Meet the Authors: Language Volume 96, Number 3 (September 2020)
Please join us on Friday, August 21 for the newest in the LSA's "Meet the Authors" webinars showcasing research from our flagship journal, Language. The webinar will take place from 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM U.S. Eastern Time.
Authors Jennifer Culbertson, Marieke Schouwstra, and Simon Kirby of the University of Edinburgh discussed their article, "From the world to word order: deriving biases in noun phrase order from statistical properties of the world."
Please read on for author biographies and an abstract. The article is available on the Project MUSE page for Language through the LSA's publish-ahead-of-print initiative.
The Authors
Jennifer Culbertson's research focuses on understanding how languages are shaped by learning and use. She is interested in how typological universals (differences in the frequency of linguistic patterns across the world's languages) arise from properties of our cognitive system. To get at this, she teaches people (children and adults) miniature artificial languages, and creates computational models of their behavior. (Picured at right)
Marieke Schouwstra is interested in how individual and cultural processes interact to give us structured languages that allow us to share our thoughts. She studies this by focusing on what happens when languages are created anew, in laboratory experiments in which participants communicate in novel ways. Currently at the University of Edinburgh, she will soon take up a position at the University of Amsterdam. (Pictured at left)
Simon Kirby is Professor of Language Evolution at the University of Edinburgh and Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Cognitive Science Society. He works in parallel on scientific and artistic investigations of cultural evolution and the origins of human uniqueness. He founded the Centre for Language Evolution, which has pioneered techniques for growing languages in the lab and in computer simulation. His artistic work includes the BAFTA-winning Cybraphon, which is now part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Scotland. (Pictured at right)