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Variation in vocabulary – The learning, knowledge, and processing of words
Variation in vocabulary – The learning, knowledge, and processing of words
Oct 09, 2018
The native speakers of a language differ in how many words they know. But what are the effects of variation in vocabulary size on language processing? And why do people differ in their vocabulary size? Nina Mainz’s thesis examined these two questions. Mainz will defend her thesis on October 22nd at 12:30 at the Aula of the Radboud University Nijmegen. more >
World-renowned philosopher Professor Daniel C. Dennett will deliver the Nijmegen Lectures on October 15 and 16, 2018
World-renowned philosopher Professor Daniel C. Dennett will deliver the Nijmegen Lectures on October 15 and 16, 2018
Oct 08, 2018
Daniel Dennett is Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Centre for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University in the United States. Dennett will be in Nijmegen to receive an Honorary Doctorate from Radboud University on Thursday October 18, 2018. We are happy that world-renowned philosopher Professor Daniel C. Dennett has accepted to deliver the Nijmegen Lectures about Autonomy, Language, and Consciousness. more >
Genes, Memes and Tremes. The Future of Artificial Intelligence | Lecture by psychologist Susan Blackmore
Genes, Memes and Tremes. The Future of Artificial Intelligence | Lecture by psychologist Susan Blackmore
Oct 05, 2018
In an exciting event jointly sponsored by Radboud Reflects and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Susan Blackmore will visit Nijmegen on October 29th to talk about the evolution of technology and the emergence of new forms of intelligence. more >
Ten Lectures on Language, Cognition, and Language Acquisition
Ten Lectures on Language, Cognition, and Language Acquisition
Sep 26, 2018
Melissa Bowerman presented these ten lectures in 2010. Her sudden death in 2011 prevented her from turning them into a book-size publication, as was her intention. Her close colleagues and dear friends Eve Clark and Dan Slobin then took it upon them to edit these lectures for publication - a challenging and delicate exercise. The resulting book is not only a lasting tribute to professor Bowerman as the leading developmental psycholinguist she was, but also the best, up-to-date introduction to the full breadth of her research. more >
Saussure and Sechehaye: Myth and Genius
Saussure and Sechehaye: Myth and Genius
Sep 24, 2018
In this book, Pieter Seuren argues that Ferdinand de Saussure has been grossly overestimated over the past century, while his junior colleague Albert Sechehaye has been undeservedly ignored. more >
Prof. dr. Antje Meyer inaugurated into the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences (KNAW)
Prof. dr. Antje Meyer inaugurated into the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences (KNAW)
Sep 18, 2018
Prof. dr. Antje Meyer, director at the MPI for Psycholinguistics and professor of individual differences in language processing at Radboud University, has been inaugurated into the Royal Academy of Arts & Sciences (KNAW). The inauguration took place at the Openbare Bibliotheek in Amsterdam on 17 September 2018. more >
SFARI Pilot Award
SFARI Pilot Award
Sep 13, 2018
Dr. Beate St Pourcain, group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, has been granted a SFARI Pilot Award for her project ‘Disentangling autism heterogeneity through multivariate genetic analyses’. SFARI has announced that it intends to fund 36 grants (15 Pilot Awards and 21 Research Awards) in response to the 2018 Pilot and Research Awards request for applications. These grants will support investigator-driven research projects that aim to improve our understanding of autism spectrum disorders and to gain insight that will ultimately lead to novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. more >
What’s the use of “actually”, actually?
What’s the use of “actually”, actually?
Sep 07, 2018
Everyday language use is packed with so-called discourse markers (of course, you know, well, I mean, actually, indeed), expressions that we use to comment on what we are saying. Geertje van Bergen and Hans Rutger Bosker investigated the use of two Dutch discourse markers, eigenlijk “actually” and inderdaad “indeed”, for listeners in conversation. They explain the markers as linguistic expectation managers: inderdaad confirms our expectations about what a conversation is about, whereas eigenlijk warns us for unexpectedness. Such expectation-managing cues are beneficial for real-time language understanding: listeners use them to quickly update their predictions about how a conversation will unfold. Read more (in Dutch) > more >

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About MPI

This is the 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.

 

 

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