Kevin graduated in 2007 with a major in Computer Science. His comps, "Natural Language Processing (NLP) Grocery Recommender Dialogue System," used several NLP technologies to parse the syntactic structure and word meaning of user input. After graduating, he worked as a software developer for a research subsidiary of a major cable corporation. The company develops NLP techniques to make video searchable. Kevin is interested in the use of linguistic structures in NLP efforts (most extant systems use statistical models, largely because linguistic approaches were too clunky for 1990's hardware). After obtaining a degree in linguistics, he hopes to continue pursuing research interests in literacy acquisition. How does the structure of a child's native language affect how he learns to read? Does the script that one reads affect mental representations of the spoken language?