Dr. Somdev Kar

Name: 
Dr. Somdev Kar
Department: 
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Biography: 
Dr. Somdev Kar is an associate professor of Linguistics at the Indian Institute of Technology Ropar. He completed his MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Hyderabad (India) in 2004. In 2005, he moved to the University of Tübingen in Germany to pursue doctoral research in Linguistics under the supervision of Prof. Hubert Truckenbrodt and received his PhD degree in 2009. His doctoral research is in the area of Optimality Theory (Phonology) and Distributed Morphology, and with a focus on the syllable structure of Bangla. Later, Dr. Kar worked on the phonology of a group of Tibeto-Burman languages of Sikkim as part of his post-doctoral research at CIIL, Mysore, India.
Areas of Research: 
Phonetics, Phonology (Optimality Theory), Morphology
Speech Processing, Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Evolutionary Linguistics
Education: 
PhD (Linguistics), University of Tübingen, Germany, 2009
MA (Applied Linguistics), University of Hyderabad, India, 2004
BA (Honours in Linguistics), University of Calcutta, India, 2002
Work Experience: 
Associate Professor, IIT Ropar, 2018 - Present
Assistant Professor, IIT Ropar, 2010 - 2018
Visiting Assistant Professor, Qatar University, Qatar, 2010
Fellow, Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore, 2008 - 2010
Research Associate, Center for General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin, Germany, 2008
Research Associate and Assistant, University of Tübingen, Germany, 2005 - 2008
Selected Publications/Patents: 

Kar, Somdev, and Truckenbrodt, Hubert. (2019). Syllable structure and stratification in Bangla. Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, 6(1), 1-25. (DOI: 10.1515/jsall-2019-2008)

Dwivedi, Pankaj, and Kar, Somdev (2018) Phonology of Kanauji. In G. Sharma (Ed), Advances in Hindi Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics pp. 189-220 Munich: Lincom Europa. (LINK

Chand, Gulab, and Kar, Somdev (2017). Revival of Endangered Languages: A Case Study of Hadoti. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 46(2), 153-170.  

Dwivedi, Pankaj, and Kar, Somdev (2017). On Documenting Low Resourced Indian Languages: Insights from Kanauji Speech Corpus. Dialectologia, 19, 67-91. (LINK)

Chand, Gulab, and Kar, Somdev (2017). Sonority and Reduplication in Hadoti. Journal of Universal Language, 18(2), 1-37. (DOI: 10.22425/jul.2017.18.2.1)

Dwivedi, Pankaj, and Kar, Somdev (2016). Kannauji of Kanpur: A brief overview. Acta Linguistica Asiatica, 6(1): 101-119. (DOI: 10.4312/ala.6.1.101-119)  

Kar, Somdev (2013). Complex onsets in regional varieties of Bangla. Language Sciences, 40, 212-220. (DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2013.06.001)  

Kar, Somdev (2013). Slot-specific glide formation in Bangla. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 42(1), 67-83.  

Kar, Somdev (2012). Voicing agreement in Bangla word-medial clusters. Indian Linguistics, 73(1-4), 175-184.  

Kar, Somdev (2010). Syllable Structure of Bangla: An Optimality Theoretic Approach. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. (ISBN  978-1-4438-2402-6)  

Kar, Somdev (2008). Gemination in Bangla: An Optimality Theoretic Analysis. Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics, 1(2), 87-114. (DOI: 10.3329/dujl.v1i2.37189)  

Other Information: 

  • PhD Scholars

    Past

    (1) Dr. Gulab Chand, PhD (IIT Ropar), MA Linguistics (BHU, Varanasi), MPhil (MGAHV, Wardha)

    (2) Dr. Pankaj Dwivedi, PhD (IIT Ropar), MA Linguistics (BHU, Varanasi)

    Current

    (1) Sharmistha Sarkar, MA Linguistics (University of Calcutta), MPhil (Jadavpur University)

    (2) Thamanna Raza P P, MA Applied Linguistics & MPhil (University of Hyderabad)

    (3) Priyeshi Kumari, MA Linguistics (BHU, Varanasi)

    (4) Ashitha Rachel Jacob, MA Linguistics (Central University of Kerala)

UG Courses

  • HUL452   Fundamentals of Linguistics (3 credits)
  • HUL456   Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology (3 credits)
  • HUL461   Morphology (3 credits)
  • HUL465   Laboratory Phonology (3 credits)

PG Courses

  • HUL607   English Syntactic Structure (3 credits)
  • HUL608   Topics in Optimality Theory (3 credits)
  • HUL614   Computational Phonology (3 credits)

 

Industrial Consultancy

1. Appen Butler Hill Group / Clarasoft, USA, as Consultant, 2018 - 2019.
2. Appen Butler Hill Group / Oracle, USA, as Consultant, 2016 - Present.
3. Appen Butler Hill Group / Microsoft Corporation, USA, as Consultant, 2011-
4. Acapela Group Sweden AB, Solna, Sweden, as Consultant (Linguist), 2010.
5. Zi Corporation, Calgary, Canada, as Language Consultant (Bengali), 2004 - 2005.

Email: 
somdev.kar [AT] iitrpr.ac.in
Designation: 
Associate Professor