The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik'';

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: ''Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholinguïstiek'') is a research institute situated on the campus of

Radboud University Nijmegen Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, nl, Radboud Universiteit , formerly ''Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen'') is a public research university located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The university bears the name of Saint Radboud, a 9th century D ...

located in

Nijmegen Nijmegen (;; Spanish and it, Nimega. Nijmeegs: ''Nimwèège'' ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and tenth largest of the Netherlands as a whole, located on the Waal river close to the German border. It is about 6 ...

Gelderland Gelderland (), also known as Guelders () in English, is a province of the Netherlands, occupying the centre-east of the country. With a total area of of which is water, it is the largest province of the Netherlands by land area, and second by ...

the Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. The institute was founded in 1980 by Pim Levelt, and is particular for being entirely dedicated to

psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

, and is also one of the few institutes of the

Max Planck Society The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (german: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. ...

to be located outside

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. The Nijmegen-based institute currently occupies 5th position in the Ranking Web of World Research Centers among all

Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical p ...

institutes (7th by size, 4th by visibility). It currently employs about 235 people.

Research

The institute specializes in

language comprehension Sentence processing takes place whenever a reader or listener processes a language utterance, either in isolation or in the context of a conversation or a text. Many studies of the human language comprehension process have focused on reading of s ...

language production Language production is the production of spoken or written language. In psycholinguistics, it describes all of the stages between having a concept to express and translating that concept into linguistic forms. These stages have been described in ...

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...

, language and

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...

, and the relation between language and

cognition Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

. Its mission is to undertake basic research into the psychological, social and biological foundations of language. The goal is to understand how human minds and brains process language, how language interacts with other aspects of mind, and how to learn languages of quite different types. The MPI for Psycholinguistics is a globally recognized center of linguistics and presents with its international archive of

endangered languages An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...

a significant contribution to the preservation of the common heritage of mankind. This archive is sponsored since 2000 by the

Volkswagen Foundation The Volkswagen Foundation (German: ''VolkswagenStiftung'') is the largest German private nonprofit organization involved in the promotion and support of academic research. It is not affiliated to the present company, the Volkswagen Group. It wa ...

and offers on the internet about 50 projects.

Current departments

The MPI for Psycholinguistics has four primary organizational units besides research groups.

Language and Genetics

Established in October 2010, the Language and Genetics Department is headed by Simon E. Fisher. The department takes advantage of the latest innovations in molecular methods to discover how the human genome helps to build a language-ready brain. It aims to uncover the DNA variations which ultimately affect different facets of human communicative abilities, not only in children with language-related disorders but also in the general population. Crucially, its work attempts to bridge the gaps between genes, brains, speech and language, by integrating molecular findings with data from other levels of analysis, including

cell biology Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living and ...

experimental psychology Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, in ...

and

neuroimaging Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Incre ...

. In addition, it hopes to trace the evolutionary history and worldwide diversity of key genes, which may shed new light on language origins.

Language Development

The original Language Acquisition Department (1980-2015) investigated processes of language acquisition and use in a broad perspective. The department combined attention to both first and second languages, researching production as well as comprehension of speakers of different ages and cultures, and the developmental relationship between language and cognition. The focus was on morpho-syntax, semantics and discourse structure. Headed by

Wolfgang Klein Wolfgang Klein (28 January 1941 – 15 September 2017) was a German athlete. He competed in the men's long jump at the 1964 Summer Olympics. He later became a lawyer and served as the president of the football club Hamburger SV Hamburg ...

, Language Acquisition previously launched three institute projects, namely, Information Structure in Language Acquisition, Categories in Language and Cognition and

Multimodal Interaction Multimodal interaction provides the user with multiple modes of interacting with a system. A multimodal interface provides several distinct tools for input and output of data. Introduction Multimodal human-computer interaction refers to the " ...

Clive Perdue Clive is a name. People and fictional characters with the name include: People Given name * Clive Allen (born 1961), English football player * Clive Anderson (born 1952), British television, radio presenter, comedy writer and former barrister * ...

was the scientific coordinator of the program ''Second Language Acquisition by Adult Immigrants'', whose results, published in the early 1990s, proposed that

second language acquisition Second-language acquisition (SLA), sometimes called second-language learning — otherwise referred to as L2 (language 2) acquisition, is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the scientific dis ...

proceeds along three stages: ''pre-basic'' variety (or ''nominal utterance organisation''), basic variety (or ''infinite utterance organisation'') and post-basic variety (or ''finite utterance organisation''). The Language Acquisition Department has returned in 2016 as the Language Development Department, headed by Caroline F. Rowland.

Neurobiology of Language

The Neurobiology of Language Department, headed by

Peter Hagoort Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

, focuses on the study of language production, language comprehension, and language acquisition from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. This includes using

, behavioral and

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

techniques to investigate the language system and its neural underpinnings. Research facilities at the Max Planck Institute include a high-density

electroencephalography Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex ...

(EEG) lab, a virtual reality laboratory and several behavioral laboratories. Having a part of the department stationed at the

Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour Donders is a Dutch surname meaning "thunder's", perhaps originally referring to a person's temper or voice, or to an artillery man.Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, it also has access to a whole-head 275 channel MEG system, MRI-scanners at 1.5, 3 and 7 Tesla, a TMS-lab, and several additional EEG laboratories.

Psychology of Language

The Psychology of Language Department, headed by Antje S. Meyer, identifies characteristics of the cognitive system that determine behavior in a broad range of linguistic tasks and the relationships between language production, comprehension, and learning via speaking, listening and cognition. The department also understands variability in adult language production and comprehension. Using various approaches, the Psychology of Language utilizes a combination of experimental and correlational work and inclusion of diverse samples of participants. With such methods, it has close links to the Language and Genetics and Neurobiology of Language departments.

Former departments

Language and Cognition

The Language and Cognition Department 1994-2017, headed by

Stephen C. Levinson Stephen C. Levinson FBA (born 6 December 1947)LEVINSON, Prof. Stephen Curtis

, investigated the relationship between language, culture and general cognition, making use of the natural laboratory of language variation. In this way, the research wanted to bring the perspective of

language diversity Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

to a range of central problems in the language sciences. Languages were described (sometimes for the first time) based on field data, and field experiments were conducted and extended

corpora Corpus is Latin for "body". It may refer to: Linguistics * Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts * Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files * Corpus linguistics, a branch of linguistics Music * ...

natural language In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...

usage collected. The department used a diversity of methods, ranging from linguistic analysis and

ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

to developmental perspectives, from psycholinguistic experimentation to

conversation analysis Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction, embracing both verbal and non-verbal conduct, in situations of everyday life. CA originated as a sociological method, but has since spread to other fields. CA began with ...

, from corpus statistics to brain imaging, and from

phylogenetics In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek language, Greek wikt:φυλή, φυλή/wikt:φῦλον, φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary his ...

to linguistic data mining. The research by the department started work with an explicit focus on

typology Typology is the study of types or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. Typology is the act of finding, counting and classification facts with the help of eyes, other senses and logic. Ty ...

within

Interactional linguistics Interactional linguistics (IL) is an interdisciplinary approach to grammar and interaction in the field of linguistics, that applies the methodology of Conversation Analysis to the study of linguistic structures, including syntax, phonetics, phonol ...

Language Comprehension

The Language Comprehension Department 1993-2013, headed by

Anne Cutler Elizabeth Anne Cutler FRS FBA FASSA ( – ) was an Australian psycholinguist, who served as director emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. A pioneer in her field, Cutler's work focused on human listeners' recognition an ...

, undertook empirical investigation and computational modeling of the understanding of

spoken language A spoken language is a language produced by articulate sounds or (depending on one's definition) manual gestures, as opposed to a written language. An oral language or vocal language is a language produced with the vocal tract in contrast with a si ...

. Until 2009, the work within the department was largely divided between two research projects: decoding continuous speech and phonological learning for speech perception; thereafter, most work was in the project called Mechanisms and Representations in Comprehending Speech. This project focused on core theoretical issues in speech comprehension such as on how episodic memories (e.g. hearing someone speak in an unfamiliar dialect) influence the speech perception system, or how prior knowledge about one's language (phonotactic probabilities, lexical knowledge, frequent versus infrequent word combinations) is used during perception.

Independent Research Groups

Communication before Language

This MPI research group, headed by Daniel Haun, investigates the social and cognitive foundations of human communication in infancy specifically on infants' developing social cognition and social motivation in relation to their emerging prelinguistic communication within social and cultural contexts. Their work is motivated by the idea that there is a psychological basis of human communication that develops ontogenetically prior to language and can be first expressed in gestures.

Evolutionary Processes in Language and Culture

Started in 2009, the research group investigates language diversity and change as part of an integrated cultural evolutionary system. Headed by Michael Dunn, the group takes a modern evolutionary perspective, using computational tools from genetics and biology, and integrating probabilistic, quantified approaches to

with rigorous tests of different models of the interaction between elements of language, contact and geography, and cultural variation.

Syntax, Typology and Information Structure

The research group, headed by Robert D. Van Valin, Jr., tries to determine the role of

information structure In linguistics, information structure, also called information packaging, describes the way in which information is formally packaged within a sentence.Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. ''Information structure and sentence form.'' Cambridge: Cambridge Univer ...

in explaining cross-linguistic differences in grammatical systems out of the idea that the interaction of pragmatics and grammar happens on several levels and differs from language to language. Another major task of the group is to investigate and re-evaluate the status of the information structure primitives (topic, focus, contrast, etc.) as cross-linguistically valid categories. To achieve this, the members of the group combine extensive corpus analysis of the data in their respective languages with production experiments; all findings are further cross-checked through standard information structure tests (question-answer pairs, aboutness tests, association with focus sensitive items).

References

External links

Homepage

DoBeS Documentation of endangered languages
{{Authority control Research institutes established in 1980 Organisations based in Gelderland Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...