Research
Linguistic research at UiL OTS focuses on language and speech as an essential ingredient of human cognition and communication. Language is a multi-layered phenomenon, in which sound and structure collaborate to convey meaning in communicative aspects. Different aspects of language are under investigation in subareas of the field. UiL OTS focuses on the architecture of language as part of human cognition, the psychological and neurological processes underlying the acquisition and processing of language, and the use of language in communicative contexts.
These research lines are embedded in the Utrecht University focus areas Neuroscience & Cognition, Education & Learning Sciences, and Youth & Identity.
Research Groups
Concrete research activities are organised in 14 thematically structured relatively small research groups that allow interaction between junior and senior researchers:
- psycholinguistics: parsing/aphasia/dyslexia
- speech
- phonology & phonological first & second language acquisition
- first & second language acquisition: syntax-semantics-discourse
- bilingualism & multilingual language contact
- cognitive and affective factors underlying discourse representation and processing
- document design & communication
- language learning
- language technology: language resources
- language & logic
- semantic variation
- interfaces: syntax-semantics-lexicon
- syntactic micro- and macrovariation
- historical linguistics
Collaboration within research groups is informal, concrete and intensive.
Research Themes
Collaboration across research groups happens in the overarching research themes of Bilingualism across the lifespan and Language & Emotion.
Under the header of 'Bilingualism across the lifespan', UiL OTS researchers investigate aspects of bilingual language acquisition, processing in healthy and impaired bilingual individuals of different ages, and language use and education in multilingual communicative contexts.
UiL OTS researchers interested in 'Language & Emotion' work on the interaction of the linguistic and the affective system in grammar, processing and speech.