Corpus linguistics · Northern Arizona University
Language is evidence.
I specialize in language comprehension. I use corpus methods, linguistic annotation, and quantitative modeling to turn complex data into concrete evidence of how people process language. My doctoral research in applied linguistics applies these computational and statistical methods to identify the specific factors that make complex communication difficult to navigate.
7
peer-reviewed articles
4.2M
words in a genre-balanced TV corpus
8
languages
Research areas
Explore research →Legal language comprehension
How statutory and institutional language is understood - and where it breaks down. Miranda warnings, jury instructions, plain-language redesign.
Corpus methodology & annotation
Building and tagging large corpora; word-sense disambiguation, lexico-grammatical tagging, and automated genre classification.
Second-language comprehension
Crosslinguistic influence and listening comprehension across eight languages; elicited imitation as a measure of understanding.
Selected publications
All publications →- 2026 — Akbary, M. Sense-Tagging Legal Language: Corpus-Based Disambiguation in Jury Instructions. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law.
- 2026 — Jarvis, S. & Akbary, M. Sentence repetition, paraphrasing, and comprehension: Can you repeat a sentence without understanding it? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 1–35.
- 2024 — Benzaia, L., Jarvis, S., Akbary, M. & Park, L. Investigating the relationship between L2 proficiency and Miranda rights comprehension. International Journal of Speech, Language & the Law, 31(2), 291–327.