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Workshop – Language Processing and Learning

Welcome to our one-day workshop on language processing and learning!

This workshop marks the completion of the DFG-funded project “CoLeaP – Cognition, Learning, Processing” (2020-2024), jointly led by Holger Hopp (TU Braunschweig), Greg Poarch (University of Groningen), and Sarah Schimke (LMU Munich).

The project investigated the contributions of processing to language acquisition. Focusing on non-canonical word orders in syntax, we investigated how linguistic development is shaped by experience with processing syntactic structures in an L1 and an L2 (within domain, i.e., linguistic processing) and cognitive control abilities (across domain, i.e., cognitive to linguistic processing). In the first phase of the project, we tested how L1 German adolescent learners of English at low proficiency Learn to Process (object) relative clauses by assessing correlations of (cross-)linguistic and cognitive variables with processing. In the second phase, we investigated how learners Process to Learn by testing effects of language and cognitive processing on acquisition in an implicit learning study, using structural priming.

The workshop will take place on Thursday, March 7, 2024, on site at the University of Munich (Germany).

It will feature two talks from the CoLeaP project and two keynote talks by:

    • Janet van Hell (Pennsylvania State University): “Neural signatures of accented speech processing: the roles of speaker identity and listener experience”
    • John Trueswell (University of Pennsylvania): “The process of acquiring word meanings: How making rapid interpretive commitments shapes word learning in children and adults”

Moreover, there will be two poster sessions where empirical studies related to the topic of the workshop will be presented.