LOT Schultink Memorial lecture: Alec Marantz

During this years LOT Summer School, we will have the pleasure of hosting the Schultink Lecture to be delivered by Alec Marantz (NYU). The school will last for the two first weeks of July, the lecture taking place during the second week.

Date:    July 13

Time:    4:30 PM

Place:   Drift 21, room 0.32

Title:  Jabberwocky and the Role of Generative Grammar in Language Use: The Slithy Toves Slay Words and Rules

Abstract

Speakers of a language produce and understand sentences they have never heard before.  The usual explanation of this ability supposes that we memorize the words of a language and generate sentences from them – see Pinker’s Words and Rules and the research program it spawned.  Evidence from brains and behavior – and Jabberwocky — suggests instead that we generate the words and memorize the sentences.  A more compelling explanation dissolves the distinction between memory and generation and identifies a (generative) grammar as the way in which brains store a potentially infinite set of words and sentences.  We will review linguistically sensitive MEG research that motivates and supports this conclusion.