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Virtually all of our current research is organized in the Institute Projects listed below (with many of them involving multiple research groups).

Adaptive listening

Research on the processing of foreign-accented speech.

Categories across language and cognition

This project is concerned with the nature of categories and concepts in language, in non-linguistic perception and cognition, and the relationship between them.

Communication before language

Research on the cognitive, social, and cultural foundations of communication in prelinguistic infants.

Comparative cognitive anthropology

This project investigates cross-cultural differences in human cognition and the psychological mechanisms creating and maintaining group-specific variability over time.

Evolutionary processes in language and culture

This project uses evolutionary methods to investigate the linguistic, environmental, and cultural constraints on language change.

Information structure in language acquisition

Research on the linguistic realization of information structure and its acquisition by children and adults in a variety of languages.

Language and genetics

Research on the complex interplay between genes and language at different levels and time scales.

Language archiving technology

LAT focuses on open accessibility of language resources and  stresses the need for long-term archiving of digital language collections. 

Language documentation and data mining

Research focussed on the documentation of endangered or under-described languages on the one hand, and the exploitation of this kind of data for linguistic theory and analysis on the other hand.

Language in action

Cognitive neuroscience research on the architecture of the language system as it operates in rich social, physical, or discourse contexts.

Mechanisms and representations in comprehending speech

Research on theoretical issues in speech comprehension

Multimodal interaction

This project investigates language in its primordial context – face-to-face conversational interaction – the context in which language is learnt, and predominantly used.

Sociality and language use

Research on the relationship between language and social cognition.

Syntax, typology, and information structure

This project is concerned with the interaction between discourse-pragmatics and syntax in languages of a range of structural types.  

Unification

Research on how different sources of information (retrieved from memory or provided by sensory input) are unified with language into an interpretation (comprehension) or message (production).

Former research projects

Research projects that have finished