A woman in a polka-dotted dress is showing a picture book to a baby wearing an EEG cap, sitting on the lap of another woman.
© Simone Reukauf

What do we study?

What do we study?

What do we study?

How do people infer meanings that go beyond the literally encoded? What linguistic, pragmatic and cognitive mechanisms are involved? How do children acquire language, meaning and concepts? How do groups form communicative strategies? In the SPA lab, we address these questions using a variety of experimental techniques as well as theoretical and computational modeling tools. We work with adults, children, clinical populations and data from corpora (e.g. negotiation situations). The topics we deal with include, but are not limited to: pragmatic inference, irony, politeness, adjective meaning, scales, degrees, numeralia, negation, modality, information structure and dialog.

What research methods do we use?

  • Web-based experiments (PCIBex)

  • Behavioral experiments with children in the lab

  • eye tracking

  • EEG

  • Computer-based modeling (e.g. Rational Speech Act modeling)

  • Formal semantics and pragmatics