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 […]

Much research has focused on how the prosodic and distributional effects of child-directed speech (CDS) can facilitate language development and how these effects may differ across cultures. In this talk, I will explore what drives caregivers and alloparents to use CDS in the first place. I will consider two possible factors that could potentially shape […]

The expression of syllable weight in terms of moras leads to two major descriptive problems for phonological metrical theory using iambs and trochees to describe stress. On the one hand, there are languages with long vowels and geminates, such as iambic Pacific Yupik (Hayes 1995: 302) or trochaic Wolof (Bell 2003), where only the long […]

Nos anos 70, a Análise do Discurso de perspectiva materialista no Brasil, em sua filiação francesa, desenvolveu-se numa conjuntura em que o formalismo era dominante nas Ciências da Linguagem. A partir de Althusser, Pêcheux (1971) avança seus estudos ao propor que a relação entre ideologia e discurso instaure o materialismo histórico como ponto de fuga […]

There is an increasing awareness of the role of prosody in speech perception and comprehension, yet at the same time, there is increasing evidence of pervasive, substantial variation in the phonological and phonetic expression of prosody. Thus, despite progress in identifying acoustic correlates of prosody, and similar progress in identifying the dimensions of structural and […]

This talk will focus on the importance of knowledge related to particular lexical items and of low-level generalizations in the description of language. In the first part of the talk I will focus on problems arising in the context of teaching English to foreign learners and show how traditional concepts of collocation and valency, which […]