Linguistic experiments

general courses

Classroom

The aim of the course is to present the most important achievements in the field of experimental linguistics and related disciplines. The students will get to know the procedures and findings of speech perception experiments, pragmatics and semantic studies, social grounding of (sub)dialectal differences, language psychology, as well as first language acquisition and bilingualism. The course will be conducted partly as a mini-lecture, and partly as a discussion class devoted to the chosen experiments and their impact on our understanding of language as a series cognitive processes. The students will also engage in practical activities during which they will have to think about experiment design, hypothesis formulation and testing, methodology and implementation of scientific studies.

The aim of the course is to present the most important achievements in the field of experimental linguistics and related disciplines. The students will get to know the procedures and findings of speech perception experiments, pragmatics and semantic studies, social grounding of (sub)dialectal differences, language psychology, as well as first language acquisition and bilingualism. The course will be conducted partly as a mini-lecture, and partly as a discussion class devoted to the chosen experiments and their impact on our understanding of language as a series cognitive processes. The students will also engage in practical activities during which they will have to think about experiment design, hypothesis formulation and testing, methodology and implementation of scientific studies.

Experiments discussed in class will encompass different languages of the world. The exact list of papers reporting these experiments will be provided during the first class. Additional readings related to the language of specialisation of a given students and/or written in that language will also be provided.

Aitchison, J. (2007). The articulate mammal: An introduction to psycholinguistics. London: Routledge.

Blom, E. & Unsworth, S. (Eds.) (2010). Experimental methods in language acquisition research. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Litosseliti, L. (Ed.). (2010). Research methods in linguistics. Continuum.

Gonzalez-Marquez, M. (Ed.). (2007). Methods in cognitive linguistics (Vol. 18). John Benjamins Publishing.

Rosenberg, S. (2014). Handbook of applied psycholinguistics: major thrusts of research and theory. Hove: Psychology Press.

Stemmer, B., & Whitaker, H. A. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of the Neuroscience of Language. Academic Press.

Wei, L. & Moyer, M. (2008). Blackwell guide to research methods in bilingualism and multilingualism. Oxford: Blackwell.

Students will:

- have an in-depth knowledge of selected scientific discoveries in the field of linguistics and related fields

- be familiar with scientific research methodology related to experimental linguistics, psycho- and neurolinguistics, and will be able to find applications of this methodology relevant for the subdiscipline and language of their interest

- be able to analyse scientific research, interpret its results and prepare individual projects involving experimental studies on similar topics

- be able to properly communicate the conclusions drawn from the discussed and similar experiments, point to their usefulness and relatedness with our current knowledge of linguistic phenomena

- be able to formulate their own hypotheses, predict results and determine the steps to be taken in order to implement a scientific study

participation, readings, students' group research projects