Professor Jennifer Culbertson Inaugural Lecture

"It doesn't take a linguist to see that languages differ from one another. At the same time, certain linguistic patterns crop up again and again, while others seem to be completely impossible. What these tantalising observations tell us about human language is one of the most contentious questions in linguistics. Do similarities between languages reflect a special capacity for language that only humans have? Do they reflect more general features of the human mind? Are they just down to accidents of history? Historically, linguists have argued for one or another of these answers based on limited sources of evidence. For example, it is common to base claims on small samples of languages, case studies of how a handful of languages change over time, or examples of how individual languages are learned. In this lecture, I highlight problems with these traditional sources of evidence. I then survey my own approach, which uses behavioural experiments to test whether and how language is shaped by the human linguistic and cognitive system. Finally, I will discuss what I think are the crucial next steps for this research programme." 

This Inaugural Lecture took place on Wednesday 3rd May in the Gordon Aikman Lecture Theatre. To view a recording of the lecture, please access the link below: