The Department of Linguistics offers a series of lectures about the study of language and linguistics, in which a variety of internationally known scholars are invited to participate. These talks, which are open to the entire university community, feature in-depth discussion and state of the art an…
2/15/2013 Linguistic Colloquium, Bodo Winter (Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced)
The problem we address is sentence planning in 3-8 year-olds and adults. We measure planning via patterns of non-fluency in studies with and without modeling. Participants in the study without modeling observed stories and then directed a blindfolded experimenter to pick up one of two identical toys in each story. Participants in the imitation study repeated a puppet?s request for a toy after each story. Both studies tested the same four types of relative clauses (varying gap position and depth of embedding). We analyzed time to utterance onset; frequency, duration, and distribution of filled and unfilled pauses; and use of optional functional elements. There were reliable effects of structural complexity on non-fluency patterns in both experiments, with some informative shifts across methods. For example, unfilled pauses distributed similarly across age groups, structures, and methods. But filled pauses (primarily, um) differed. In the elicited production study, adults preferred filled pauses before utterance onset; children also used them in the locations preferred for unfilled pauses. In the imitation study, the incidence of filled pauses sharply declined: Adults and older children produced almost none; young children?s pattern was more similar to that of the elicited production study.
Colloquium given April 27, 2012
Audio-only recording of colloquium presented March 30, 2012
Colloquium presented jointly with Department of Philosophy, March 23, 2012
Video of colloquium presented March 30, 2012
Video of colloquium presented March 16, 2012
Audio-only recording, March 2, 2012
February 24, 2012
Thomas Bever speaks about "Investigations of familial handedness, behavior, and the brain" at the University of Arizona Department of Linguistics Colloquium Series.
February 24, 2012
Presentations given on February 2, 2012.
Noam Chomsky, a world-renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist lectured at the University of Arizona on Feb. 7, 2012, on "What is Special About Language?" Noam Chomsky is an Institute Professor and a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked for more than 50 years. Chomsky, who according to The New York Times is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” is credited with revolutionizing the field of linguistics by introducing generative grammar and the concept of a universal grammar, which underlies all human language and is based in the innate structure of language. Beyond linguistics, his work has influenced fields such as cognitive science, philosophy, computer science, mathematics, and psychology. Noam Chomsky has received numerous awards, including the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal, the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award, and the Ben Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science. Since the 1960s, Chomsky has been an influential social analyst and critic. He has published numerous books on U.S. foreign and domestic policies, international politics, the media and related subjects. His writings are among the most quoted in today's world.
February 3, 2012
January 27, 2012