Research

Vera Xia

As language users, we are constantly making predictions about the structure of upcoming sentences based on sentences that we have previously encountered. For example, if you have just heard "The parent gave the child a hug", and you next hear a sentence beginning with "The lady sent...", you might expect it to end with "...the gentleman a letter", rather than "...a letter to the gentleman". The purpose of this research project is to investigate how people who speak both Mandarin and English make predictions about these types of sentence structures in both of their languages. We are interested in how their predictions are affected by the specific language they are using, their proficiency in that language, and the frequency of similar sentences in their past experience.

Herb Colston

This project studies a broad range of types of figurative language (e.g., metaphor, verbal irony, hyperbole, idioms & proverbs, metonymy, and others) and addresses questions about how these forms are comprehended, why speakers use them, what kinds of pragmatic effect arise from their usage, and what sorts of cognitive, social, embodied and other phenomena underlie them).  Part of this work has also investigated how language learners acquire L2 idioms.  This research has been conducted in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria), the University of California, Los Angeles (U.S.), the University of California, Santa Cruz (U.S.), and the University of York (U.K.).

Elizabeth Assefa

Psycholinguistic research shows that language processing difficulties from expectation-violating information can be heightened by perceived differences in moral and political views, and that processing difficulties can lead to more negative speaker evaluations and greater difficulty accepting their message. To our knowledge, it is not known whether delivering a message using more nuanced language impedes these effects. This project will assess participants' processing of progressive and conservative speaker attitude statements. We will examine how expectations derived from preconceptions around a speaker’s political identity affect more vs. less nuanced language processing to discern whether processing disruptions can be ameliorated by the use of more nuanced language. We will also investigate whether a facilitation in processing leads to more positive evaluations of the speaker. Both parts will consider the extent that these effects depend on individual differences. This research will provide further insight into how communication breakdowns may occur around polarizing topics.

Hannah Lam

Based on my previous study examining how singular “they” and gendered pronouns are processed by adult monolinguals English speakers, I am currently extending that study to adult and child Canadian heritage bilinguals who spoke Cantonese and Mandarin at home growing up. My current project also looks at how the adult and child heritage bilinguals process Chinese classifiers.