Jack Rittenberry
New Orleans, Louisiana
EDUCATION
BA in International Studies, BA in French Studies May 2022
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA
Independently directed and collaborated with faculty on research projects for presentation and publication in multiple domains including phonology, acoustics, corpus analysis, language reclamation, and language technology, while undertaking coursework within the Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics.
Facilitated student outreach events and capacity-building activities for the Linguistics Program.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Legal Annotator Aug. 2022 – (current)
Claira Inc.
Applied linguistic and financial knowledge to annotate datasets for machine learning tasks.
Performed annotation to correct human and machine-generated representations of English sentences.
Learned and applied specific legal and financial frameworks to transition swiftly between tasks.
Assisted in the curation of a syntactic dataset.
Contributor & Linguist Apr. 2021 – (current)
Houma Language Project
Worked closely with a medium-size team to assist in the reclamation of the Houma language, with a focus on implementing language technologies for community members and the language team.
Assisted in the creation of the first Houma (Uma’) to English language dictionary and facilitated online access of language materials.
Utilized open- and closed-source software to create online lessons for English speakers, created keyboard layout and web-based dictionary resources to facilitate digital communication.
Began as a Linguistics Intern in April 2021 and transitioned to current role during summer 2022.
Student IT Manager at LSU Student Media Sept. 2021 – May 2022
Responsible for IT services for university employees and student workers in the LSU Student Media division, including network drive and IP address management.
Directed a major website update in accordance with updated university and accessibility standards.
Web Design Intern at Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics, LSU Feb. 2021 – May 2022
Worked directly with Interim Program Director to revamp and manage the online presence of the program to aid current students and promote student recruitment.
Created and maintained the website for the 89th Meeting of the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics hosted by the Linguistics Program prior to and throughout the duration of the conference.
PUBLICATIONS
Rittenberry, J., & Shport, I. A. (2024). Clear speech effects in production of sentence-medial Mandarin lexical tones. JASA Express Letters, 4(5). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0025991.
Worked closely with faculty mentor to develop project and identify gaps for further research in the area of clear speech analysis in tone languages.
Conducted online recruitment and utilized an online platform for experiment building and audio recording during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Presented preliminary findings at regional and national academic conferences for further development.
Conducted prosodic analysis on over two-thousand individual audio files with scripts using Praat.
CONFERENCE SERVICE
Workshop Facilitator, “Tech & Language Reclamation,” Colang 2024 June 2024
Developed a curriculum with a co-facilitator focusing on the use of pre-existing language technologies for language reclamation for an audience of community members and linguists with varying familiarity and proficiency with software tools.
Collected and organized information to present to workshop participants about available tools for language work for dictionary-building, archiving, website building, etc.
Responded dynamically to participant needs to provide the most relevant information to their work and communities throughout the duration of the workshop.
Teaching Assistant, “Grant Writing,” CoLang 2024 June 2024
Assisted Workshop Facilitator to create activities to improve participant understanding of grant writing related to language reclamation and academic linguistics research.
Supported in-classroom activities throughout the duration of the workshop.
Program Committee Member, Southeastern Conference on Linguistics 89 Spring 2022
Collaborated with university staff and faculty members to create program materials and information to host the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics at LSU.
Facilitated access to these materials in accordance with university guidelines for style and accessibility for conference participants.
PRESENTATIONS
Jack Rittenberry (Apr. 2022). “Assessing Keyboard Layouts for Indigenous Languages: Access and Development.” Southeastern Conference on Linguistics 89. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Identified challenges facing community developers of keyboards and the use of custom layouts for language reclamation.
Examined the availability of keyboards to speakers of Indigenous languages in the United States and the sophistication of keyboarding tools (spellcheck, text prediction, etc.) alongside basic input.
Jack Rittenberry & Irina Shport (Nov. 2021). “Influence of clear speech on F0 patterns of Mandarin lexical tones.” 181st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Seattle, Washington.
Developed poster presentation for further feedback and development for an academic audience of speech acousticians for fulfillment of LSU ASPIRE Undergraduate Research program.
Conducted additional participant recruitment, data collection, and acoustical analysis based on prior feedback from conference presentation.
Jack Rittenberry & Irina Shport (Apr. 2021). “Production of Mandarin Tones in Clear Speech.” Southeastern Conference on Linguistics 88. Houston, Texas.
Shared preliminary findings of independent study in oral presentation format for feedback and further development.
Jack Rittenberry (Mar. 2020). “The Influence of English Orthography on Loanword Adaptation of Anglicisms in French Phonology.” Southeastern Conference on Linguistics 87. Cancelled in advance of presentation.
Identified current issues in research of loanword adaptation and ongoing developments in language contact between English and French
Created survey to gather responses from native French speakers for familiarity with common Anglicisms and to elicit examples of usage.
SKILLS
French reading, writing, and speaking proficiency. B2 equivalency.
Chinese reading and writing proficiency. HSK 3 equivalency.
Audacity: Competence in editing audio content for analysis, consistency, and ease of listening.
FLEx: Experience configuring lexical data for import, export, and database management.
Praat: Experience in utilizing scripts to analyze large numbers of speech files with ease.
Excel: Proficiency in organizing large sums of data for analysis and export.
AWARDS
LSU ASPIRE Grant Recipient – May 2020
LSU Discover Travel Stipend – January 2020