招待講演：Jennifer Culbertson (University of Edinburgh)

Title: New connections between language evolution and SLA

Abstract: Artificial language learning paradigms have long been a core tool for understanding how both adults and children learn language. More recently, researchers in language evolution have co-opted these paradigms to test hypotheses about the links between learning, language use, and linguistic typology (e.g., language universals). These links have been the subject research in SLA for many years (e.g., Rutherford 1984, Carlisle 2001, White 2003, a.o.), yet connections between this new empirical approach to universals and SLA research is scant. In this talk, I survey recent findings using artificial language learning experiments to investigate universals in syntax and morphology. In each case, I highlight how SLA research may enrich these findings and make new predictions about how adult and child learning might drive population-level typological trends.

Bio: Professor Jennifer Culbertson received her PhD in Cognitive Science from Johns Hopkins University in 2010, and was awarded the Robert J. Glusko Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in Cognitive Science in 2012. She is a founding member of the Centre for Language Evolution at the University of Edinburgh, where she is currently Professor of Experimental Linguistics.