In this talk we provide an update about the work carried out as part of our project in the past years. We will report results from our empirical studies and discuss recent and upcoming publications.
At the end of their recent position paper, Arnon et al. (2025, *Science*) ask “[...] why language (unlike, say, birdsong) is flexible enough to be conveyed by radically different sensory systems?” We argue that language can be expressed in different …
Im Rahmen eines von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) geförderten Projekts haben wir Unterschiede zwischen Nomen und Verben in der Deutschen Gebärdensprache (DGS) untersucht. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Nomen in der Regeal kürzer und mit …
An influential school of thought in theoretical linguistics (Adger, 2021; Chomsky, 1995; Chomsky et al., 2023) stipulates that the core computational machinery for language—the ability to hierarchically combine lexical items—is …
Sprache ist gleichzeitig soziales Phänomen und biologisches Merkmal des Menschen. In diesem Impulsvortrag widmen wir uns den Grundlagen von Gebärdensprachen in Gesellschaft und Gehirn aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven, und bieten den Teilnehmern …
Language processing relies on a distributed network of white-matter pathways connecting frontal, temporal, and parietal regions of cortex. While the arcuate fasciculus in the left hemisphere connecting the posterior inferior frontal gyrus to the …
Murphy’s discussion (2025) of his recent ROSE model includes explicit linking hypotheses connecting computational, algorithmic, and implementational levels in the study of language and its neurobiological basis. Here, I argue that establishing the …
The capacity for language enables humans to flexibly link meaning to sound or sign by means of grammar. Significantly, the computations underlying this ability appear to be fundamentally abstract and therefore at least to an extent independent of the …
Sign languages are perceived visually and externalized using the signer’s hands, face, and body. During sign language comprehension, deaf signers primarily focus their gaze on the face, while hearing non-signers attend more to the hands of a signer. …
The ability to combine words into sentences lies at the heart of the human capacity for language which is not bound to speech but can also be externalised in the form of sign languages. Syntactic processing in spoken and written language in hearing …