Acquisition and Psycholinguistics

This section, dedicated principally to the acquisition of language and languages, aims to study the processes, mechanisms and determining factors of linguistic development, as well as testing recent formal and functional models concerning the structure and functioning of language. As a whole it is strongly interdisciplinary, combining linguistics (formal, functional, typological), psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and language teaching. Studies in this theme concern a diverse set of learners - in particular, L1, L2, bilingual, atypical development - and cover a wide developmental span - from the pre-linguistic period through to adulthood. The studies draw on crosslinguistic comparisons and use complementary methodologies relating verbal and non-verbal behavior (analysis of spontaneous and controlled productions, categorization and memory, speech-gesture relationships, eye movement). All projects involve multiple national and international collaborations and interact with other laboratory sections.