Jos van Berkum

The overall goal of my research is to understand the nature of sentence- and discourse-level language comprehension, with a specific focus on how people relate the unfolding utterance to its wider context in real time. Topics include the language-affect interface, mood-based modulation of language processing, the anticipation of upcoming meaning, the interaction of static and linguistically configured knowledge, and pragmatic inferencing. I'm interested in the functional architecture of the systems involved as well as in their realization in the brain. Because of this, I use both classical but proven techniques from experimental psycholinguistics (e.g., self-paced reading, questionnaires) and methods from cognitive neuroscience (EEG, MEG, fMRI).

As of October 1st, 2010, my primary affiliation is with the Faculty of Humanities of Utrecht University, as professor in Discourse, Cognition & Communication. My research is conducted in the context of the Utrecht Institute for Linguistics OTS, as well as in the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

I recently obtained a Vici grant from the Dutch Science Foundation, for this proposal: "Moving the language user - Affect and perspective in discourse processing". The project will start around summer 2011.

Address in Utrecht: Department of Dutch | Faculty of Humanities | Utrecht University | Trans 10 | 3512 JK Utrecht | The Nederlands | j.vanberkum@uu.nl | www.josvanberkum.nl | t: +31-30-253-7984 (secr. -8000) | f: +31-30-253-6000 |