Other researchers believe that CLI is more than production influences, claiming that this linguistic exchange can impact other factors of a learner's identity. Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008) described such affected areas as experiences, knowledge, cognition, development, attention and language use, to name a few, as being major centers for change because of CLI. These ideas suggest that crosslinguistic influence of syntactic, morphological, or phonological changes may just be the surface of one language's influence on the other, and CLI is instead a different developmental use of one's brain.


CLI has been heavily studied by scholars, but there is still much more research needed because of the multitude of components that make up the phenomenon. Firstly, the typology of particular language pairings needs to be researched to differentiate CLI from the general effects bilingualism and bilingual acquisition.


Also, research is needed in specific areas of overlap between particular language pairings and the domains that influence and discourage CLI. For example, most of the research studies involve European language combinations, and there is a significant lack of information regarding language combinations involving non-European languages, indigenous languages, and other minority languages.


More generally, an area of research to be further developed are the effects of CLI in multilingual acquisition of three or more languages. There is limited research on this occurrence.


Gaston, P. (2013)Syntactic error processing in bilingualism: an analysis of the Optional Infinitive stage in child language acquisition (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Yale University.


Odlin, T. (2005). Crosslinguistic Influence And Conceptual Transfer: What Are The Concepts? "Annual Review of Applied Linguistics," "25". doi:10.1017/s0267190505000012


Sentence processing takes place whenever a reader or listener processes a language utterance, either in isolation or in the context of a conversation or a text. Many studies of the human language comprehension process have focused on reading of single utterances (sentences) without context. Extensive research has shown that language comprehension is affected by context preceding a given utterance as well as many other factors.


Sentence comprehension has to deal with ambiguity in spoken and written utterances, for example lexical, structural, and semantic ambiguities. Ambiguity is ubiquitous, but people usually resolve it so effortlessly that they do not even notice it. For example, the sentence "Time flies like an arrow" has (at least) the interpretations "Time moves as quickly as an arrow", "A special kind of fly, called time fly, likes arrows" and "Measure the speed of flies like you would measure the speed of an arrow". Usually, readers will be aware of only the first interpretation. Educated readers though, spontaneously think about the arrow of time but inhibit that interpretation because it deviates from the original phrase and the temporal lobe acts as a switch.


Instances of ambiguity can be classified as local or global ambiguities. A sentence is globally ambiguous if it has two distinct interpretations. Examples are sentences like "Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony" (was it the servant or the actress who was on the balcony?) or "The cop chased the criminal with a fast car" (did the cop or the criminal have a fast car?). Comprehenders may have a preferential interpretation for either of these cases, but syntactically and semantically, neither of the possible interpretations can be ruled out.


Local ambiguities persist only for a short amount of time as an utterance is heard or written and are resolved during the course of the utterance so the complete utterance has only one interpretation. Examples include sentences like "The critic wrote the book was enlightening", which is ambiguous when "The critic wrote the book" has been encountered, but "was enlightening" remains to be processed. Then, the sentence could end, stating that the critic is the author of the book, or it could go on to clarify that the critic wrote something about a book. The ambiguity ends at "was enlightening", which determines that the second alternative is correct.


When readers process a local ambiguity, they settle on one of the possible interpretations immediately without waiting to hear or read more words that might help decide which interpretation is correct (the behaviour is called "incremental processing"). If readers are surprised by the turn the sentence really takes, processing is slowed and is visible for example in reading times. Locally-ambiguous sentences have, therefore, been used as test cases to investigate the influence of a number of different factors on human sentence processing. If a factor helps readers to avoid difficulty, it is clear that the factor plays a factor in sentence processing.


Experimental research has spawned a large number of hypotheses about the architecture and mechanisms of sentence comprehension. Issues like modularity versus interactive processing and serial versus parallel computation of analyses have been theoretical divides in the field.


Serial accounts assume that humans construct only one of the possible interpretations at first and try another only if the first one turns out to be wrong. Parallel accounts assume the construction of multiple interpretations at the same time. To explain why comprehenders are usually only aware of one possible analysis of what they hear, models can assume that all analyses ranked, and the highest-ranking one is entertained.


There are a number of influential models of human sentence processing that draw on different combinations of architectural choices.


The garden path model is a serial modular parsing model. It proposes that a single parse is constructed by a syntactic module. Contextual and semantic factors influence processing at a later stage and can induce re-analysis of the syntactic parse. Re-analysis is costly and leads to an observable slowdown in reading. When the parser encounters an ambiguity, it is guided by two principles: late closure and minimal attachment. The model has been supported with research on the early left anterior negativity, an event-related potential often elicited as a response to phrase structure violations.


Late closure causes new words or phrases to be attached to the current clause. For example, "John said he would leave yesterday" would be parsed as "John said (he would leave yesterday)", and not as "John said (he would leave) yesterday" (i.e., he spoke yesterday).


Minimal attachment is a strategy of parsimony: The parser builds the simplest syntactic structure possible (that is, the one with the fewest phrasal nodes).


Constraint-based theories of language comprehension emphasize how people make use of the vast amount of probabilistic information available in the linguistic signal. Through statistical learning, the frequencies and distribution of events in linguistic environments can be picked upon, which inform language comprehension. As such, language users are said to arrive at a particular interpretation over another during the comprehension of an ambiguous sentence by rapidly integrating these probabilistic constraints.


The good enough approach to language comprehension, developed by Fernanda Ferreira and others, assumes that listeners do not always engage in full detailed


processing of linguistic input. Rather, the system has a tendency to develop shallow and superficial representations


when confronted with some difficulty. The theory takes an approach that somewhat combines both the garden path model and the constraint based model. The theory focuses on two main issues. The first is that representations formed from complex or difficult material are often shallow and incomplete. The second is that limited information sources are often consulted in cases where the comprehension system encounters difficulty. The theory can be put to test using various experiments in psycholinguistics that involve garden path misinterpretation, etc.


Eye tracking has been used to study online language processing. This method has been influential in informing knowledge of reading. Additionally, Tanenhaus et al. (1995) established the visual world paradigm, which takes advantage of eye movements to study online spoken language processing. This area of research capitalizes on the linking hypothesis that eye movements are closely linked to the current focus of attention.


The rise of non-invasive techniques provides myriad opportunities for examining the brain bases of language comprehension. Common examples include positron emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), event-related potentials (ERPs) in electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). These techniques vary in their spatial and temporal resolutions (fMRI has a resolution of a few thousand neurons per pixel, and ERP has millisecond accuracy), and each type of methodology presents a set of advantages and disadvantages for studying a particular problem in language comprehension.


Word recognition, according to Literacy Information and Communication System (LINCS) is "the ability of a reader to recognize written words correctly and virtually effortlessly". It is sometimes referred to as "isolated word recognition" because it involves a reader's ability to recognize words individually from a list without needing similar words for contextual help. LINCS continues to say that "rapid and effortless word recognition is the main component of fluent reading" and explains that these skills can be improved by "practic[ing] with flashcards, lists, and word grids".


An article in "ScienceDaily" suggests that "early word recognition is key to lifelong reading skills". There are different ways to develop these skills. For example, creating flash cards for words that appear at a high frequency is considered a tool for overcoming dyslexia. It has been argued that prosody, the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry, can improve word recognition.


Word recognition is a manner of reading based upon the immediate perception of what word a familiar grouping of letters represents. This process exists in opposition to phonetics and word analysis, as a different method of recognizing and verbalizing visual language (i.e. reading). Word recognition functions primarily on automaticity. On the other hand, phonetics and word analysis rely on the basis of cognitively applying learned grammatical rules for the blending of letters, sounds, graphemes, and morphemes.


Word recognition is measured as a matter of speed, such that a word with a high level of recognition is read faster than a novel one. This manner of testing suggests that comprehension of the meaning of the words being read is not required, but rather the ability to recognize them in a way that allows proper pronunciation. Therefore, context is unimportant, and word recognition is often assessed with words presented in isolation in formats such as flash cards Nevertheless, ease in word recognition, as in fluency, enables proficiency that fosters comprehension of the text being read.


The intrinsic value of word recognition may be obvious due to the prevalence of literacy in modern society. However, its role may be less conspicuous in the areas of literacy learning, second-language learning, and developmental delays in reading. As word recognition is better understood, more reliable and efficient forms of teaching may be discovered for both children and adult learners of first-language literacy. Such information may also benefit second-language learners with acquisition of novel words and letter characters. Furthermore, a better understanding of the processes involved in word recognition may enable more specific treatments for individuals with reading disabilities.


Bouma shape, named after the Dutch vision researcher Herman Bouma, refers to the overall outline, or shape, of a word. Herman Bouma discussed the role of "global word shape" in his word recognition experiment conducted in 1973. Theories of bouma shape became popular in word recognition, suggesting people recognize words from the shape the letters make in a group relative to each other. This contrasts the idea that letters are read individually. Instead, via prior exposure, people become familiar with outlines, and thereby recognize them the next time they are presented with the same word, or bouma.


The slower pace with which people read words written entirely in upper-case, or with alternating upper- and lower-case letters, supports the bouma theory. The theory holds that a novel bouma shape created by changing the lower-case letters to upper-case hinders a person's recall ability. James Cattell also supported this theory through his study, which gave evidence for an effect he called word superiority. This referred to the improved ability of people to deduce letters if the letters were presented within a word, rather than a mix of random letters. Furthermore, multiple studies have demonstrated that readers are less likely to notice misspelled words with a similar bouma shape than misspelled words with a different bouma shape.


Though these effects have been consistently replicated, many of their findings have been contested. Some have suggested that the reading ability of upper-case words is due to the amount of practice a person has with them. People who practice become faster at reading upper-case words, countering the importance of the bouma. Additionally, the word superiority effect might result from familiarity with phonetic combinations of letters, rather than the outlines of words, according to psychologists James McClelland and James Johnson.


Parallel letter recognition is the most widely accepted model of word recognition by psychologists today. In this model, all letters within a group are perceived simultaneously for word recognition. In contrast, the serial recognition model proposes that letters are recognized individually, one by one, before being integrated for word recognition. It predicts that single letters are identified faster and more accurately than many letters together, as in a word. However, this model was rejected because it cannot explain the word superiority effect, which states that readers can identify letters more quickly and accurately in the context of a word rather than in isolation.


The accuracy with which readers recognize words depends on the area of the retina that is stimulated. Reading in English selectively trains specific regions of the left hemiretina for processing this type of visual information, making this part of the visual field optimal for word recognition. As words drift from this optimal area, word recognition accuracy declines. Because of this training, effective neural organization develops in the corresponding left cerebral hemisphere.


Eyes make brief, unnoticeable movements called saccades approximately three to four times per second. Saccades are separated by fixations, which are moments when the eyes are not moving. During saccades, visual sensitivity is diminished, which is called saccadic suppression. This ensures that the majority of the intake of visual information occurs during fixations. Lexical processing does, however, continue during saccades. The timing and accuracy of word recognition relies on where in the word the eye is currently fixating. Recognition is fastest and most accurate when fixating in the middle of the word. This is due to a decrease in visual acuity that results as letters are situated farther from the fixated location and become harder to see.


The word frequency effect suggests that words that appear the most in printed language are easier to recognize than words that appear less frequently. Recognition of these words is faster and more accurate than other words. The word frequency effect is one of the most robust and most commonly reported effects in contemporary literature on word recognition. It has played a role in the development of many theories, such as the bouma shape. Furthermore, the neighborhood frequency effect states that word recognition is slower and less accurate when the target has an orthographic neighbor that is higher in frequency than itself. Orthographic neighbors are words of all the same length that differ by only one letter of that word.


Serif fonts, i.e.: fonts with small appendages at the end of strokes, hinder lexical access. Word recognition is quicker with sans-serif fonts by an average of 8 ms. These fonts have significantly more inter-letter spacing, and studies have shown that responses to words with increased inter-letter spacing were faster, regardless of word frequency and length. This demonstrates an inverse relationship between fixation duration and small increases in inter-letter spacing, most likely due to a reduction in lateral inhibition in the neural network. When letters are farther apart, it is more likely that individuals will focus their fixations at the beginning of words, whereas default letter spacing on word processing software encourages fixation at the center of words.


The role of the frequency effect has been greatly incorporated into the learning process. While the word analysis approach is extremely beneficial, many words defy regular grammatical structures and are more easily incorporated into the lexical memory by automatic word recognition. To facilitate this, many educational experts highlight the importance of repetition in word exposure. This utilizes the frequency effect by increasing the reader's familiarity with the target word, and thereby improving both future speed and accuracy in reading. This repetition can be in the form of flash cards, word-tracing, reading aloud, picturing the word, and other forms of practice that improve the association of the visual text with word recall.


Improvements in technology have greatly contributed to advances in the understanding and research in word recognition. New word recognition capabilities have made computer-based learning programs more effective and reliable. Improved technology has enabled eye-tracking, which monitors individuals' saccadic eye movements while they read. This has furthered understanding of how certain patterns of eye movement increases word recognition and processing. Furthermore, changes can be simultaneously made to text just outside the reader's area of focus without the reader being made aware. This has provided more information on where the eye focuses when an individual is reading and where the boundaries of attention lie.


With this additional information, researchers have proposed new models of word recognition that can be programmed into computers. As a result, computers can now mimic how a human would perceive and react to language and novel words. This technology has advanced to the point where models of literacy learning can be digitally demonstrated. For example, a computer can now mimic a child's learning progress and induce general language rules when exposed to a list of words with only a limited number of explanations. Nevertheless, as no universal model has yet been agreed upon, the generalizability of word recognition models and its simulations may be limited.


Despite this lack of consensus regarding parameters in simulation designs, any progress in the area of word recognition is helpful to future research regarding which learning styles may be most successful in classrooms. Correlations also exist between reading ability, spoken language development, and learning disabilities. Therefore, advances in any one of these areas may assist understanding in inter-related subjects. Ultimately, the development of word recognition may facilitate the breakthrough between "learning to read" and "reading to learn".


James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher


"James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher" is an English sentence used to demonstrate lexical ambiguity and the necessity of punctuation,


which serves as a substitute for the intonation, stress, and pauses found in speech.


In human information processing research, the sentence has been used to show how readers depend on punctuation to give sentences meaning, especially in the context of scanning across lines of text. The sentence is sometimes presented as a puzzle, where the solver must add the punctuation.


The sentence refers to two students, James and John, who are required by an English test to describe a man who had suffered from a cold in the past. John writes "The man had a cold", which the teacher marks incorrect, while James writes the correct "The man had had a cold". Since James's answer was right, it had had a better effect on the teacher.


The sentence is easier to understand with added punctuation and emphasis:


In each of the five "had had" word pairs in the above sentence, the first of the pair is in the past perfect form. The italicized instances denote emphasis of intonation, focusing on the differences in the students' answers, then finally identifying the correct one.


Alternatively, the sentence can also be read as John's answer being better than James', simply by placing the same punctuation in a different arrangement through the sentence:


The sentence can be given as a grammatical puzzle or an item on a test, for which one must find the proper punctuation to give it meaning. Hans Reichenbach used a similar sentence ("John where Jack had...") in his 1947 book "Elements of Symbolic Logic" as an exercise for the reader, to illustrate the different levels of language, namely object language and metalanguage. The intention was for the reader to add the needed punctuation for the sentence to make grammatical sense.


In research showing how people make sense of information in their environment, this sentence was used to demonstrate how seemingly arbitrary decisions can drastically change the meaning, analogous to how changes in the punctuation and quotes in the sentence show that the teacher alternately prefers James's work and John's work (e.g., compare: 'James, while John had had "had", had...' vs. 'James, while John had had "had had", ...').


The sentence is also used to show the semantic vagueness of the word "had", as well as to demonstrate the difference between using a word and mentioning a word.


It has also been used as an example of the complexities of language, its interpretation, and its effects on a person's perceptions.


For the syntactic structure to be clear to a reader, this sentence requires, at a minimum, that the two phrases be separated by using a semicolon, period, en-dash or em-dash. Still, Jasper Fforde's novel "The Well of Lost Plots" employs a variation of the phrase to illustrate the confusion that may arise even from well-punctuated writing:


This effect is more important to humans than what was initially thought. Linguists have pointed out that at least the English language has many false starts and extraneous sounds. The phonemic restoration effect is the brain's way of resolving those imperfections in our speech. Without this effect interfering with our language processing, there would be a greater need for much more accurate speech signals and human speech could require much more precision. For experiments, white noise is necessary because it takes the place of these imperfections in speech. One of the most important factors in language is continuity and in turn intelligibility.


The phonemic restoration effect was first documented in a 1970 paper by Richard M. Warren entitled "Perceptual Restoration of Missing Speech Sounds". The purpose of the experiment was to give a reason to why in background of extraneous sounds, masked individual phonemes were still comprehensible.


In his initial experiments, Warren provided the sentence shown and first replaced the first 's' phoneme in legislatures with extraneous noise, in the form of a cough. In a small group of 20 subjects, 19 did not notice a missing phoneme and one person misidentified the missing phoneme. This indicated that in the absence of a phoneme, the brain filled in the missing phoneme, through top-down processing. This was a phenomenon that was somewhat known at the time, but no one was able to pinpoint why it was occurring or had labeled it. He again did the same experiment with the sentence:


He replaced the 'wh' sound in wheel and the same results were found. All people tested wrote down wheel. Warren later did much research for next several decades on the subject.


Since Warren, much research has been done to test the various aspects of the effect. These aspects include how many phonemes can be removed, what noise is played in replacement of the phoneme, and how different contexts alter the effect.


Neurally, the signs of interrupted or stopped speech can be suppressed in the thalamus and auditory cortex, possibly as a consequence of top-down processing by the auditory system. Key aspects of the speech signal itself are considered to be resolved somewhere in the interface between auditory and language-specific areas (an example is Wernicke's area), in order for the listener to determine what is being said. Normally, the latter is thought to be instantiated at the end stages of the language processing system, but for restorative processes, much remains unknown about whether the same stages are responsible for the ability to actually fill-in the missing phoneme.


People with mild and moderate hearing loss were tested for the effectiveness of phonemic restoration. Those with mild hearing loss performed at the same level of a normal listener. Those with moderate hearing loss had almost no perception and failed to identify the missing phonemes. This research is also dependent on the amount of words the observer is comfortable understanding because of the nature of top-down processing.


For people with cochlear implants, acoustic simulations of the implant indicated the importance of spectral resolution. When the brain is using top-down processing, it uses as much information as it can to make a decision on if the filler signal in the gap belongs to the speech, and with lower resolution, there is less information to make a correct guess. A study with actual cochlear implant users indicated that some implant users can benefit from phonemic restoration, but again they seem to need more speech information (longer duty cycle in this case) to achieve this.


The age effects were studied in children and older adults, to observe if children can benefit from phonemic restoration and if so, at what capacity, and if older adults maintain the restoration capacity in the face of age-related neurophysiological changes.


Children are able to produce results comparable to adults by about the age of 5, however still not doing as well as adults. At such an early age most information is processed through bottom-up processing due to the lack of information to recall from. However, this does mean they are able to use previous knowledge of words to fill in the missing phonemes with much less of their brain developed than adults.


Older adults (older than 65 years) with no or minimal hearing loss show benefit from phonemic restoration. In some conditions restoration effect can be stronger in older adults than in younger adults, even when the overall speech perception scores are lower in older adults. This observation is likely due to strong linguistic and vocabulary skills that are maintained in advanced age.


In children, there was no effect of gender on phonemic restoration.


In adults, instead of completely replacing the phonemes, researchers masked them with tones that are informative(helped the listeners pick the correct phoneme), uninformative(neither helped or hurt the listener select the correct phoneme), or misinformative (hurt the listener in picking the correct phoneme). The results showed that women were much more affected by informative and misinformative cues than men. This evidence suggests that women are influenced by top-down semantic information more than men.


The effect reverses in a reverberation room, which echoes real life more so than the typical quiet rooms used for experimentation. This allows for echoes of the spoken phonemes to act as the replacement noise for the missing phonemes. The additional produced white noise that replaces the phoneme adds its own echo and causes listeners to not perform as well.


Another study by Warren was done to determine the effect of the duration of the replacement phoneme on comprehension. Because the brain processes information optimally at a certain rate, when the gap became approximately the length of the word is when the effect started top breakdown and become ineffective. At this point the effect is no longer effective because the observer is now cognisant of the gap.


Much like the McGurk Effect, when listeners were also able to see the words being spoken, they were much more likely to correctly identify the missing phonemes. Like every sense, the brain will use every piece of information it deems important to make a judgement about what it is perceiving. Using the visual cues of mouth movements, the brain will you both in top-down processing to make a decision about what phoneme is supposed to be heard. Vision is the primary sense for humans and for the most part assists in speech perception the most.


Only when the intensity of the noise replacing the phonemes is the same or louder as the surrounding words, does the effect properly work. This effect is made apparent when listeners hear a sentence with gaps replaced by white noise repeat over and over with the white noise volume increasing with each iteration. The sentence becomes more and more clear to the listener as the white noise is louder.


When a word with the segment 's' is removed and replaced by silence and a comparable noise segment were presented dichotically. Simply put, one ear was hearing the full sentence without phoneme excision and the other ear was hearing a sentence with a 's' sound removed. This version of the phonemic restoration effect was particularly strong because the brain was doing much less guess work with the sentence, because the information was given to the observer. Observers reported hearing exactly the same sentence in both ears, regardless of one of their ears missing a phoneme.


The restoration effect is studied mostly in English and Dutch, where the restoration effect seemed similar between the two languages. While no research directly compared the restoration effect further for other languages, it is assumed that this effect is universal for all languages.


That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is


That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is is an English word sequence demonstrating syntactic ambiguity. It is used as an example illustrating the importance of proper punctuation.


The sequence can be understood as any of four grammatically correct sequences, each with at least four discrete sentences, by adding punctuation:


The first, second, and fourth relate a simple philosophical proverb in the style of Parmenides that all that is, is, and that anything that does not exist does not. The phrase was noted in "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable".


This phrase appeared in the 1968 American movie "Charly", written to demonstrate punctuation to the main character Charly's teacher, in a scene to demonstrate that the surgical operation to make the character smarter had succeeded.


In relation to psychology, pair by association is the action of associating a stimulus with an arbitrary idea or object, eliciting a response, usually emotional. This is done by repeatedly pairing the stimulus with the arbitrary object.


For example, repeatedly pairing images of beautiful women in bathing suits elicits a sexual response in most men. Advertising agencies repeatedly pair products with attractive women in television commercials with the intention of eliciting an emotional or sexually aroused response in the consumer. This causes the consumer to be more likely to buy the product than when presented with a similar product without such an association.


Additionally, there is ongoing research into the effects ecstasy/polystimulant use has on paired-associate task/learning. In a study by Gallagher et al., it was found that those who used ecstasy/polydrugs had in general more false positive responses, clicking yes (in agreement) when asked if a word pair had been previously presented even if the reality was false, compared to non-users. It was proposed that because creating the association between word pairs requires executive resources, which has been known to be hampered in ecstasy users. This is what has prevented the binding of word pairs. However, as stated by the author, it is not possible to fully attribute these deficits in the task, but it bears noting that there are differences occurring.


Behaviorists will often use paired association tests to determine the strength of verbal behavior, in particular, B.F Skinner's concept of the verbal response class called intraverbals.


The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (German: "Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik"; Dutch: "Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholinguïstiek") is a research institute situated on the campus of Radboud University Nijmegen located in Nijmegen, Gelderland, the Netherlands. Founded in 1980 by Pim Levelt, it is the only institution in the world entirely dedicated to psycholinguistics, and is also one of only three among a total of 90 within the Max Planck Society to be located outside Germany. The Nijmegen-based institute currently occupies 5th position in the Ranking Web of World Research Centers among all Max Planck institutes (7th by size, 4th by visibility). It currently employs about 235 people.


The institute specializes in language comprehension, language production, language acquisition, language and genetics, and the relation between language and cognition. Its mission is to undertake basic research into the psychological, social and biological foundations of language. The goal is to understand how human minds and brains process language, how language interacts with other aspects of mind, and how to learn languages of quite different types. The MPI for Psycholinguistics is a globally recognized center of linguistics and presents with its international archive of endangered languages a significant contribution to the preservation of the common heritage of mankind. This archive is sponsored since 2000 by the Volkswagen Foundation and offers on the internet about 50 projects.


The MPI for Psycholinguistics has six primary organizational units:


The Language and Cognition Department, headed by Stephen C. Levinson, investigates the relationship between language, culture and general cognition, making use of the "natural laboratory" of language variation. In this way, the department brings the perspective of language diversity to bear on a range of central problems in the language sciences. It maintains over a dozen field sites around the world, where languages are described (often for the first time), field experiments conducted and extended corpora of natural language usage collected. In addition, the department is characterized by a diversity of methods, ranging from linguistic analysis and ethnography to developmental perspectives, from psycholinguistic experimentation to conversation analysis, from corpus statistics to brain imaging, and from phylogenetics to linguistic data mining.


Established in October 2010, the Language and Genetics Department is headed by Simon E. Fisher. The department takes advantage of the latest innovations in molecular methods to discover how the human genome helps to build a language-ready brain. It aims to uncover the DNA variations which ultimately affect different facets of human communicative abilities, not only in children with language-related disorders but also in the general population. Crucially our work attempts to bridge the gaps between genes, brains, speech and language, by integrating molecular findings with data from other levels of analysis, including cell biology, experimental psychology and neuroimaging. In addition, it hopes to trace the evolutionary history and worldwide diversity of key genes, which may shed new light on language origins.


The Language Comprehension Department, headed by Anne Cutler, undertakes empirical investigation and computational modeling of the understanding of spoken language. Until 2009, the work within the department was largely divided between two research projects: decoding continuous speech and phonological learning for speech perception. From 2009 onwards, most of the work of the department goes into the project called Mechanisms and Representations in Comprehending Speech. This project focuses on core theoretical issues in speech comprehension such as on how episodic memories - such as hearing someone speak in an unfamiliar dialect - influence the speech perception system, or how is prior knowledge about one's language (phonotactic probabilities, lexical knowledge, frequent versus infrequent word combinations) used during perception.


While still under reorganization, the Language Acquisition Department until September 2012 investigated processes of language acquisition and use in a broad perspective. The department combined attention to both first and second languages, researching production as well as comprehension of speakers of different ages and cultures, and the developmental relationship between language and cognition. The focus was on morpho-syntax, semantics and discourse structure. Headed by Wolfgang Klein, Language Acquisition previously launched three institute projects, namely, Information Structure in Language Acquisition, Categories in Language and Cognition and Multimodal Interaction. The Language Acquisition Department has reopened in 2016 heading by Caroline Rowland.


The Neurobiology of Language Department, headed by Peter Hagoort, focuses on the study of language production, language comprehension, and language acquisition from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. This includes using neuroimaging, behavioral and virtual reality techniques to investigate the language system and its neural underpinnings. Research facilities at the Max Planck Institute include a high-density electroencephalography (EEG) lab, a virtual reality laboratory and several behavioral laboratories. Having a part of the department stationed at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, it also has access to a whole-head 275 channel MEG system, MRI-scanners at 1.5, 3 and 7 Tesla, a TMS-lab, and several additional EEG laboratories.


The Psychology of Language Department, headed by Antje S. Meyer, identifies characteristics of the cognitive system that determine behavior in a broad range of linguistic tasks and the relationships between language production, comprehension, and learning via speaking, listening and cognition. The department also understands variability in adult language production and comprehension. Using various approaches, the Psychology of Language utilizes a combination of experimental and correlational work and inclusion of diverse samples of participants. With such methods, it has close links to the Language and Genetics and Neurobiology of Language departments.


This MPI research group, headed by Daniel Haun, investigates the social and cognitive foundations of human communication in infancy specifically on infants' developing social cognition and social motivation in relation to their emerging prelinguistic communication within social and cultural contexts. Their work is motivated by the idea that there is a psychological basis of human communication that develops ontogenetically prior to language and can be first expressed in gestures.


Started in 2009, the research group investigates language diversity and change as part of an integrated cultural evolutionary system. Headed by Michael Dunn, the group takes a modern evolutionary perspective, using computational tools from genetics and biology, and integrating probabilistic, quantified approaches to phylogenetics with rigorous tests of different models of the interaction between elements of language, contact and geography, and cultural variation.


The research group, headed by Robert D. Van Valin, Jr., tries to determine the role of information structure in explaining cross-linguistic differences in grammatical systems out of the idea that the interaction of pragmatics and grammar happens on several levels and differs from language to language. Another major task of the group is to investigate and re-evaluate the status of the information structure primitives (topic, focus, contrast, etc.) as cross-linguistically valid categories. To achieve this, the members of the group combine extensive corpus analysis of the data in their respective languages with production experiments; all findings are further cross-checked through standard information structure tests (question-answer pairs, aboutness tests, association with focus sensitive items).


Change from below is linguistic change that occurs from below the level of consciousness. It is language change that occurs from social, cognitive, or physiological pressures from within the system. This is in opposition to change from above, wherein language change is a result of elements imported from other systems.


Change from below first enters the language from below the level of consciousness; that is, speakers are generally unaware of the linguistic change. These linguistic changes enter language primarily through the vernacular and spread throughout the community without speakers' conscious awareness. Since change from below is initially non-salient, the changing features are not marked characteristics and are difficult for speakers or linguists to perceive. As the changes occur, they will ultimately become stable changes that are stigmatized.


New linguistic changes that enter the language from below are most commonly used by the interior socioeconomic classes, as displayed by William Labov's curvilinear principle. Change from below is seen in Labov's Philadelphia study, where a series of new vowel changes was most often used by the interior classes. Age and gender similarly affect the way changes occur, where younger or female individuals are more likely to exhibit the change than older or male individuals in the community. However, gender, age, and social class act independently in transmission.


Change from below challenges societal norms; women (especially upper working class women, and those who are socially entrenched and involved in their community) lead this linguistic change. However, forms that have overt prestige are more prized by these groups, so when changes from below rise to the level of awareness, they are frequently stigmatized and rejected by the very people using them.


Change from below typically begins in informal speech. Often, those utilizing the changing forms are young speakers using the language as a form of resistance to authority. The changes made by individuals such as these, who are upwardly mobile and intentionally nonconformist, then diffuse into the speech of broader groups as described by Bill Labov’s Constructive Nonconformity Principle.


The first phase of change from below is the acquisition of language by children. Typically, children learn the patterns of female caretakers.


The second phase of change from below is the advancement of informal changes by young individuals.


The third phase of change from below sees the individual’s speech shift towards more standard forms, and the change become socioeconomically diffused and stigmatized.


Experimental pragmatics is an academic area that uses experiments (concerning children's and adults' comprehension of sentences, utterances, or story-lines) to test theories about the way people understand utterances—and, by extension, one another—in context (this is an area known as pragmatics).


Given that an utterance generally does not fully determine the message it is destined to convey, the main question this field asks is, how does a listener fully comprehend a speaker's intention? For example, if one were to read about a singer who says "That was a brilliant performance" to her colleague after they both sang beautifully, the utterance would seem sincere and truthful. If the same utterance were made after both sang terribly, the utterance would be perceived as ironic. The very same utterance can have two entirely different interpretations as a function of the speaker's intended meaning.


Experimental pragmatics adopts existing cognitive and psycholinguistic techniques in order to carry out its investigations. While developmental progressions can reveal how interlocutors across several ages interpret utterances with clear pragmatic potential, reading times can reveal how sentences are processed (as relatively easy or difficult). While EEGs can reveal sharp on-line measures for determining how a word is integrated into a sentence, fMRI can reveal what areas of the brain are recruited when processing one reading over another.


Philosophers have laid the groundwork for much of the work in pragmatics. Modern investigations can be traced back to Paul Grice and his philosophical approach to utterance understanding. Grice’s initial contribution was to propose a novel analysis in which he distinguished between "sentence meaning" (what the words and grammar mean) and "speaker’s meaning" (what the speaker actually intended to communicate by uttering a sentence). According to Grice, understanding an utterance requires access to, or making hypotheses about, the speaker’s intention and thus involves going beyond the meanings of the words in the sentence.


Two major European grants have supported the field. The European Science Foundation's (ESF's) Research Network Program (EURO-XPRAG) sponsored European collaborations, workshops and conferences between 2009 and 2014. The German Research Foundation (DFG) established the priority program XPRAG.de in 2014.


In linguistics, predicate transfer is the reassignment of a property to an object which would not otherwise inherently have that property. Thus, the expression "I am parked out back" conveys the meaning of "parked" from "car" to the property of "I possess a car". This avoids incorrect polysemous interpretations of "parked": that "people can be parked", or that "I am pretending to be a car", or that "I am something which can be parked". This is supported by the morphology: "We are parked out back" does not mean that there are multiple cars; rather, that there are multiple passengers (having the property of being in possession of a car).


The question whether the use of language influences spatial cognition is closely related to theories of linguistic relativity—also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis—which states that the structure of a language affects cognitive processes of the speaker. Debates about this topic are mainly focused on the extent to which language influences spatial cognition or if it does at all. Research also concerns differences between perspectives on spatial relations across cultures, what these imply, and the exploration of potentially partaking cognitive mechanisms.


Research shows that frames of reference for spatial cognition differ across cultures and that language could play a crucial role in structuring these different frames.


Three types of perspectives on space can be distinguished:


Languages like English or Dutch do not exclusively make use of relative descriptions but these appear to be most frequent compared to intrinsic or absolute descriptions. An absolute frame of reference is usually restricted to large scale geographical descriptions in these languages. Speakers of the Australian languages Arrernte, Guugu Yimithirr, and Kuuk Thaayore only use absolute descriptions.


The relative and intrinsic perspectives seem to be connected as there is no known language which applies only one of these frames of reference exclusively.


(1.) It has been argued that people universally use an egocentric representation to solve non-linguistic spatial tasks which would align with the relative frame of reference.


(2.) Other researchers have proposed that people apply multiple frames of reference during their daily lives and that languages reflect these cognitive structures.


In the light of the current body of literature the second view seems to be the more plausible one.


The dominant frames of reference have found to be reflected in the common types of gesticulation in the respective language. Speakers of absolute languages would typically represent an object moving north with a hand movement towards the north. Whereas speakers of relative languages typically depict a movement of an object to the right with a hand movement to the right, independent of the direction they are facing during speech. Speakers of intrinsic languages would, for example, typically represent human movement from the perspective of the mover with a sagittal hand gesture away from the speaker.


A study by Boroditsky and Gaby compared speakers of an absolute language—Pormpuraawans—with English speakers. The task on which they compared them consisted of the spatial arrangement of cards which showed a temporal progression. The result was that the speakers of the relative language (Americans) exclusively chose to represent time spatially as progressing from left (earlier time) to right (later time). Whereas the Pormpuraawans took the direction they faced into account and preferred to depict time as progressing from east (earlier time) to west (later time) the most.


Confounding variables could potentially explain a significant proportion of the measured difference in performance between the linguistic frames of reference.


These can be categorized into three types of confounding factors:


Gentner, Özyürek, Gürcanli, and Goldin-Meadow found that deaf children, who lacked a conventional language, did not use gestures to convey spatial relations (see home sign). Building on that, they showed that deaf children performed significantly worse on a task of spatial cognition compared to hearing children. They concluded that the acquisition of (spatial) language is an important factor in shaping spatial cognition.


Several mechanisms accounting for or contributing to the possible effect of language on cognition have been suggested:


Code-mixing is the mixing of two or more languages or language varieties in speech.


Some scholars use the terms "code-mixing" and "code-switching" interchangeably, especially in studies of syntax, morphology, and other formal aspects of language. Others assume more specific definitions of code-mixing, but these specific definitions may be different in different subfields of linguistics, education theory, communications etc.


Code-mixing is similar to the use or creation of pidgins; but while a pidgin is created across groups that do not share a common language, code-mixing may occur within a multilingual setting where speakers share more than one language.


Some linguists use the terms code-mixing and code-switching more or less interchangeably. Especially in formal studies of syntax, morphology, etc., both terms are used to refer to utterances that draw from elements of two or more grammatical systems. These studies are often interested in the alignment of elements from distinct systems, or on constraints that limit switching.


Some work defines code-mixing as the placing or mixing of various linguistic units (affixes, words, phrases, clauses) from two different grammatical systems within the same sentence and speech context, while code-switching is the placing or mixing of units (words, phrases, sentences) from two codes within the same speech context. The structural difference between code-switching and code-mixing is the position of the altered elements—for code-switching, the modification of the codes occurs intersententially, while for code-mixing, it occurs intrasententially.


In other work the term code-switching emphasizes a multilingual speaker's movement from one grammatical system to another, while the term code-mixing suggests a hybrid form, drawing from distinct grammars. In other words, "code-mixing" emphasizes the formal aspects of language structures or linguistic competence, while "code-switching" emphasizes linguistic performance.


While many linguists have worked to describe the difference between code-switching and borrowing of words or phrases, the term code-mixing may be used to encompass both types of language behavior.


While linguists who are primarily interested in the structure or form of code-mixing may have relatively little interest to separate code-mixing from code-switching, some sociolinguists have gone to great lengths to differentiate the two phenomena. For these scholars, code-switching is associated with particular pragmatic effects, discourse functions, or associations with group identity. In this tradition, the terms "code-mixing" or "language alternation" are used to describe more stable situations in which multiple languages are used without such pragmatic effects. See also Code-mixing as fused lect, below.


In studies of bilingual language acquisition, "code-mixing" refers to a developmental stage during which children mix elements of more than one language. Nearly all bilingual children go through a period in which they move from one language to another without apparent discrimination. This differs from code-switching, which is understood as the socially and grammatically appropriate use of multiple varieties.


Beginning at the babbling stage, young children in bilingual or multilingual environments produce utterances that combine elements of both (or all) of their developing languages. Some linguists suggest that this code-mixing reflects a lack of control or ability to differentiate the languages. Others argue that it is a product of limited vocabulary; very young children may know a word in one language but not in another. More recent studies argue that this early code-mixing is a demonstration of a developing ability to code-switch in socially appropriate ways.


For young bilingual children, code-mixing may be dependent on the linguistic context, cognitive task demands, and interlocutor. Code-mixing may also function to fill gaps in their lexical knowledge. Some forms of code-mixing by young children may indicate risk for language impairment.


In psychology and in psycholinguistics the label "code-mixing" is used in theories that draw on studies of language alternation or code-switching to describe the cognitive structures underlying bilingualism. During the 1950s and 1960s, psychologists and linguists treated bilingual speakers as, in Grosjean's term, "two monolinguals in one person". This "fractional view" supposed that a bilingual speaker carried two separate mental grammars that were more or less identical to the mental grammars of monolinguals and that were ideally kept separate and used separately. Studies since the 1970s, however, have shown that bilinguals regularly combine elements from "separate" languages. These findings have led to studies of code-mixing in psychology and psycholinguistics.


Sridhar and Sridhar define code-mixing as "the transition from using linguistic units (words, phrases, clauses, etc.) of one language to using those of another within a single sentence". They note that this is distinct from code-switching in that it occurs in a single sentence (sometimes known as "intrasentential switching") and in that it does not fulfill the pragmatic or discourse-oriented functions described by sociolinguists. (See Code-mixing in sociolinguistics, above.) The practice of code-mixing, which draws from competence in two languages at the same time suggests that these competences are not stored or processed separately. Code-mixing among bilinguals is therefore studied in order to explore the mental structures underlying language abilities.


A "mixed language" or a "fused lect" is a relatively stable mixture of two or more languages. What some linguists have described as "codeswitching as unmarked choice" or "frequent codeswitching" has more recently been described as "language mixing", or in the case of the most strictly grammaticalized forms as "fused lects".


In areas where code-switching among two or more languages is very common, it may become normal for words from both languages to be used together in everyday speech. Unlike code-switching, where a switch tends to occur at semantically or sociolinguistically meaningful junctures, this code-mixing has no specific meaning in the local context. A fused lect is identical to a mixed language in terms of semantics and pragmatics, but fused lects allow less variation since they are fully grammaticalized. In other words, there are grammatical structures of the fused lect that determine which source-language elements may occur.


A mixed language is different from a creole language. Creoles are thought to develop from pidgins as they become nativized. Mixed languages develop from situations of code-switching. (See the distinction between code-mixing and pidgin above.)


There are many names for specific mixed languages or fused lects. These names are often used facetiously or carry a pejorative sense. Named varieties include the following, among others.


Whereas some are more recent, for example, in his play Pygmalion George Bernard Shaw famously recognised the disparities of accent (even in a native context) when he wrote:


The "own-accent bias" is the inclination toward, and more positive judgement of, individuals with the same accent as yourself compared to those with a different accent. There are two main theories that attempt to explain this bias: affective processing and prototype representation.


The affective processing approach proposes that the positive-bias exhibited for others who speak with an own-accent is produced by a (potentially unconscious) emotional reaction. Put simply, people like others who have the same accent as themselves for that precise reason; they like it. This theory has developed, and draws support, from neuroscientific research investigating affective prosody (a key component underlying accent) and vocal emotion, which has found activation (predominantly in the right hemisphere) in important brain regions associated with the processing of emotion. These regions include:


Additional to the processing of memory and emotion, the amygdalae have important roles as “relevance detectors" for the discernment of relevant social information. Therefore, these brain regions that deal with social relevance and vocal emotion are probable candidates for a neural network concerning accent-based group membership that would drive the affective processing of accents.


Rebecca Treiman is an American psychologist. She is the Burke and Elizabeth High Baker Professor of Child Developmental Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and head of the Reading and Language Lab there. Treiman's research focuses on spelling and reading, and especially on the linguistic factors that affect these processes.


Born in Princeton, New Jersey to Sam Bard Treiman and Joan Little Treiman, Rebecca Treiman received a B.A. in linguistics from Yale University (1976) and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania (1980). She was a faculty member at Indiana University and Wayne State University before moving to Washington University in St. Louis.


Treiman has written two books on children's spelling, and has published research articles on the processes involved in reading and spelling in children and adults. She has over 200 publications and an h-index of over 85. In addition, Treiman has edited or co-edited several books on spelling and reading. Treiman was editor in chief of the "Journal of Memory and Language" from 1997 to 2001. She was awarded the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading in 2014.


James Bruce Tomblin (born February 10, 1944) is a language and communication scientist and an expert on the epidemiology and genetics of developmental language disorders (DLD). He holds the position of Professor Emeritus of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Iowa.


Tomblin received the Alfred K. Kawana Award for Lifetime Achievement in Publications from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) in 2009 and ASHA Honors in 2010. He received the Callier Prize in Communication Disorders in 2011 for "remarkable advances in the epidemiology, etiology, assessment and treatment of children's language disorders."


Tomblin has co-edited several books including "Understanding Individual Differences in Language Development Across the School Years" (with Marilyn Nippold), and U"nderstanding Developmental Language Disorders: From Theory to Practice" (with Courtenay Norbury and Dorothy V. M. Bishop).


Tomblin went to La Verne College from 1963–1966, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology. He attended graduate school at the University of Redlands from 1966–1967, where he received his Master of Arts in Speech Pathology and was awarded his membership in American Speech and Hearing Association Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech-Language Pathology (CCC-SLP). Tomblin completed his PhD in Communication Disorders at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970. He held faculty positions at Syracuse University and SUNY Upstate Medical Center prior to joining the faculty of the University of Iowa in 1972.


Tomblin was named Spriestersbach Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Iowa in 1999 and was named Honorary Fellow of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in 2013. His research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.


Elissa Lee Newport is a Professor of Neurology and Director of the Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery at Georgetown University. She specializes in language acquisition and developmental psycholinguistics, focusing on the relationship between language development and language structure, and most recently on the effects of pediatric stroke on the organization and recovery of language.


Newport graduated from Ladue Horton Watkins High School in Ladue, Missouri in 1965.


Newport attended Wellesley College from 1965 to 1967 and in 1969 graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University. Newport received a Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975, where her advisors were Lila Gleitman and Henry Gleitman.


She was a member of the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Illinois before joining the faculty at the University of Rochester, where she was chair of the department and the George Eastman Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. In July 2012, she joined the faculty at Georgetown University where she became the founding director of the newly established Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery. Dr. Newport is married to Ted Supalla, who is also a professor in the Department of Neurology at Georgetown University.


In 2017, Newport and eight other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit with attorney Ann Olivarius against the University of Rochester for sexual misconduct by Professor Florian Jaeger of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department. The lawsuit followed upon an independent investigation by the university, about which Newman said "It is not acceptable to say that people have behaved offensively and inappropriately to our students, but nobody did anything wrong. It is not an acceptable conclusion to arrive at. Shame on you." In 2020, the University settled the case for $9.4 million.


Newport has been recognized by a number of organizations for the impact of her theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of language acquisition. She has been elected as a fellow in the American Philosophical Society, the Association for Psychological Science, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the Cognitive Science Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, and the Packard Foundation.


In 2015, she was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Computer and Cognitive Sciences. She had previously received the Claude Pepper Award of Excellence from the NIH, and the William James Lifetime Achievement Award for Basic Research, the highest honor given by the Association for Psychological Science (APS).


Victoria Alexandra Fromkin (; May 16, 1923 – January 19, 2000) was an American linguist who taught at UCLA. She studied slips of the tongue, mishearing, and other speech errors and applied this to phonology, the study of how the sounds of a language are organized in the mind.


Fromkin was born in Passaic, New Jersey as "Victoria Alexandra Landish" on May 16, 1923. She earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1944. She married Jack Fromkin, a childhood friend from Passaic, in 1948, and they settled in Los Angeles, California. She decided to head back to school to study linguistics in her late 30s. She enrolled at UCLA, received her master's in 1963 and her Ph.D in 1965. Her thesis was entitled, "Some phonetic specifications of linguistic units: an electromyographic investigation". That same year, Fromkin joined the faculty of the linguistics department at UCLA.


Her line of research mainly dealt with speech errors and slips of the tongue. She collected more than 12,000 examples of slips of the tongue, which were analyzed in a number of scholarly publications, notably her 1971 "Language" article and an edited volume, "Speech Errors as Linguistic Evidence".


From 1971 to 1975, Fromkin was part of a team of linguistic researchers studying the speech of the "feral child" known as Genie. Genie had spent the first 13 years of her life in severe isolation, and Fromkin and her associates hoped that her case would illuminate the process of language acquisition after the critical period. However, the study ended after rancorous disputes over Genie's care, and the loss of funding from the National Institute of Mental Health. Fromkin published several papers about Genie's linguistic development, and her PhD student, Susan Curtiss, wrote a dissertation about Genie's linguistic development under Fromkin's supervision.


In 1974, Fromkin was commissioned by the producers of the children's television series "Land of the Lost" to create a constructed language for a species of primitive cavemen/primates called the Pakuni. Fromkin developed a 300-word vocabulary and syntax for the series, and translated scripts into her created Pakuni language for the series' first two seasons.


For the action-sci-fi movie Blade (film), Fromkin created another constructed language for the vampires in the film.


She became the first woman in the University of California system to be Vice Chancellor of Graduate Programs. She held this position from 1980 to 1989. She was elected President of the Linguistic Society of America in 1985. Fromkin was also chairwoman of the board of governors of the Academy of Aphasia. She was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1996.


Fromkin died at the age of 76 on January 19, 2000 from colon cancer. The Linguistic Society of America established the "Victoria A. Fromkin Prize for Distinguished Service" award in her honor in 2001. This award recognizes individuals who have performed extraordinary service to the discipline and to the Society throughout their career.


Fromkin contributed to the area of linguistics known as speech errors. She created "Fromkin's Speech Error Database", for which data collection is ongoing.


Fromkin recorded nine different types of speech errors. The following are examples of each:


Fromkin theorized that slips of the tongue can occur at many levels including syntactic, phrasal, lexical or semantic, morphological, phonological. She also believed that slips of the tongue could occur as many different process procedures. The different forms were:


Fromkin's research helps support the argument that language processing is not modular. The argument for modularity claims that language is localized, domain-specific, mandatory, fast, and encapsulated. Her research on slips of the tongue has demonstrated that when people make slips of the tongue it usually happens on the same level, indicating that each level has a distinct place in the person's brain. Phonemes switch with phonemes, stems with stems, and morphemes switch with other morphemes.


Crain was awarded an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship (2004–2009), and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (2006–current). He is currently the chair of the National Committee on Mind and Brain (Australian Academy of Science), and is a presidential nominee on the MIT Corporation Visiting Committee for the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. Crain is a visiting professor at the Beijing Language and Culture University, China, and at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Japan. He was appointed Macquarie University Distinguished Professor in 2010.


Morton Ann Gernsbacher is Vilas Research Professor and Sir Frederic Bartlett Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is a specialist in autism and psycholinguistics and has written and edited professional and lay books and over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on these subjects. She is currently on the advisory board of the journal "Psychological Science in the Public Interest" and associate editor for "Cognitive Psychology," and she has previously held editorial positions for "Memory & Cognition" and "Language and Cognitive Processes." She was also president of the Association for Psychological Science in 2007.


Gernsbacher received a B.A. from the University of North Texas in 1976, an M.S. from University of Texas at Dallas in 1980, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in Human Experimental Psychology in 1983. She was employed at the University of Oregon from 1983-1992 before joining the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she has remained ever since.


Gernsbacher is married and has one child.


Marta Kutas (born September 2, 1949) is a Professor and Chair of cognitive science and an adjunct professor of neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego. She also directs the Center for Research in Language at UCSD. Kutas is known for discovering the N400, an event-related potential (ERP) component typically elicited by unexpected linguistic stimuli, with her colleague Steven Hillyard in one of the first studies in what is now the field of neurolinguistics.


Kutas received a B.A. in 1971 from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in 1977 from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Diego in 1980. She then accepted a position as a research neuroscientist in the Department of Neurosciences at UCSD, and she has been a member of the Department of Cognitive Science at UCSD since its founding in 1988. In 2018 Kutas was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.


Thomas G. Bever (born December 9, 1939) is a Regent's Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience at the University of Arizona. He has been a leading figure in psycholinguistics, focusing on the cognitive and neurological bases of linguistic universals, among other pursuits. Bever received a B.A. in linguistics and psychology from Harvard University in 1961, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967; he studied with Noam Chomsky, George A. Miller, and Jean Piaget. He taught at Rockefeller University from 1967–1969, Columbia University from 1970–1986 (where he was involved with Project Nim), and the University of Rochester from 1985–1995, before accepting his current position at the University of Arizona, where he has remained ever since.


Bever is notable for his study of garden path sentences such as "The horse raced past the barn fell", as well as his analysis by synthesis model of sentence processing, developed with David Townsend. In recent decades, Bever has studied the differences in language processing between righthanders with familial handedness and righthanders without left-handed relatives.


He was a co-founder of the journal "Cognition".


Petitto's research and discoveries span several scientific disciplines. Her early work with Nim Chimpsky and her later work with humans, encompasses anthropology, comparative ethology, evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive science, theoretical linguistics, philosophy, psychology, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, child development, evolutionary psychology, American Sign Language, deaf studies, and bilingualism. Her overall discoveries involve:


Advancement of New Discipline: Petitto had an early role in the creation of a new scientific discipline with her colleague and husband Kevin Niall Dunbar, which they termed Educational Neuroscience. Educational Neuroscience is a sister discipline of Cognitive Neuroscience, in which basic neuroscience and behavioral science discoveries about the developing brain and the growing child are joined with their translational implications, towards the ultimate goal of solving core problems in society and the education of young children.


Taken together, Petitto's research discoveries and scientific writings have offered testable hypotheses and theory regarding the neural basis for the brain's specialization for human language, the types of language features a child must minimally be exposed to (and when) in early life (sensitive or critical periods), what happens if early critical periods are missed, and how best to facilitate optimal language learning in all children acquiring all human languages be they signed or spoken.


After her undergraduate work with Nim Chimpsky, Petitto went on to make discoveries about the linguistic structure, acquisition, and representation in the brain of the world's natural signed languages, especially American Sign Language (ASL). Using signed languages as a new "microscope" to discover the central/universal properties of human language in the brain (those that are distinct from the modality of language transmission and reception), Petitto focused on the following lines of research:


Petitto's more recent studies involve the use of a combination of four disciplines:


Petitto is the recipient of over twenty international prizes and awards including,


Michael Tomasello (born January 18, 1950) is an American developmental and comparative psychologist, as well as a linguist. He is professor of psychology at Duke University.


Earning many prizes and awards from the end of the 1990s onward, he is considered one of today's most authoritative developmental and comparative psychologists. He is "one of the few scientists worldwide who is acknowledged as an expert in multiple disciplines". His "pioneering research on the origins of social cognition has led to revolutionary insights in both developmental psychology and primate cognition."


Tomasello was born in Bartow, Florida. He received his bachelor's degree 1972 from Duke University and his doctorate in Experimental Psychology 1980 from University of Georgia.


He was a professor of psychology and anthropology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, US, during the 1980s and 1990s. Subsequently, he moved to Germany to become co-director of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and later also honorary professor at University of Leipzig and co-director of the Wolfgang Kohler Primate Research Center. 2016 he became Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, where he now is James F. Bonk Distinguished Professor.


He works on child language acquisition as a crucially important aspect of the enculturation process. He is a critic of Noam Chomsky's universal grammar, rejecting the idea of an innate universal grammar and instead proposing a functional theory of language development (sometimes called the social-pragmatic theory of language acquisition or usage-based approach to language acquisition) in which children learn linguistic structures through intention-reading and pattern-finding in their discourse interactions with others.


Tomasello also studies broader cognitive skills in a comparative light at the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center in Leipzig. With his research team, he created a set of experimental devices to test toddlers' (from 6 months to 24 months) and apes' spatial, instrumental, and social cognition; the outcome of which is that social (even ultrasocial) cognition is what truly sets human apart.


Uniqueness of human social cognition: broad outlines.


More specifically, Tomasello argues that apes lack a series of skills:


Tomasello sees these skills as being preceded and encompassed by the capacity to share attention and intention (collective intentionality), an evolutionary novelty that would have emerged as a cooperative integrating of apes skills that formerly worked in competition.


The sharing of attention and of intention.


Tomasello's defense, use and deepening of the shared attention and intention hypothesis rely on the experimental data asserted to above (see also). Tomasello also resorts to an evolutionary two-step scenario (see below), and to philosophical concepts borrowed from Paul Grice, John Searle, Margaret Gilbert, Michael Bratman, and anthropologist Dan Sperber.


For Tomasello, this two-step evolutionary path of macro ecological pressures impacting micro-level skills in representation, inferences and self-monitoring, does not hold because natural selection would see internal mechanisms. "Cognitive processes are a product of natural selection, but they are not its target. Indeed, natural selection cannot even "see" cognition; it can only "see" the effects of cognition in organizing and regulating overt actions." Ecological pressures would have put prior cooperative or mutualistic behaviors at such an advantage against competition as to create a new selective pressure favoring new cognitive skills, which would have posed new challenges, in an autocatalytic way.


Echoing the phylogenetic path, humans' unique skills at joint and collective intentionality develop during the individual's lifetime by scaffolding, not only on simple skills like distinguishing animate/inanimate matter, but also on the communicative conventions and institutions forming the socio-cultural environment, forming feedback loops that enrich and deepen both cultural ground and individual's prior skills. "[B]asic skills evolve phylogenetically, enabling the creation of cultural products historically, which then provide developing children with the biological and cultural tools they need to develop ontogenetically".


The sharing of attention and of intention is taken to be prior to language in evolutionary time and in an individual's lifetime, while conditioning language's acquisition through the parsing of joint attentional scenes into actors, objects, events and the like. More broadly, Tomasello sees the sharing of attention and of intention as the roots of human cultural world (the roots of conventions, of group identity, of institutions): ""Human reasoning, even when it is done internally with the self, is ... shot through and through with a kind of collective normativity in which the individuals regulate her actions and thinking based on the group's normative conventions and standards".


Willem Johannes Maria (Pim) Levelt (born 17 May 1938 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch psycholinguist. He is an influential researcher of human language acquisition and speech production. He developed a comprehensive theory of the cognitive processes involved in the act of speaking, including the significance of the "mental lexicon". Levelt was the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. He also served as president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences between 2002 and 2005, of which he has been member since 1978.


Levelt became a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 1993. In 2000 he became a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. Levelt became a corresponding member (living abroad) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2002. In 2010 Levelt was awarded the "Orden Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste", receiving the orden in person from the President of Germany on 30 May 2011.


Dan Isaac Slobin (born May 7, 1939) is a Professor Emeritus of psychology and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Slobin has made major contributions to the study of children's language acquisition, and his work has demonstrated the importance of cross-linguistic comparison for the study of language acquisition and psycholinguistics in general.


Slobin received a B.A. in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1960 and a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University in 1964. In addition to working at the University of California, Berkeley, Slobin has served as a visiting professor at several universities around the world, including Boğaziçi University, Tel-Aviv University, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and Stanford University.


Slobin has extensively studied the organization of information about spatial relations and motion events by speakers of different languages, including both children and adults. He has argued that becoming a competent speaker of a language requires learning certain language-specific modes of thinking, which he dubbed "thinking for speaking". Slobin's "thinking for speaking" view can be described as a contemporary, moderate version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which claims that the language we learn shapes the way we perceive reality and think about it. This view is often contrasted with the "language acquisition device" view of Noam Chomsky and others, who think of language acquisition as a process largely independent of learning and cognitive development.


Slobin did a research study, published in 2007, titled the "Children use canonical sentence schemas: A crosslinguistic study of word order and inflections." The aim of the study was to show that we must not generalize that the acquiring of English language in children is the same as the acquiring of "x" languages. Slobin proposed that children "construct a canonical sentence schema as a preliminary organizing structure for language behaviour. This canonical sentence schemas provide a functional explanation for the order of words and inflectional strategies based on each child's attempt to quickly master basic communication skills in his or her languages."


Slobin believes that language is acquired and is a learning as well as cognitive development in a child. His choice of method is the result of his theoretical stance where, in task-comparison activity, his subjects get exposed to a consistent variety of tests, administered differently over a period of ten days. In task-comparison, his subjects get to perform or answer questions by displaying the instructions given.


Slobin also designed a project, along with Ruth Berman in the beginning of 1980. He created "The frog-story project", a research tool which was a children's storybook that tells a story in 24 pictures with no words. This makes it possible to elicit narratives that are comparable in content but differing in form, across age and languages. There is now data from dozens of languages and most of the world's major language types. The Berman & Slobin study compared English, German, Spanish, Hebrew and Turkish on a range of dimensions.


His project was also mentioned in Raphael Berthele, a professor in the University of Fribourg, Switzerland on her work in the "Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology approach" by Elena Lieven, Jiansheng Guo.


Elizabeth Ann Bates (July 26, 1947 – December 13, 2003) was a Professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. She was an internationally renowned expert and leading researcher in child language acquisition, psycholinguistics, aphasia, and the neurological bases of language, and she authored 10 books and over 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on these subjects. Bates was well known for her assertion that linguistic knowledge is distributed throughout the brain and is subserved by general cognitive and neurological processes.


Elizabeth Bates earned a B.A. from St. Louis University in 1968, and an M.A. and PhD in human development from the University of Chicago in 1971 and 1974, respectively.


She was employed as a tenure-track professor at the University of Colorado from 1974-1981 before joining the faculty of the University of California, San Diego, where she worked until late 2003. Bates was one of the founders of the Department of Cognitive Science at UCSD, the first department of its kind in the USA. She was also the director of the UCSD Center of Research in Language and the co-director of the San Diego State University/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communication Disorders. Bates also served as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1976-1977 and at the National Research Council Institute of Psychology in Rome.


On December 13, 2003, Elizabeth Bates died, after a year-long struggle with pancreatic cancer. Over the course of more than thirty years, Bates had established herself as a world leader in a number of fields – child development, language acquisition, aphasia research, cross-linguistic research, bilingualism, psycholinguistics and their neural underpinnings, and had trained, supported and collaborated with a diverse and international group of researchers and students. The Elizabeth Bates Graduate Research Fund was established at UCSD in her memory to assist graduate students' research.


In defense of communication functioning as a main force of language acquisition, she looked to the prelinguistic use of commands by infants that required them to develop and use social skills. She highlighted the reliance on pointing by infants in order to fill their need to communicate before they are able to speak. The child's ability to incorporate imperatives in their gestures in order to make a command or request was found in her research and shows the necessity of communication regardless of language. Bates also coined the term , a word-like utterance made by prelinguistic children that has meaning (e.g. yumyum), but does not represent the adult-like form.


Domain-Specificity, Modularity and Neural Plasticity in Language Processing.


Bates and colleagues also showed that after brain injury, adult aphasic patients' deficits were not specific to linguistic structures theorized to be localized to specific brain areas, or even restricted to the linguistic domain. Deficits and lesion sites instead overlap in the role that they affect speech fluency and complexity. Language is viewed as interrelated with cognitive processes such as memory, pattern recognition, and spreading activation. This perspective runs counter to the theory of Noam Chomsky, Eric Lenneberg, and Steven Pinker that language is processed in a domain-specific manner, by specific language modules in the mind, and can be localized to specific brain regions such as Broca's and Wernicke's areas.


David Swinney (April 21, 1946 – April 14, 2006) was a prominent psycholinguist. His research on language comprehension contributed to methodological advances in his field.


Swinney received his BA in Psychology at Indiana University in 1968, his MA in Language Disorders, Speech Pathology and Audiology (1969), and his PhD in Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin (1974).


Swinney's faculty positions included: Tufts University (Department of Psychology), Rutgers University (Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Departments), the City University of New York (Programs in Linguistics, Psychology, Speech and Hearing Science) and University of California, San Diego (Chair, Department of Psychology).


Cross-Modal Priming Task. The Cross-Modal Priming Task (CMPT), developed by David Swinney, is an online measure used to detect activation of lexical and syntactic information during sentence comprehension.


Prior to Swinney's introduction of this methodology, studies of lexical access were largely procured by offline measures, such as a phoneme-monitoring task. In these measures, study participants were asked to respond to a syntactic or lexical ambiguity in a sentence only after the entire sentence had been comprehended. Since Swinney considered the system of resolving ambiguities to be an autonomous, fast, and mandatory process, he suggested that the “downstream” temporal delay between stimulus and response could contaminate results. The CMPT, therefore, was created to probe lexical access in real time.


During this task, study participants heard recorded sentences containing lexical or syntactic ambiguities while seated in front of a computer screen. At the same moment when the ambiguous word or phrase was uttered, simultaneously a string of letters---either a word or a non-word---was flashed on the computer screen, and the participant was required to indicate whether it was a word or not, by pressing one of two buttons on a computer keyboard.


The uttered words had an ambiguous meaning or were an ambiguous phrase (for example: "mouse" - which could be understood as an animal or as a computer input device).


The words shown on the screen - when they were actual lexical words (and not non-words), could be related to one of the meanings of the uttered word or phrase (for example, on the screen the written word could be "animal", or "computer"), or the written word on the screen could be a control word or phrase, unrelated to the uttered word or phrase (for example, "sun").


Study participants were then asked to respond as quickly as possible once the probes were processed (i.e. once they understood them). The test assumed that multiple meanings are activated at the moment an ambiguity is encountered in a sentence, which primes related concepts. Swinney's anticipated quicker recognition of concepts, once related concepts were primed and thus activated, as opposed to words that had not been activated.


This study utilized a CMPT, in order to investigate the process by which people resolve lexical ambiguity. Specifically, do people access all meanings of words at such moments, or only one meaning? Subjects listened to pre-recorded series of sentences that contained ambiguous words. These words were equibiased—meaning that there were two possible meanings of each ambiguous word and that one meaning was not favored over the other in common speech. The subjects were informed that they would be tested on their comprehension of these sentences.


For example, subjects were presented with the utterance: "Rumor had it that, for years, the government building had been plagued with problems. The man was not surprised when he found several bugs in the corner of the room." Here, the word "bugs" was determined to be ambiguous and equibiased towards the meaning of either "insects" on one hand, or "surveillance" on the other. At the moment of the utterance "… bugs" either "ANT" or "SPY" or an unrelated word such as "SEW" or non-word, were flashed on the screen. Study participants were asked to decide, as quickly as possible, whether the string of letters was a word or not.


Additionally, context conditions varied in that some had no biasing context, as above, or they strongly biased the listener towards one meaning or another. For example, "Rumor had it that, for years, the government building had been plagued with problems. The man was not surprised when he found several spiders, roaches and other bugs in the corner of the room."


Swinney claimed that if a person activates both meanings of an equibiased ambiguous word simultaneously, then the response times should be the same regardless of which meaning is primed by the stimulus. However, if one meaning or another is activated, then the response time should be quicker for the priming of that meaning.


Results indicated that listeners accessed multiple meanings for ambiguous words, even when faced with strong biasing contexts that indicated a single meaning. That is to say that regardless of whether "the man was not surprised when he found several bugs in the corner of the room" or "the man was not surprised when he found several spiders, roaches and other bugs in the corner of the room" was uttered, both SPY (contextually inappropriate to the second sentence) and ANT (contextually appropriate) appear to have been primed equally, whereas SEW and non-words were not.


In this study, Love, Maas and Swinney explored lexical access, using the CMPT, among three different categories of English proficient individuals: monolingual native English speakers (NINES), non-native English speakers (NNES) and bilingual native English speakers (BNES). Particularly, they were interested in how these different groups resolved non-canonical object-relative constructions that contained an ambiguous noun with a strong biasing context. For example, a prior experiment used the following sentence:


"The professor insisted that the exam be completed in ink, so Jimmy used the new pen (Probe Position1), that his mother-in-law recently (Probe Position2) purchased (Probe Position3) because the multiple colors allowed for more creativity."


This object-relative construction is considered non-canonical because the direct object "pen" occurs before its associated verb "purchased". Thus, it can be considered a "fronted direct object". The argument relies on the ambiguity of the word, "pen" which could mean either a writing instrument, or a jail cell. The Probe Positions 1, 2 and 3 indicated in the sentence above indicate the points at which the study participants were presented with a word on a computer screen, in a cross-modal decision task similar to the one described above. Moreover, the Probes represented either one ("pencil") or another interpretation ("jail") of the noun "pen" or were non-related controls ("jacket" or "tale") or a non-word of equivalent length.


After qualifying language pre-tests and completion of a self-report questionnaire about language proficiency, background, and age of second language acquisition, subjects were classified as either BNES or NNES. The non-English languages identified were of wide variety (e.g. Russian, Cantonese, Greek, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Spanish, Korean), and the researchers emphasize that most of the languages represented place less importance on word order than the English language. The study subjects participated in a CMPT that utilized object-relative sentences such as the one above, or a filler sentence of equivalent length and complexity. Response times were measured and compared.


Overall, all the English-proficient individuals tested activated both meanings of the ambiguous direct object as soon as it was presented, despite the strong biasing context. Then, in the NINES group, activation had dissipated 700 ms downstream (PP2), until the primary meaning was reactivated at Probe Position 3, after the verb. However, for the contextually appropriate interpretation, the non-NINES did not reactivate the fronted direct object in Probe Position 3. Researchers attributed this difference to the prior exposure of many in the non-NINES groups to languages that relied less explicitly on word order for comprehension.


In this experiment, Zurif, Swinney and Garret built upon existing research on language processing errors in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia patients. Prior studies indicate that, generally, Broca's aphasia patients demonstrate a slower-than-normal time course of lexical activation than controls; whereas, lexical activation is relatively unimpaired in Wernicke's aphasics. This study compared and contrasted selected patients’ capacities for resolving subject-relative constructions through a process known as gap filling. For example:


"The gymnast loved the professor* from the northern city who* (t)* complained about the bad coffee."


Since the displaced "who" is intended to modify "the professor" in this sentence, reactivation of antecedent "the professor" at "who" refers to the process of gap filling. Here, the gap between the subject noun phrase and relative pronoun is necessarily resolved through mental reordering of the sentence's structural elements.


Findings indicated that, in support of the hypothesis, the capacity and resources available to patients with Wernicke's aphasia to procure appropriate gap filling remain intact. Although this process appears to be preserved, the researchers point out that other related processes, such as higher-level sentence comprehension, might be impaired.


On the other hand, the gap filling process in Broca's patients was significantly impaired. Results showed that priming was not activated at any of the probe positions—signifying a poverty of resources available to these patients for real-time processing such subject-relative constructions. The researchers argue, based on these results, that neurological damage to the left anterior cortex implicates this region in resolving gap-filling operations during sentence comprehension.


Jeffrey Locke Elman (January 22, 1948 – June 28, 2018) was an American psycholinguist and professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He specialized in the field of neural networks.


In 1990, he introduced the simple recurrent neural network (SRNN), also known as the 'Elman network', which is capable of processing sequentially ordered stimuli, and has since become widely used.


Elman's work was highly significant to our understanding of how languages are acquired and also, once acquired, how sentences are comprehended. Sentences in natural languages are composed of sequences of words that are organized in phrases and hierarchical structures. The Elman network provides an important hypothesis for how neural networks—and, by analogy, the human brain—might be doing the learning and processing of such structures.


Elman was also a generous and kind person, beloved by his colleagues at UCSD and around the world.


Elman attended Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, California, then Harvard University, where he graduated in 1969. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977.