Research Programs
Innovative, collaborative and interdisciplinary research
Research is integral to the linguistics and cognitive science academic programs for graduates and undergraduates. We provide rigorous training experiences that span scholarship, research, and instruction.
Students work alongside faculty recognized for their published research and roles with prestigious organizations and editorial boards around the world. Our faculty have consistently attracted major funding from leading national agencies.
Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science faculty and students conduct research through labs and research centers at UD — such as the Center for Biomedical and Brain Imaging — that fuel collaborative work across the University and beyond.
UD's Center for Biomedical and Brain Imaging, an 11,600-square-foot, two-story extension to the Life Sciences Research Facility, houses the first research fMRI scanner in the state of Delaware. The fMRI can map brain activity, as well as provide remarkably detailed images of muscles, discs, bones and organs. Serving researchers campuswide, statewide and throughout the region, the center will advance research on psychopathology, cancer, stroke, cerebral palsy, osteoporosis and other diseases and disorders.
The center's collaborators are UD researchers from departments and centers across the University, including Biomedical Engineering; Communication Sciences & Disorders; Kinesiology and Applied Physiology; Linguistics and Cognitive Science; Mechanical Engineering; Nursing; Physical Therapy; and Psychological & Brain Sciences. The director is Keith Schneider, professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences.
Voluntary Research Participation
Students are invited to participate as volunteers in experiments conducted by researchers in the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science. Some studies will offer a small dollar amount. You may also earn extra credit in a class if your instructor allows it. Ask your professor in advance if they offer extra credit in return for experiment participation.
If your professor allows extra credit for research participation, they will decide how much extra credit you will receive. The researcher will email your instructor at the end of their study indicating how much time you spent in the study and what you did. Your instructor may also ask you to submit a written report related to the research participants.
Students who are taking multiple LING/CGSC courses: For each experiment in which you participate, you can only get extra credit in ONE course for each experiment participation. You will be asked to indicate which class you want your extra credit for. Please make your decision before you sign up for the experiment.
Note that you can also participate in an experiment simply because you are interested in seeing how linguistic research is conducted and would like to volunteer your time.
Please be aware of the eligibility criteria that are indicated for each experiment and do not sign up unless you qualify. You may participate in more than one experiment, but you may only participate once in each experiment. You have to be at least 18 years old to participate.
Email the researcher to make an appointment. Make note of the time and location of the experiment when you sign up. You are responsible for arriving on time to all experiments. Please consult the Campus Map in advance to see where buildings are so you know how to get there. The research labs often run on tight schedules – if you arrive late you may have to reschedule.
If you have to cancel your appointment, please contact the researcher of the study at least one day in advance.
All instructors that allow students to receive extra credit in their courses through research participation will also have an alternative extra credit assignment available for those students who do not meet the research criteria or who do not wish to participate in research.
Labs and Research Areas
The Experimental Psycholinguistics Laboratory examines the millisecond-by-millisecond incremental representation building that the mind/brain performs in response to language stimuli.
Lab Director
Research Areas
Psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience of language
Research Questions
- What are the components of the human language processing system?
- What is the relative timing of these components' activity during linguistic representation building?
- What can parsing tell us about grammar?
- How do the language processing mechanisms develop in children?
- How does this development interact with children's induction of grammatical rules?
- Do language-impaired children process language differently and is this the source of their acquisition impairment?
The research uses behavioral (reaction time and categorical data) and electrophysiological measures of brain activity (EEG and event-related brain potentials) to address these questions.
Since 1974, researchers at the Child's Play, Learning and Development Lab at the University of Delaware have been exploring how children learn and grow. From how children develop language and spatial skills to how play can help scaffold learning, they are exploring children’s marvelous minds.
Lab Director
Research Area
- Language acquisition
Research Questions
- How do children learn language?
- How do children develop spatial skills?
- How do children learn through play?
- How does media affect children's learning and development?
- What can parents do to promote early literacy?
Researchers at the PhonLab study the relationship between speech, language, and cognition by examining how speakers of the world’s languages produce and perceive speech. They use a number of methods in our research, including acoustic and articulatory analysis and behavioral perception studies. The research takes them to language communities all over the world.
At the heart of their work lies questions about cross-linguistic variation in prosody and speech timing. Researchers are interested in how these aspects of language are acquired, and how the structure of different languages shapes aspects of their temporal properties, as reflected in patterns of speech articulation and perception.
Lab Director
Research Areas
- Endangered and underdescribed languages
- Phonology and phonetics
Researchers at the Experimental Syntax Lab study how sentences of human language are processed, with a special interest in the relationship between sentence processing, language typology, and formal syntactic theory. The research employs a variety of experimental techniques, including self-paced reading, visual-world eye-tracking, and grammaticality judgement studies, to examine how formal representations of linguistic structure interact with how we understand sentences that we’ve never heard before. Researchers study a variety of diverse languages including English, Korean, Mandarin, Niuean, and Japanese.
Lab Director
Research Areas
- Endangered and underdescribed languages
- Syntax and semantics
The UD Perception and Language Lab is an interdisciplinary lab in the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware. By integrating empirical and theoretical approaches from different areas of cogntive science, the lab investigates the link between what we see and how we describe it — and in turn what this can tell us about how we conceptualize the world.
Lab Director
Research Area
- Psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience of language
Research Questions
- Perception: How does perceptual processing contribute to our understanding of the world around us? What is the structure and format of perceptual representations? How do perceiving and remembering interact?
- Language: What can language reveal about the contents of perceptual and cognitive experience? How do children learn words for concepts — especially abstract ones? How are concepts represented in the mind?
- Cognition: How is information “translated” across cognitive domains? Do these domains represent information in similar ways, or even in common neural systems? What is the nature of the “language of thought”?
Research on endangered and underdescribed languages is comparative research on the diversity and uniformity of the languages of the world. This is an area of special initiative at the NSF, NEH and other agencies. One NSF funded project is underway at present on endangered Malayic languages spoken on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Two earlier NSF projects have now been completed, one on the Malay spoken in Jambi Province in Sumatra, and the second on the Algonquian language, Passamaquoddy, spoken in Maine and New Brunswick.
Faculty Researchers
Benjamin Bruening, Ph.D., Professor
Gabriella Hermon, Ph.D., Professor Emerita
Nadya Pincus, Ph.D., Assistant Professor; Director of PhonLab
Rebecca Tollan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor; Director of the Experimental Syntax Lab
A major focus of the linguistics program at the University of Delaware is the study of a wide range of typologically different languages. Which features of human languages are common to all languages, and which features vary across languages? Answers to these questions are central to an understanding of the human capacity for language. This research is carried out in the context of precise linguistic theory, and students and faculty alike have been very successful in publishing their work in the leading journals in linguistics. This work combines with the department's other main focus on linguistics in cognitive science to provide a powerful interdisciplinary approach to the study of language. Training in cross-linguistic research plays a central role in the graduate program — courses in linguistic theory include extensive preparation in the skills needed to do research on less well-studied languages. The faculty and students in the program provide an unusually broad array of cross-linguistic expertise.
Language acquisition is one of the central topics in cognitive science. Experimental research is focused on first and second language acquisition in infants, children, and adults, language processing in adults and children, and the neural and genetic bases of language and its relation to other mental processes. An area of special strength is first language acquisition. This group is genuinely interdepartmental, including faculty from the departments of Linguistics and Cognitive Sciences and Psychological and Brain Sciences, and from the School of Education. Agencies funding this research have included NIH and NSF.
Faculty Researchers
Roberta Golinkoff, Ph.D., Professor and Unidel H Rodney Sharp Chair; Director of Infant Language Laboratory
Gabriella Hermon, Ph.D., Professor Emerita
Faculty and graduate students at the University of Delaware are conducting cutting-edge research in the areas of phonology, phonetics, and their interface. The kinds of questions asked include:
How can we characterize the sound patterns of different languages?
What principles account for the variety of sound patterns of different languages?
What role do various factors play in how a child might learn the sound pattern of his or her or language?
What is the relationship between perception and production of speech?
This research group also makes use of the PhonLab on campus to investigate human speech. This lab provides resources for making high quality recordings, speech analysis, and tools for developing experiments and computational models relating to human speech.
Faculty Researchers
Nadya Pincus, Ph.D., Assistant Professor; Director of PhonLab
Irene Vogel, Ph.D., Professor Emerita
Understanding psycholinguistics is crucial for unraveling the mysteries of human communication. This interdisciplinary field delves into how language is processed, produced, and comprehended in the mind. By examining the intricate relationship between language and cognition, psycholinguistics sheds light on how we acquire language, how it influences thought, and how it shapes social interactions. Insights from psycholinguistics not only enhance language learning and teaching methodologies but also aid in diagnosing and treating language disorders. Moreover, it informs technological advancements in artificial intelligence, machine translation, and natural language processing, driving innovations that bridge linguistic gaps and foster global communication.
Faculty Researchers
Alon Hafri, Ph.D., Assistant Professor; Director of The Perception and Language Lab
Arild Hestvik, Ph.D., Professor; Director of Experimental Psycholinguistics Lab
Researchers at the University of Delaware are conducting cutting-edge research in the areas of syntax, semantics, and their interface. The study of syntax and semantics is pivotal in understanding language structure and meaning. Together, syntax and semantics serve as the foundation for linguistic analysis, aiding in language acquisition, translation, computational linguistics, and various fields reliant on effective communication, fostering mutual understanding across diverse contexts.
Faculty and students hold regular meetings where participants present their own work, give practice talks, lead discussions, and enjoy syntax-semantics (and occasional candy) in a collegial atmosphere. Everyone is welcome to attend.
Faculty Researchers
Benjamin Bruening, Ph.D., Professor
Gabriella Hermon, Ph.D., Professor Emerita
Satoshi Tomioka, Ph.D., Professor
Rebecca Tollan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor; Director of the Experimental Syntax Lab
The unfortunate tendency in the field of linguistics has been that sounds, structure and meanings, and their processing are investigated separately by the researchers in each subfield of linguistics, and their findings are rarely integrated in a systematic way. Involving close collaboration by the researchers with different expertise, this project has great potential to initiate a step toward more productive integration of the subfields of linguistics.
Faculty Researcher
Satoshi Tomioka, Ph.D., Professor
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