Comparative and Experimental Linguistics Lab (CELL)
Syntax aims at a scientific understanding of how words combine together to form meaningful sentences; it investigates questions like: what are possible and impossible word combinations and structures; why do some combinations work, i.e. produce interpretable and sometimes ambiguous sentences, while others do not, how do speakers acquire the knowledge necessary to produce these combinations and how do they put this knowlege to use in everyday communication?
In our lab, we approach these questions comparatively, studying a variety of languages, with a special interest in Romance (especially French) and Creole languages, and experimentally using a variety of techniques (corpus searches, on line judgment tasks, truth-value judgment tasks, perception, acoustic analysis, and ERP).
Funded International Projects and Networks we currently participate in:
The Structure, Emergence and Evolution of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Advancing the European Multilingual Experience (AthEME)
Colleagues we currently collaborate with:
Dr. Renauld Govain, Dean of the Université de Linguistique Appliquée, Haiti
Dr. Fabiola Henri, University of Kentucky, USA
Dr. Emmanuel Schang, Université d'Orleans, France.
Dr. Maria-Teresa Espinal, University Autonoma of Barcelona, Spain
Dr. Susagna Tubau, University Autonoma of Barcelona, Spain
Dr. Richard Larson, SUNY Stony Brook, USA
Dr. Asya Achimova Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of Tubingen, Germany
Dr. Cecilia Poletto. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany