As Wilhelm von Humboldt observed long ago, human language is characterized by its ability to make “infinite use of finite means.” But what are these finite means, exactly? Words? Morphemes? In this talk, I will review existing work by various linguists, as well as a couple of observations of my own, that point to a […]

Learners of a second language commonly rely on their first language to break into the novel linguistic system. One would expect that due to the modality differences between speech and sign, learners of a sign language as a second language lack a system that could alleviate some of the burden to learn the target language. […]

We usually assume that the linear order of language is driven by the grammatical categories. This assumption is widely held in both syntax (e.g. SOV, Det N Adj) and morphology (e.g. N-Num-Case, V-Tns). However ordering may also deviate from this assumption, for example where words or morphemes have item-specific orderings that are not determined by […]

Language acquisition is often viewed as a problem of inference, in which the child—like a “mini-linguist”— tries to piece together the abstract grammar of her native language from incomplete and noisy input. This “language-as-knowledge” viewpoint contrasts with a more recent alternative, in which the challenge of language acquisition is practical, not theoretical: by practicing across […]

Theoretical accounts of argument structure typically try to explain meaning differences between alternating argument structures in terms of general semantic notions, such as affectedness, directionality or agency. The underlying idea is that these notions allow us to explain meaning differences using only few theoretical assumptions, i.e. that they provide parsimonious explanations. However, corpus linguists often […]

Despite a long and important history of cross-linguistic research on language acquisition (e.g., MacWhinney & Bates 1989; Slobin 1985-1997), it is estimated that acquisition data is available for only around 1-2% of the world’s 7.000+ languages (e.g., Kidd 2020; Lieven & Stoll 2010). In particular, our empirical database is heavily skewed towards the acquisition of […]

Typology uncovers universals of language through cross-linguistic comparison; many such universals have been found since Greenberg’s word order universals. But what do typological universals have to do with analyzing a single language, such as your native language, or a language you are doing fieldwork on? After all, analyzing the syntactic structure of a single language […]

The key to understanding the nature and origins of language lies in the interplay of the biological and cultural factors that shaped, and continue to shape, its evolution. Untangling this interplay is hard because we can only access a degenerate snapshot of the linguistic diversity and design space in our species’ history. I will begin […]

My program of research uses a systems neuroscience approach to study the computations, maturational constraints, and plasticity underlying speech perception. Speech signals are multidimensional, acoustically variable, and temporally ephemeral. A significant computational challenge in speech perception (and more broadly, audition) is categorization, that is, mapping continuous, multidimensional, and variable acoustic signals into discrete, behavioral equivalence […]

Esta mesa sobre o movimento #FicaEspanhol propõe debater sobre essa iniciativa de intervenção política, empreendida por estudantes de graduação e professoras/es da Educação Básica e Superior, para garantir a continuidade da oferta do ensino de língua espanhola em diversos Estados do Brasil. Em 2016, uma Medida Provisória (MP) propôs a reforma do Ensino Médio e […]