Psycholinguistics
Successful language processing requires speaker and hearer to dynamically create richly structured representations within a few hundred milliseconds of encountering each new word.
Our group asks how this feat is achieved, whether it is achieved in the same fashion across languages with varying word order and morphological markers, what are the possible neural encoding mechanisms for richly structured information and how the dynamics of language processing differ in adult native speakers, child and adult language learners, or in atypical learners.
Some distinctive features of the Maryland group include its expertise in cross-language research (e.g., recent studies on Japanese, Hindi, Mandarin, Portuguese, Basque, Russian, American Sign Language and Spanish); its use of diverse tools to investigate language-related processes (reading time, eye-movement measures, EEG and MEG measures of millisecond-grain brain activity and fMRI measures of brain localization); and its work involving neuro-computational modeling of language processing and studies of developmental and atypical populations. The rich network of connections between investigators make it feasible to try to seamlessly align insights from formal grammars with findings from psycho/neurolinguistics and computational neuroscience, often in ways that we could not have imagined a few years ago.
Research in psycholinguistics at Maryland is not pursued as a separate enterprise, but rather is closely integrated into all research areas of the department and the broader language science community. Weekly research group meetings primarily feature student presentations of in-progress research and typically attract 20-30 people.
Primary Faculty
Naomi Feldman
Professor, Linguistics
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
Professor, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
1413 A Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
William Idsardi
Professor, Linguistics
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
CLaME: Max Planck • NYU Center for Language Music and Emotion
1401 A Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Ellen Lau
Associate Professor, Linguistics
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
Co-Director, KIT-Maryland MEG Lab
3416 E Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Jeffrey Lidz
Professor and Chair, Linguistics
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
1413 Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Colin Phillips
Professor, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, Linguistics
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
1413 F Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Andrea Zukowski
Research Scientist, Linguistics
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
1413 Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Secondary Faculty
Valentine Hacquard
Professor, Linguistics
Affliliate Professor, Philosophy
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
1401 F Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Maria Polinsky
Professor Emerita, Linguistics
Affiliate Faculty, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center
1417 A Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Philip Resnik
Professor, Linguistics
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
Affiliate Professor, Department of Computer Science
Professor, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
1401 C Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Alexander Williams
Associate Professor, Linguistics
Associate Professor, Philosophy
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
1401 D Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Upcoming Events
ActivitiesExplore more of our research activities
A Course in First Language Acquisition
Situating language acquisition at the intersection of theories of cognition, development, and grammar.
Author/Lead: Jeffrey LidzNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Tyler Knowlton *21
This textbook introduces fundamental concepts and results in the theory of first language acquisition, bringing together linguistic phenomena on the one hand and learning and cognitive development on the other. Grammar and development are woven together through a range of case studies that provide students with the tools to think about (a) what is already understood about language acquisition; (b) what methods we use to identity children's grammatical knowledge; and (c) how to approach problems in any area of grammatical acquisition.
Visual perception supports 4-place event representations: A case study of TRADING
Can adults visually represent a trading as a single event with four participants?
Contributor(s): Alexander Williams, Jeffrey LidzNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Ekaterina Khylstova (UCLA), Laurel Perkins (UCLA)
Events of social exchange, such as givings and tradings, are uniquely prevalent in human societies and cognitively privileged even at early stages of development. Such events may be represented as having 3 or even 4 participants. To do so in visual working memory would be at the limit of the system, which throughout development can track only 3 to 4 items. Using a case study of trading, we ask (i) whether adults can track all four participants in a trading scene, and (ii) whether they do so by chunking the scene into two giving events, each with 3 participants, to avoid placing the visual working memory system at its limit. We find that adults represent this scene under a 4-participant concept, and do not view the trade as two sequential giving events. We discuss further implications for event perception and verb learning in development.
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Psycholinguistic evidence for restricted quantification
Determiners express restricted quantifiers and not relations between sets.
Contributor(s): Jeffrey Lidz, Alexander Williams, Paul PietroskiNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Tyler Knowlton *21, Justin Halberda (JHU)
Quantificational determiners are often said to be devices for expressing relations. For example, the meaning of every is standardly described as the inclusion relation, with a sentence like every frog is green meaning roughly that the green things include the frogs. Here, we consider an older, non-relational alternative: determiners are tools for creating restricted quantifiers. On this view, determiners specify how many elements of a restricted domain (e.g., the frogs) satisfy a given condition (e.g., being green). One important difference concerns how the determiner treats its two grammatical arguments. On the relational view, the arguments are on a logical par as independent terms that specify the two relata. But on the restricted view, the arguments play distinct logical roles: specifying the limited domain versus supplying an additional condition on domain entities. We present psycholinguistic evidence suggesting that the restricted view better describes what speakers know when they know the meaning of a determiner. In particular, we find that when asked to evaluate sentences of the form every F is G, participants mentally group the Fs but not the Gs. Moreover, participants forego representing the group defined by the intersection of F and G. This tells against the idea that speakers understand every F is G as implying that the Fs bear relation (e.g., inclusion) to a second group.
Read More about Psycholinguistic evidence for restricted quantification