Bilingualism and Cross-Linguistic Research
Today, bilingualism is understood broadly: as the use of two (or more) languages or dialects in everyday life. Our studies of bilingualism reveal how two language systems function at the mental level. In one language, under the influence of a more dominant one, grammatical categories may experience changes or even be lost. These changes may not be noticeable at first glance but modern experimental methods make it possible to trace them.
Cross-linguistic research is aimed at identifying both universal aspects of how language is stored and used, and those phenomena that are unique to a particular language or group of languages. Of particular interest are studies of language interaction in bilinguals arising from typological differences between their languages—this opens a window into cross-linguistic investigation of language processing within one population.
What distinguishes the Center’s bilingual and cross-linguistic research is its linguistic diversity. For the first time, modern psycholinguistic models of language processing are being tested on understudied and minority languages, including languages of Russia. These studies bring together field linguistics and experimental linguistics, enriching both approaches, raising public awareness of the uniqueness of these languages and their importance for science and everyday life, and presenting minority and understudied languages at the level of international psycholinguistic research.
Fundamental Research
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The problem of reference in Spanish as a native and second foreign language
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Comprehension of relative clauses in West Circassian (Adyghe) language
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Multilingual Eye-Tracking Corpus of Text Reading: the MECO International Project