search engines in which the computer understands the concepts behind a person’s words and searches, rather than just the character strings. Raskin finds today’s top search engines to be less than optimal.
“Much of Google responses is garbage,” said Raskin. “It just searches for the exact words you type in, rather than the content you’re looking for. Don’t those schmucks know we’re looking for meaning?”
Another computer application he is working on can look at long e-mails and remove everything the computer already has stored. Raskin believes this application will free computers of data overload and allow more space. It can also flag contradictions between pieces of information, a fresh concept that has yet to be used by any other computer or operating system.
Along with his numerous systematic achievements, Raskin is friendly and approachable.
“Outgoing is definitely how to describe Victor Raskin,” said Robert Channon, associate professor of Russian and linguistics, when asked to describe Raskin’s personality.
To put it lightly, he is quite a chatterbox. His sociable personality and batty sense of humor are as recognizable as his thick Russian accent. He commonly intersperses jokes even while speaking of his academic achievements.
While talking about his work, Raskin noted something interesting about his fluency in languages.
Before rambling on to a joke, Raskin said: “The last time I counted, I am fluent in 29 languages, but that doesn’t mean I know them instantly; I need some time to re-acquaint myself. I know many at the level of competence, not complete familiarity.”