Cognitive Science of Language

Return to: Faculty of Humanities

Cognitive Science of Language

Based in the Department of Linguistics and Languages, the graduate program (M.Sc.; Ph.D.) in the Cognitive Science of Language is interdisciplinary and includes faculty from Humanities, Science, and Health Sciences. The program has a strong research orientation and has expertise in the areas of Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Sociolinguistics, Neurolinguistics, Phonetics/Phonology, Forensic Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, and Psycholinguistics. The breadth of faculty research areas provides a rich environment for graduate training. The graduate program introduces students to the issues in those fields that form the nexus of cognitive science, linguistics, and languages and trains them in the research methods employed to study them. Our graduate programs provide flexibility so that students can optimize their studies around their own areas of interest.

Enquiries: 905-525-9140 Ext. 24388
Fax: 905-577-6930
E-mail: lingdept@mcmaster.ca
Website: http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~linguistics/

Faculty/Fall 2024

Professors

John J. Colarusso, B.A. (Cornell), M.A. (Northwestern), Ph.D.(Harvard)
Ivona Kucerova, M.A. (Charles University, Prague), Ph.D. (MIT)
Victor Kuperman, B.A., M.A. (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Ph.D. (Nijmegen)/Graduate Chair
Elisabet Service, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (Helsinki)

Associate Professors

Catherine Anderson, B.A. (McMaster), Ph.D. (Northwestern)
Anna L. Moro, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (Toronto)
Daniel Pape, M.A. (TU/Humboldt, Berlin), Ph.D. (Humboldt, Berlin)

Assistant Professors

Alison Biggs, B.A. (SOAS, London), M.Phil., Ph.D. (Cambridge)
Phoebe Gaston, B.A. (Yale), Ph.D. (University of Maryland, College Park)

Professors Emeriti

John F. Connolly, A.B. (College of the Holy Cross), M.A.(Saskatchewan), Ph.D. (London)
Magda Stroinska, M.A. (Warsaw), Ph.D. (Edinburgh)

Associate Members

Richard Arthur (Philosophy)
Sue Becker (Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour)
Christian Brodbeck (Department of Computing and Software)
Steven Brown (Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour)
David Feinberg (Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour)
Faiza Hirji (Communication Studies and Multimedia)
Karin Humphreys (Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour)
Graham Knight (Communication Studies and Multimedia)
Victor Satzewich (Sociology)
Michael Schutz (School of the Arts)
David Shore (Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour)
Laurel Trainor (Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour)

Adjunct Members

Susana Bejar (University of Toronto)
Veena Dwivedi (Applied Linguistics, Brock University)
Arsalan Kahnemuyipour (University of Toronto)
Jean Saint-Aubin (University of Moncton)
John W. Schwieter (Wilfrid Laurier University)
Julie Van Dyke (Haskins Laboratories)
 

Fields of Study in the Graduate Program

The M.Sc./Ph.D. program in the Cognitive Science of Language comprises the following fields:

Theoretical Linguistics

The department has a strong commitment to research in formal linguistic theory, including  syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology/phonetics, and their interfaces, with a notable specialism in the intersection of theoretical linguistic research with behavioural, neural, computational, and language documentation methods. The graduate program emphasizes the theoretical disciplines as the foundation of empirical language science research, recognizing that empirical methods cannot advance our understanding of human cognition in the absence of clearly defined theory. Faculty members specializing in theoretical linguistics in turn actively engage with applied and experimental research. Some representative areas of faculty research interest include syntax-semantics interactions in the area of information structure (I. Kucerova), agreement (I. Kucerova), argument and event structure (A. Biggs), the syntax-morphology interface (A. Biggs, I. Kucerova), and articulatory phonology and the interface to phonetics (D. Pape).

Experimental Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics

This field studies how language is represented and processed, from both a functional and neurobiological perspective, at all levels of linguistic structure from sound to morpheme to word to sentence to discourse. Research in this field aims to establish the cognitive foundations of speech production and perception, reading, and writing, across all ages and in both first and second language. Faculty also investigate impairments in language including developmental disorders and those acquired through strokes or other brain injuries. Current research in the department includes the interplay of working memory capacity and general cognitive resources with lexical retrieval and processing of morphological and syntactic complexity (E. Service), the brain activity correlates of phonological processing (J. Connolly), neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying word recognition, syntactic structure-building, and top-down context effects in language comprehension (P. Gaston), the use and interplay of acoustic cues (i.e. cue-weighting) in speech production and perception (D. Pape), articulatory and biomechanical constraints in speech perception (D. Pape), the link between perceptual acuity and accuracy of articulation, real-time sentence comprehension in people with agrammatic aphasia (C. Anderson), probabilistic approaches to speech production and visual word comprehension (V. Kuperman), and individual differences in visual processing of morphological and syntactic complexity (V. Kuperman).

Computational Linguistics & Cognition

This strand of research aims at developing computational models of natural language, as well as cognitive models of human communication. Faculty research in natural language processing includes development of information-theoretical models of morphological processing, corpus studies of vocabulary and lexical development, and cognitive models of self-organization in phonetic inventories across languages (V. Kuperman).

Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Clinical Linguistics

The field of cognitive sociolinguistics examines cognitive aspects of language use in diverse social contexts. Using methods from varied theoretical frameworks, it investigates pragmatic and sociocultural phenomena, including bilingual education and childrearing, second language learning (E. Service), first & second language attrition (M. Stroinska), cognitive theory of translation (M. Stroinska) contact languages, pidgins and creoles (A. Moro). In addition, cognitive aspects of the use of language for persuasion, advertising, propaganda and politics are also studied (M. Stroinska). Research in this area also includes psychometric assessments of language competence in bilingual adults with and without language impairments (A. Moro).

Facilities for Research

Students in the program have access to the department’s research labs and other resources. The Language, Memory and Brain Lab includes a 128-channel EEG/ERP system as well as equipment for running behavioural studies of language processing. The Reading Lab includes a desk-mounted eye-tracking system and several large corpora of written and spoken language data. The Phonetics lab consists of a sound-attenuated room with audio equipment and software to record speech, perform speech perception experiments  as well as articulatory speech synthesis. Researchers in the department enjoy productive collaborations with a number of community partners, including the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board, a network of practicing Speech-Language Pathologists and other clinicians, the Hamilton chapter of TESL Ontario, and local communities of native speakers of many languages.

Programs

• Cognitive Science of Language, M.Sc.

• Cognitive Science of Language, Ph.D

• Cognitive Science of Language Courses

Return to: Faculty of Humanities