Research
The overarching goal of the research carried out at the HULC lab lies in understanding the interrelation between language and cognition. We are particularly interested in the role of the specific linguistic system, with a special focus on the role of grammar, in cognitive processing. Our approach is crosslinguistic, including native speakers of a variety of typologically diverse languages as well as bilingual speakers and first and second language learners.
In order to study language effects on cognitive processing we look at language in use (production and comprehension), visual attention, memory and neural correlates. We test our hypotheses using traditional linguistic methods and experimental psycholinguistic methods such as eye tracking, chronometry, MEG and EEG.
Languages currently under investigation are German, English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Georgian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic (MS, Algerian, Moroccan).
Research groups
Language and Visual processing
- Event conceptualisation and linguistic realisation: The impact of semantic and lexical factors on sentence production
- Top-down influences on event apprehension
- Tracking gaze movement while construing and talking about events: a cross-linguistic approach
- VIPICOL - Visual Information Processing In the Context Of Language
- Visual attention as a window to cognitive processing – A new method to analyze eye tracking data elicited from dynamic scenes
Time and Space in Language and Cognition
- A Case for Semantic Underspecification? The Representation of Aspectual Class Information for Motion Verbs and Directional Prepositions
- Event duration estimations are modulated by grammatical aspect
- Event units and event segmentation in verbal and non verbal tasks
- LANG-ACROSS: Utterance structure in context - L1 & L2 acquisition in a cross-linguistic perspective
Discourse Particles and Cognition
Psycholinguistic research on Chinese
- 'Serial-verb-constructions' in motion event encoding - morphological, syntactic, and contextual aspects
- Ditransitive constructions in Mandarin Chinese
- Neural correlates of language processing in Chinese
- Predicting object states in Mandarin Chinese - insights from the bǎ-construction
- Processing discourse referents in Mandarin active and passive SOV sentences
- The interaction of discourse salience, visual information uptake, and syntactic encoding in Mandarin Chinese
Bilingualism and L2-Acquisition
- Gender processing and representation in the mental lexicon of bilinguals
- Grammatical encoding in German as a second language
- Grammatical gender sensitivity and biological gender errors in processing German personal and possessive pronouns
- Motion-Event conceptualization and encoding by Chinese-German bilingual children
- Phonological co-activation in Portugese-German bilinguals
- Referential coherence in first and second language learners
- Translanguaging and the Bilingual Brain