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Max Planck Institute
About MPI

 

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics is an institute of the German Max Planck Society. Our mission is to undertake basic research into the psychological,social and biological foundations of language. The goal is to understand how our minds and brains process language, how language interacts with other aspects of mind, and how we can learn languages of quite different types.

The institute is situated on the campus of the Radboud University. We participate in the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, and have particularly close ties to that institute's Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging. We also participate in the Centre for Language Studies. A joint graduate school, the IMPRS in Language Sciences, links the Donders Institute, the CLS and the MPI.

 

MPI in the press

'Language Protein' May Help Build Brain Circuits

Researchers of the Language and Genetics department led by Simon E. Fisher revealed that the FOXP2 gene and its protein are involved in early speech developmental processes. Fisher explains the workings of FOXP2 as a "hub in a network of genes which might be important,".
  • 7 july 2012 · AAAS ScienceNow (online)

Family labels framed similarly across cultures

Scientists may have found a couple of principles of relativity in family trees from different cultures, says Charles Kemp (Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh) and Terry Regier (University of California, Berkeley). Some languages veer more toward simplicity in defining kin relations, and others pack in more information, the researchers find in a new mathematical analysis of words describing family relationships. Cultural forces shape specific kin systems, adds Levinson (Language and Cognition Group), of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Netherlands.
  • 24 may 2012 · Science News (online)

Children, Not Chimps, Prefer Collaboration

In a study of collaboration processes, MPI researcher Daniel Haun (Comparative Cognitive Anthropology Group, as well as MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig) compared 3-year old children with chimps in order to see if both would have a tendency to collaborate on tasks or not. The results show that while children do prefer to work together, chimps do not. "Our findings suggest that behavioral differences between humans and other species might be rooted in apparently small motivational differences," says Haun.
  • 23 may 2012 · Science Daily (online)

Gestures Fulfill a Big Role in Language

Research by Spencer Kelly, affiliated with the MPI project Language in our hands (ERC, led by Asli Ozyurek) sheds new light on the relationship between gestures and spoken language. "Our results provide a glimpse into this past relationship by showing that gestures still have a tight and perhaps special coupling with speech in present-day communication. In this way, gestures are not merely add-ons to language -- they may actually be a fundamental part of it." Kelly says.
  • 8 may 2012 · Science Daily (online)

Out of Africa? Data Fail to Support Language Origin in Africa

Opposite the proposition by Quentin Atkinson (a cultural anthropologist at Auckland University in New Zealand) who claimed that the orgins of language might , Michael Cysouw together with Steven Moran (LMU, Munich) and MPI researcher Dan Dediu (from the Language and Genetics department) showed that this notion might not hold up and that the method applied by Atikinson might not work.
  • 15 feb 2012 · Science Daily (online)

Majority-based learning in chimpanzees and humans

Researchers of the Comparative Cognitive Anthropology group, led by Daniel Haun, have discovered that chimpanzees are more likely to copy an action performed by a large number of individuals than an action that was performed more frequently.
  • 12 apr 2012 · Science Daily (online)

MPI Language of Perception project featured in television documentary

The Dutch popular science TV programme Labyrint featured MPI's research project "The Language of Perception", in an episode that explores the nature of language and the importance of linguistic diversity. Asifa Majid and Mark Dingemanse, researchers at MPI's Language & Cognition department, talked about their research on language and perception and their fieldwork in Malaysia and Ghana respectively.

  • 25 Jan 2012 · Wetenschap24 / Labyrint (online)

Formal opening of The Language Archive

The TLA was officially opened on Oct. 12, 2011, at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin. Speakers were Wolfgang Klein (MPG), Angelika Storrer (BBAW), Theo Mulder (KNAW), Wilhelm Krull (Volkswagen-Foundation), Nikolaus Himmelmann (Köln University) and Paul Trilsbeek (TLA). There were a number of reports in the media, here are a few examples.

  • 12 Oct 2011 · Suddeutsche Zeitung (PDF) (online) · Berliner Zeitung (PDF) · Frankfurter Rundschau (PDF)

Levinson and Dunn's research featured in Frankfurter Allgemeine

An article tracking recent developments in linguistics cites the work of Stephen C. Levinson (Language & Cognition Department) and Michael Dunn (Evolutionary Processes in Language and Culture Group).

  • 11 jun 2011 · Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (PDF) (online)

Chimps "Mourn" Nine-year-old's Death?

Are chimpanzees mourning the deaths of a nine-year-old male and infant? Researchers of the MPI for Psycholinguistics have released never-before-seen video of a chimp community in Zambia reacting to the deaths.

  • 13 may 2011 · National Geographic 13 (online)

Language universality idea tested with biology method

A long-standing idea that human languages share universal features that are dictated by human brain structure has been cast into doubt.

  • 14 apr 2011 · BBC News (online)
Last checked 2013-03-07 by MD

Max Planck Institute
for Psycholinguistics


Street address
Wundtlaan 1
6525 XD Nijmegen
The Netherlands


Mailing address
P.O. Box 310
6500 AH Nijmegen
The Netherlands

Phone:   +31-24-3521911
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