What doesn’t change: Pertinacity in language change and processing
In linguistic change, not everything goes. Languages don't capriciously change all the time. Despite an inexhaustible potential for variation, much about the lexicon and grammar, including the grammar of sounds, pertinaciously remains constant. In speech and in texts we observe how continuity is negotiated between speakers and hearers, writers and readers, over their life spans and from generation to generation. In experimental psycho- and neurolinguistic research we try to identify what it is about human minds and brains that effectuates, but also constrains variation. This sort of research agenda, combining philological, linguistic, and cognitive-science methodologies, will be illustrated from my own work on Bengali, English, German, Mandarin, Norwegian and Swedish phonology.
Biography
Professor Aditi Lahiri, CBE FBA MAE, Emerita Professor of Linguistics, is currently a Research Professor in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics at the University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford. Professor Lahiri obtained her first PhD from the University of Calcutta and then a second from Brown University. She came to Oxford from Germany, where she had for 15 years held the Chair of Linguistics at the University of Konstanz, and prior to that she was a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
With the overarching objective of shedding light on mental representations and historical developments of phonological and morpho-phonological systems and processes, Professor Lahiri's research programme employs a diversity of methodologies beyond the traditional tools of the theoretical and historical linguist's trade, ranging from cutting-edge brain imaging technology to palaeographic investigation of centuries-old manuscripts. Also, her research on featural systems has found a practical application in the development of a linguistically-based model of speech recognition.
Her work has been supported by research grants from the ERC, AHRC, and DFG. Her current project, PERTINACITY, originally awarded by ERC, is funded by EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of the UK).
Professor Lahiri's academic honours include the Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, and the Professor Sukumar Sen Memorial Gold Medal of the Asiatic Society. She is a Fellow and former Vice-President of the British Academy, a member of Academia Europaea, and an Honorary Life Member of the Linguistic Society of America. She was mentioned in the Queen's honours list 2010 awarding her a CBE for services to Linguistics.