Janet van Hell (PhD, University of Amsterdam) is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Linguistics, and Director of the Center for Language Science at the Pennsylvania State University. Funded (mainly) by the National Science Foundation, research in her Bilingualism and Linguistic Diversity ( BiLD ) Lab focuses on the neural and cognitive basis of human language processing in linguistically diverse contexts, in L2 learners and monolingual, bilingual and bidialectal speakers. She combines neuropsychological and behavioral techniques to study patterns of cross-language interaction at the lexical and sentence levels, codeswitching, and accented-speech processing. Dr. Van Hell and her students are active in outreach initiatives that bring language and brain research to broader communities. She serves as PI of the NSF NRT program “Linguistic diversity across the lifespan: Transforming training to advance human-technology interaction”.  She is also Associate Editor for Brain and Language and Co-Editor of Language Learning’s Cognitive Neuroscience Series.

Topic: Communication Across Languages: Neural Signatures of Accented Speech Processing

Abstract: Our globalized world is a linguistic mosaic, home to many nonnative speakers of a given language. In fact, there are more nonnative than native speakers of English, many of whom have a noticeable accent. Nonnative-accented speech can pose processing challenges, as listeners must reconcile incoming deviating acoustic signals with their existing phonological representations. These challenges can be exacerbated when nonnative-accented speech is embedded in background noise, as may happen when you listen to your colleague during the conference coffee break. How do listeners process speech produced by nonnative-accented speakers? In this talk, I will discuss recent electrophysiological (EEG/ERP) and behavioral research on how listeners process semantic and syntactic information in sentences spoken by nonnative- and native-accented speakers. I will specifically focus on studies that examined how listeners’ processing of nonnative-accented speech is impacted by their familiarity with nonnative-accented speech, knowledge of the speakers’ identity, and noisiness of the environment. Collectively, these findings highlight the importance of integrating socio-indexical cues, listener experience, and environmental features into theoretical models of nonnative speech processing.

Mirjam Fried is Professor of Linguistics and Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Charles University, where she has worked since 2011. Her expertise is in cognitive linguistics, especially the development of conceptual and analytic tools in Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics. Her research examines the grammatical and interactional organisation of spontaneously produced spoken language, with an empirical foundation in corpus data. She received her PhD from UC Berkeley, held faculty appointments in the United States (University of Oregon, UC Berkeley, and Princeton University), and has served in major leadership roles at Charles University, including as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and as Principal Investigator of a five-year European structural research project.

Topic: Multilayered Cues for Listener Comprehension in Spontaneously Produced Interactions

Abstract: Cognitively oriented linguistic research rests on the long-standing understanding that face-to-face oral interactions constitute an important resource for detecting the complex patterns of language production and perception. This usage-based commitment calls for a multi-layered approach that can incorporate simultaneous contributions of multiple semiotic channels – linguistic, auditory, visual (e.g. Feyaerts et al. 2017; Verhaagen 2025). I will demonstrate how the conceptual and analytic tools of Construction Grammar can help articulate integrative representations of speakers’ conventional linguistic knowledge. To illustrate, I will consider the relationship between lexico-grammatical structure and specific auditory patterns in signaling subtle, but conversationally crucial discourse-pragmatic meanings. My corpus material (private, everyday Czech conversations) is instructive in at least two ways: It highlights the role of sound (prosodic patterns and/or varying degrees of phonetic reductions) as a strong indicator of speakers’ intentions as well as a reliable cue for functional disambiguation and, hence, successful comprehension. And it supports the hypothesis that descriptively adequate and cognitively plausible generalizations about grammatical structure must take into account the inherent properties of dialogic interaction: temporal sequencing of turns, distributed co-construction of complete linguistic units, and the need to keep updating the listener’s mental model of the unfolding discourse.

James H-Y. Tai (戴浩一) is Chair Professor of Linguistics at National Chung Cheng University, where he founded the Graduate Institute of Linguistics and the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences. He received his BA from National Taiwan University (1964) and his MA (1967) and PhD (1970) in Linguistics from Indiana University. His academic career includes positions at Southern Illinois University and The Ohio State University, with visiting appointments at MIT, the University of Massachusetts, and Cornell University, and he has also served as Adjunct Professor at Ohio State since 1995. His research spans Chinese linguistics (syntax, semantics, and pragmatics), cognitive linguistics, sign linguistics, and language and aging, and he has played a central role in advancing research on Taiwan Sign Language, including establishing the Taiwan Center for Sign Linguistics.

Topic: The Role of Language Skills in Aging: Cognitive Reserve and Resilience

Abstract: For the first time in history, human race faces a grave threat in global aging. The rate of aging is the fastest in Europe, Japan, and Taiwan. In 2026, Taiwan is officially a “super-aged society” with 20% of the population over 65. It is expected that life of centenarians will be a common phenomenon in Taiwan in the near future. The ensued medical costs and social problems will present a much graver burden than now for the country. Therefore, it is imperative to think ahead ways to alleviate the burden.

In this talk, I offer the view that building up language skills in early life and consolidation and enhancement of the language skills in later life is fundamentally important for ‘cognitive reserve’ and ‘resilience’ for the elderly. 

The concept of ‘cognitive reserve’ is to be distinguished from ‘brain reserve’ (Varangis and Stern 2020). Brain reserve concerns larger brain size, or more neurons/synapses in individuals. In contrast, cognitive reserve refers to the preservation of executive functions, in spite of the pathological or structural damages to the brain. In the well-known ‘The Nun Study’ (Snowdon 1997, Snowdon et al. 2000), Sister Mary, who passed away at age 101 with clear evidence of AD-neuropathology at autopsy (Snowdon 1997), showed no signs of cognitive impairment or decline prior to autopsy. The neuropathology contains beta-amyloid plaque and tau tangles. Follow-up studies on Sister Mary and her cohort showed that those sisters with higher levels of educational attainment and activities were significantly less susceptible to AD. 

It should be noted, however, that highly educated individuals typically develop dementia later in life due to higher cognitive reserve, but often experience a more rapid, steeper decline once symptoms appear.

‘The Nun Study’ was a longitudinal, epidemiological study of aging, investigating risk factors for the development of Alzheimer’s disease and longevity with a special focus on linguistic ability (Snowdon et al., 1997). The diaries written by nuns since their entrance to the convents were analyzed with respect to their vocabulary and syntax. It was found that those sisters with low degrees of ‘idea density’ and ‘grammatical complexity’ were more susceptible to AD than those with higher degrees.

I will also briefly report how ‘idea density’ and ‘grammatical complexity’ can be measured with similar methods used in child language acquisition, e.g., MLU, TTR, and relative clauses in Mandarin Chinese. I addition, I will outline the functions of language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) for the elderly in social interactions and health literacy, thus adding to the resilience for the later life of the elderly. In particular, I propose that handwriting Chinese characters for correspondences, diaries, and essays, etc., could be one of the most beneficial anti-aging methods, pending further empirical evidence.