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Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science

Language Acquisition LabThe Language Acquisition Lab

The Lab

The Language Acquisition Lab provides up-to-date technical support to researchers that wish to work on children's language development. Digital video recording equipment and sound recording equipment are available for data collection and analysis. Our lab also hosts a large toy library, assembled over the years to provide props for the Truth Value Judgment Task and the Elicited Production Task, experimental techniques developed by Dr. Rosalind Thornton and Prof. Stephen Crain.

The Language Acquisition Lab provides a welcoming environment for studies with children aged 18 months and upwards. Also working with different day care centers, a wide range of experiments have taken place in the lab, investigating the details of children's syntactic and semantic knowledge. Some of the results and experimental techniques that we have developed over the years can be found at the Child Language Videos Archive. This archive is a website designed to provide linguists all over the world as well as a more general audience, examples and explanations of different experiments conducted by researchers from the Language Acquisition Lab.

Current Projects Students Working

Much of the research in our lab has focused around children's acquisition of logical words such as 'or' and 'and' and how these words are interpreted in different sentence contexts in different languages. Members of our team have been investigating how these logical words function in English, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.

Our recent grant from the Australian Research Council continues our work on the acquisition of logical words. We have learned a lot about children's knowledge of these words using behavioural techniques, and we are now investigating children's knowledge of logical words using MEG (brain imaging) methodology. We already have experiments underway with 4-year-old English- and Mandarin-speaking children. Our international collaboration includes researchers in Hong Kong, Taiwan and in China: Professor Liqun Gao from Beijing Language and Culture University, Professor Thomas Hun-Tak Lee from City University of Hong Kong, and Professor Ovid Tseng from Academica Sinica in Taiwan. Our team is also drawing on the MEG expertise of Dr. Blake Johnson here at MACCS and the knowledge of logic and language offered by Dr. Drew Khlentzos from the University of New England. Many of our collaborators joined us for our 'Mandarin Fest Workshop' at Macquarie University in 2009.

We also have an ongoing collaboration with colleagues in Japan, Dr Hirohisa Kiguchi (Miyagi Gakuin Women's University) and Dr. Takuya Goro (Ibaraki University) on aspects of the syntax and semantics of English and Japanese. Last but not least, we continue to work with scientists at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology, headed by Professor Hisashi Kado.

We have a lively team of research students and collaborators, and we welcome new students who are interested in joining us on this and other related projects on the acquisition of syntax and semantics. Our current students work on English, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, but we welcome students who speak other languages too.

People

Research Staff

  • Professor Stephen Crain works on the acquisition of semantics. His current projects investigate children's acquisition of logical expressions in English, Chinese and Japanese.
  • Dr Rosalind Thornton focuses on the acquisition of syntax. Current projects include two-year-old children's acquisition of sentence structure. She is also working on the acquisition of logical expressions in English and Japanese.
  • Dr Autuman Luo is trained in formal semantics, and is working on quantification, and question words in Mandarin Chinese, and relating the structures and meanings of these expressions to other human languages.
  • Dr Daniele Panizza is a semanticist from Italy (and Harvard University) who is working on number concepts, and inferences that arise about numbers and other expressions of quantification in various linguistic contexts.
  • Pei-Shu Tsai is a visiting researcher from Taiwan. She is assisting us in two of the world's first studies using MEG to investigate Mandarin-speaking children's linguistic knowledge.
  • Dr Graciela Tesan is the Lab Manager of the KIT-Macquarie Brain Research Laboratory. Current projects include young children's acquisition of syntax and language processing.

PhD Research Students Language Acquisition lab members

  • Aijun Huang is working on Mandarin-speaking children's acquisition of negative polarity items, especially children's interpretation of the word 'renhe' ('any') and its wh-indefinite counterpart 'shenme'.
  • Nobu Akagi is working on the acquisition of focus expressions 'dake' and 'sika-nai' ('only') in Japanese-speaking children. He is also investigating disjunction in English and Japanese.
  • Anna Notley is working on the acquisition of English-speaking children's acquisition of 'only'. She is also interested in the disjunction operator 'or' when it is combined with 'before' or with 'every'.
  • Yi (Esther) Su is working on the acquisition of Chinese. Her current project investigates the disjunction operator 'huozhe' ('or') in the context of 'mei-ge' ('every'). She is also interested in the role of scalar implicatures.
  • Francesco-Alessi Ursini is working on children's acquisition of prepositions and the relationship between language and cognition. He is also working on universal quantification ('every' and 'all').
  • Peng Zhou is working on logical expressions in the acquisition of Chinese and English. Current projects investigate the Chinese universal quantifier 'dou' and disjunction in combination with 'before' in Chinese.

Visitors

  • Professor LiQun Gao from BLCU, Beijing, visited MACCS and our lab group in 2010.
    Professor Gao works on Mandarin speaking children's acquisition of logical words as well
    as language processing in children and adults. Professor Gao is one of the collaborators on
    our most recent ARC grant.
  • Min (Maggie) Liao was a Visiting Research student from BLCU, Beijing, in early 2010. Maggie plans to join us as a PhD student later in 2010 to work on children's interpretation of question words in different prosodic contexts.
  • Dr. Kriszta Szendroi is a lecturer in linguistics in the Department of Human Communication
    Sciences, University College London. Kriszta spent three months working with us in 2009. Kriszta works on syntax, semantics and language acquisition.
  • Dr. Britta Jensen was a Postdoctoral Fellow in MACCS from 2006-2008. Britta worked with Rozz on two year-old children's acquisition of structures that are fragments of sentences and on various projects on the acquisition of semantics, including 2 year-old children's knowledge of the universal quantifier 'every' and preschool children's interpretation of 'before' and 'or' with Stephen.

Funding

ARC Funding

  • Australian Research Council Discovery Grant. "The emergence of logic in human language". (2010- 2014)  CIs: Crain, S., Thornton, R., Johnson, B., Khlentzos, D., Lee, T. H-T., Tseng, O., & Gao, L-Q. ($601,000)
  • National Philosophy and Social Science Foundation Grant of China (2009). (09BYY022) "Semantic acquisition in Chinese and English: A Crosslinguistic comparison of children's understanding of logical words." Gao, L., Lee, T. H-T., Crain, S.,  & Thornton, R.
  • ARC Discovery Project Grant (2008 - 2011) "The meaning of 'OR' in logic and human languages". Crain, S., & Thornton, R. ($307,000)
  • ARC Linkage-Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities Grant (2006) "A MEG based cognitive neuroscience laboratory" Crain, S., Coltheart, M., Michie, M., Crewther, D.P., Pammer, K., Johnson, B.W. & Mattingley, J.B. ($650,000)
  • ARC Linkage Project grant, with Yokogawa Electric Co. as a partner organization (2006 - 2009) "An MEG (brain imaging) system to study cognitive processes in children" (Total grant contribution $970,000) Crain, S., Coltheart, M., Thornton, R., & Kado, H. ($220,000)
  • ARC Federation Fellowship (2004 - 2009) "Logic and language: Foundations of cognitive growth." Crain, S. ($1,481,765)
  • ARC Large Research Grants Scheme (2001 - 2003) "Linguistic and Cognitive Processes in Children at Risk for Developmental Dyslexia" Crain, S., & Byrne, B. ($90,000)

Macquarie University Funding

  • Macquarie University Research Infrastructure Block Grant Scheme (2008) "Acquisition of a Storage Area Network (SAN)." Coltheart, M., Crain, S., Williams, M., Rich, A., Johnson, B., Barnier, A., Nickels, L., McArthur, G., Castles, A., Langdon, R., Palermo, R., Kinoshita, S., & Coltheart, V. ($60,000)
  • Macquarie University Research Infrastructure Block Grant Scheme (2008) "64-Channel EEG acquire and analysis system and special MEG-compatable electrode caps and cable system." Rich, A., Williams, M., Johnson, B., Finkbeiner, M., Savage, G., & Crain, S. ($80,000)
  • Macquarie University Research Innovation Fund (2007 - 2009) "From the Neuron to the Self: human nature and the new cognitive neurosciences." Sutton, J., Bayne, T., Coltheart, M., Crain, S., Langdon, R., Mackenzie, C., Menzies, P., & Barnier, A. ($250,000)
  • Macquarie University Research Centres Scheme (2007 - 2011) "Centre for Language Sciences." Crain, S., Peters, P., Cupples, L., Johnston, T.A., Nickels, L., McMahon, C., & Thornton, R. ($150,000)
  • Macquarie University Chair (Research Committee) Discretionary Fund (2007) "Third year logic." Crain, S. ($20,000)
  • Macquarie University Research Infrastructure Block Grant Scheme (2007) "MACCS - Brain imaging software." Coltheart, M., Crain, S., & Johnson, B. ($36,310)
  • Macquarie University New Staff Grant (2006) "Children's Answers to Questions." Thornton, R. ($17,224)
  • Macquarie University Research Infrastructure Block Grant Scheme (2006) "Helium Recovery System for the Macquarie-KIT Brain Research Lab" Crain, S., Coltheart, M., Langdon, R., & McArthur, G. ($80,747)
  • Macquarie University External Collaborative Research Grants Scheme (2006) "Investigating Auditory Processing using MEG" Crain, S., Coltheart, M., and Newell, P. ($15,000)
  • Macquarie University Visiting Scholars Scheme (2006) "The use of context in language processing: Professor Mark Steedman" Crain, S. ($5,100)
  • Macquarie University External Collaborative Research Grant (2006) "Investigating Auditory Processing using MEG." Crain, S., Coltheart, M., & Newall, P. ($15,000)

Department of Education Funding

Stephen Crain was one of a team who obtained the following funding.

  • Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training Co-operative Research Centres Programme. (2006 - 2012) The HEARing Co-operative Research Centre. Core participants: The University of Melbourne, Cochlear Ltd., Siemens Hearing Instruments Pty Ltd, Australian Hearing, Macquarie University. Crain, S. ($32,550,000)