Personal profile
Research interests
I'm interested in computational modeling of language learning, in particular about non-arbitrary form-meaning mappings and their possible role in language learning, language processing and language eveolution. My research agenda revolves around investigating whether non-arbitrary mappings between how words sound and what they mean influence the way children learn language, the way people process and comprehend it, and the way languages evolved as communication systems to be easy to learn and convenient to process.
I'm also interested in using sequence modeling techniques to investigate data science questions in different domains, including but not limited to user intent prediction, educational paths, employment trajectories, and learning tasks.
Teaching
The master course in Natural Language Processingfor the DSS master focuses on core NLP problems and tools and how they are used to develop end-to-end applications such as language generation, text classification and machine translation are reviewed. Students learn to design an NLP tool to address a specific problem (choose the data, pre-process it, extract the relevant information, evaluate the system and improve on it). This course assumes a non-technical audience.
The bachelor course in Computational Linguisticsfor the CSAIprogram (3rd y) covers similar topics but focuses more on the algorithms and the solutions developed in the last decades, to provide students with the ability to implement these solutions. The relation between computational linguistics, cognitive science and AI is also investigated. The focus is more the applied and a rather technical audience is assumed.
I also teach the R practical sessions for theStatistics for CSAI II(CSAI bachelor, 2nd y)
Slides and materials for all courses are available upon request.
Current courses
Click here for my courses.
Education/Academic qualification
Linguistics and theory of literature, PhD, The bootstrapping toolbox: Which cues are more useful to learn lexical categories and why, University of Antwerp
1 Nov 2014 → 28 Feb 2019
Award Date: 16 May 2019
Other, Master’s Degree, Distributional semantics for child directed speech: A multimodal approach, University of Trento
Sept 2012 → 24 Sept 2014
Award Date: 24 Sept 2014
Linguistics and theory of literature, Bachelor’s Degree, Effects of congenital blindness on the semantics of verbs and nouns, University of Trento
16 Sept 2009 → 18 Jul 2012
Award Date: 18 Jul 2012
Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
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SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Fingerprint
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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Thickness is more than affective valence: Evaluative language through the lenses of psycholinguistics
Cassani, G. & Colombo, M., 1 Feb 2026, In: Cognitive Science. 50, 2, 37 p., e70180.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review
Open AccessFile1 Downloads (Pure) -
Does multimodal pre-activation influence linguistic expectations in LLMs and humans?
Kenjeeva, S., Cassani, G., Venhuizen, N. J. & Alishahi, A., 6 Sept 2025. 2 p.Research output: Contribution to conference › Poster › Scientific › peer-review
Open AccessFile2 Downloads (Pure) -
BigNLI: Native Language Identification with Big Bird Embeddings
Kramp, S., Cassani, G. & Emmery, C., 20 May 2024, Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation: LREC-COLING 2024. Calzolari, N., Kan, M.-Y., Hoste, V., Lenci, A., Sakti, S. & Xue, N. (eds.). p. 2375–2382 8 p.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review
Open AccessFile34 Downloads (Pure) -
From grounded spaces to linguistic prediction: multimodal word meaning in context
Kenjeeva, S., Cassani, G., Venhuizen, N. J. & Alishahi, A., Oct 2024.Research output: Contribution to conference › Poster › Other research output
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You Sound Like an Evil Young Man: A Distributional Semantic Analysis of Systematic Form-meaning Associations for Polarity, Gender, and Age in Fictional Characters' Names
Joosse, A. Y., Kuşcu, G. & Cassani, G., 4 Feb 2024, (Accepted/In press) In: Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review
Open AccessFile100 Downloads (Pure)
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Words alone, words together, not only words, new words
Cassani, G. (Speaker)
6 Sept 2023Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk › Scientific
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3rd TSHD Digital Humanities Symposium
Cassani, G. (Contributor), Heersmink, R. (Organiser), Chateau, L. (Organiser), Tomas, F. (Organiser) & Klincewicz, M. (Organiser)
15 Jun 2023 → 16 Jun 2023Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Organising a conference › Scientific
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2nd TSHD Digital Humanities Symposium: Fact and Fiction, Trust and Distrust
Cassani, G. (Contributor), Verhaegh, S. (Organiser), van de Ven, I. (Organiser) & Tomas, F. (Organiser)
29 Jun 2022 → 30 Jun 2022Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Organising a conference › Scientific
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Not Just Form, Not Just Meaning: Consistency in Form-meaning Mappings Predicts Age of Acquisition beyond Semantic and Form Neighborhood Density
Cassani, G. (Speaker)
3 Sept 2021Activity: Talk or presentation types › Oral presentation › Scientific
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Nomen Est Omen: Fictional Characters’ Names Encode Polarity, Gender and Age
Cassani, G. (Speaker)
3 Sept 2021Activity: Talk or presentation types › Oral presentation › Scientific
Prizes
Datasets
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Voting, fast and slow
Cassani, G. (Creator), Marolla, F. (Creator), Maineri, A. M. (Creator) & Tagliabue, J. (Creator), DataverseNL, 19 Dec 2022
DOI: 10.34894/ke8vvy, https://dataverse.nl/citation%3FpersistentId=doi:10.34894/KE8VVY
Dataset