GALANA Conference 2012: Psycholinguistic and Neurolinguistic Approaches to Language Development

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

This grant provides support for the 2012 Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition-North America (GALANA) conference, with a special theme on Psycholinguistic and Neurolinguistic Approaches to Language Development. The conference will be held at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas on October 11-13, 2012. This conference will be the fifth meeting of GALANA, an international conference which has emerged as a leading forum for research in language development that is informed by linguistic theory. Language acquisition research in the generative framework addresses several core questions regarding the mental representation of linguistic knowledge, the ways in which that knowledge emerges over time, and the degree to which that knowledge is specialized or independent of other cognitive domains. In recent years, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic techniques have provided new ways to investigate the recruitment of linguistic knowledge in real time processing, and have successfully been utilized with both child and adult learner populations. The goal of this session is to consider the application of these new approaches for theory building and testing in the domains of first and second language acquisition. This session will be the first of its kind to consider first language acquisition, second language acquisition, and language disorders under the same umbrella. As there is overlap with respect to the core theoretical questions at the heart of these sub-fields, it is advantageous to encourage discussion among researchers from these different disciplines. The findings of this conference will be broadly disseminated in two outlets: a proceedings volume for the general conference and a special issue of a journal that will be dedicated to the special theme. The conference encourages broad participation by highlighting the work of junior scholars in several invited presentations. The conference also encourages participation from junior researchers by offering merit-based travel awards to graduate students and post-docs.