Predicting Grammatical Properties of Words Helps Us Read Faster
Psycholinguists from the HSE Centre for Language and Brain found that when reading, people are not only able to predict specific words, but also words’ grammatical properties, which helps them to read faster. Researchers have also discovered that predictability of words and grammatical features can be successfully modelled with the use of neural networks. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
.jpg "Weaving Languages Together: Why Megacities Need to Preserve Multilingualism")
Weaving Languages Together: Why Megacities Need to Preserve Multilingualism
Moscow, like any modern big city, attracts migrants from different regions and countries. Some of them speak very little or no Russian. Their adaptation and successful integration depend in part on how fast they can learn Russian and in part on whether the city makes an effort to accommodate other languages. According to linguist Mira Bergelson, this latter factor is particularly important if the city is to benefit from immigration.
‘Reading’ with Aphasia Is Easier than ‘Running’
Neurolinguists from HSE University have confirmed experimentally that for people with aphasia, it is easier to retrieve verbs describing situations with several participants (such as ‘someone is doing something’), although such verbs give rise to more grammar difficulties. The results of the study have been published in Aphasiology.
‘We Have Not Yet Fully Understood How Languages Work, and We Are Already Losing 90% of Their Diversity’
Why might a grandmother and her grandson not understand each other? Why would linguists want to go to Dagestan? Is it possible to save the less commonly spoken languages of small nations and Russian dialects? Nina Dobrushina, Head of the Linguistic Convergence Laboratory answered these questions in an interview with HSE News Service.
Former HSE Exchange Student Returns as Post-Doc in Linguistics
Originally from Pavia, Italy, Chiara Naccarato developed an interest in Russian early on in her studies, completing her undergraduate and master’s degrees in Russian Language and Linguistics at the University of Milan. She recently joined HSE as a postdoctoral researcher in the Linguistic Convergence Laboratory after completing her PhD studies in Linguistic Sciences at the Universities of Pavia and Bergamo.
Lecture Series Explores Communicative Supertypes, Russian as a Reality-Oriented Language, and Language & Culture
On March 19 and 22, Per Durst-Andersen, professor in the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School, gave three lectures at the Higher School of Economics on topics that fall under his current research interests, which focus largely on cognitive linguistics; communicative and linguistic typology; language, culture and identity; semiotics; and the philosophy of science. A well-known expert in cross-cultural pragmatics and specialist in business communication, Professor Durst-Andersen delivered the lectures as part of the ‘Language in the Universe of Culture: Russian Communicative Style’ course.
Francis Tyers – Drawn by Russia’s Linguistic Diversity
One of HSE’s newest faculty members is Francis Tyers, who will join the School of Linguistics on August 28 as an Assistant Professor. A native of Normanton on Soar, a small village in the south of Nottinghamshire in England, he joins HSE following a postdoctoral fellowship at UiT Norgga árktalaš universitehta in Tromsø in the north of Norway, where he worked on language technology for Russian and the Sámi languages. Prior to that, he completed PhD studies in the Department of Languages and Information Systems at the Universitat d'Alacant in Spain.
'HSE Students Are not Content with Knowing Things — They Immediately Want to Solve Linguistic Problems'
Guglielmo Cinque is a professor of linguistics at the University of Venice and one of the most well-known European generativists. Recently he paid a week-long visit the HSE School of linguistics, and now shares his impressions of our students and staff, as well as of this year's weather in Moscow.
HSE Student Elizaveta Kuzmenko Receives Google's Women Techmakers Scholarship
Google announced the recepients of its several scholarship programs, including the Women Techmakers Scholarship (formerly the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship). Among this year's winners Elizaveta Kuzmenko, 1st year student on the Computational Linguistics MA programme at the HSE School of linguistics.
'Students at HSE Have a Good Sense of Linguistic Diversity'
Yale postdoc Kevin Tang recently gave a talk at HSE on his research in experimental phonology. We talked to Kevin about his conversion from an engineer to a linguist and asked him how he liked the feedback he received from HSE students.