How free is free?: word order in Australian Indigenous languages. This project aims to address the fundamental issue of how the grammatical structure of the language we speak shapes the way we plan and interpret sentences. The project will use innovative methodologies to investigate language production and comprehension in three Australian Indigenous languages that have unusually free word order, where the words in a sentence can be varied in multiple ways without changing the overall meaning. E ....How free is free?: word order in Australian Indigenous languages. This project aims to address the fundamental issue of how the grammatical structure of the language we speak shapes the way we plan and interpret sentences. The project will use innovative methodologies to investigate language production and comprehension in three Australian Indigenous languages that have unusually free word order, where the words in a sentence can be varied in multiple ways without changing the overall meaning. Expected outcomes include new knowledge of the relationship between language structure and human cognition, a deeper understanding of the grammatical structure of three Indigenous languages and how they differ from other languages, and important contributions to Indigenous language maintenance and education.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE140101749
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$379,480.00
Summary
A computational network model of the mental lexicon. Understanding a word's meaning is a challenge when learning a language and a capacity that is seriously affected in various disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, however little is known about how meaning is organised in the mental lexicon and evolves from childhood into old age. This project aims to build a detailed computational model integrating information available through the senses and structure in the language environment to derive a l ....A computational network model of the mental lexicon. Understanding a word's meaning is a challenge when learning a language and a capacity that is seriously affected in various disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, however little is known about how meaning is organised in the mental lexicon and evolves from childhood into old age. This project aims to build a detailed computational model integrating information available through the senses and structure in the language environment to derive a lexicon that covers most words people know. By distinguishing qualitative different types of meaning relations, this project will allow the prediction of the kind of information and processes required to understand words and an understanding of how this lexicon grows in childhood and declines in old age.Read moreRead less