Which of the human brain's biological and
computational structures make language possible? What can
the recent advances in computer processing of human
language tell us about the nature of language and the
process by which children learn it? Is there a precise,
mathematical science of human language and, if so, what is
it?
With the support of a five-year $3.2 million
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship
grant from the National Science Foundation, doctoral
students in the Department of Cognitive Science at Johns
Hopkins are being trained to tackle these and other
mysteries of language from a multidisciplinary perspective.
"The goal of the program is to overcome barriers that
have long separated the way different disciplines have
approached language research," said Paul Smolensky,
Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Cognitive Science at
Johns Hopkins and principal investigator for the IGERT
program. "The program is called Unifying the Science of
Language, and its aim is to train a generation of
interdisciplinary language researchers who can bring
together the now widely separated and often divergent
bodies of research on language conducted from the
perspectives of engineering, psychology and various types
of linguistics."
The result, Smolensky contends, will be a new
generation of researchers with an unprecedented combination
of strength and breadth in experimental, theoretical and
computational methods.
This is the department's second IGERT grant, and the
winning proposal was carefully designed to build upon the
first. It involves 10 faculty members from Cognitive
Science, 10 from other departments on the Homewood campus
and from the School of Medicine and approximately 20
students, half on IGERT fellowships and half funded from
other sources.
According to Smolensky, IGERT fellows and researchers
are using the grant to conduct a wide range of projects
delving into some fundamental questions facing cognitive
science.
"After a stroke, a patient may lose the ability to
understand speech while retaining the ability to produce
it. How could our knowledge of language be organized to
make this possible?" Smolensky said. "Or, consider that
toddlers learn an average of 10 new words a day, and at a
much higher rate during vocabulary bursts. What makes it
possible for children to learn language at a rate that far
outpaces their development in other areas of cognition?
These are the kinds of questions that we hope to be able to
answer."
Those questions may sound theoretical, but the answers
may hold the key to the development of very real--and
practical--applications, from strategies to teach reading
and spelling to children with learning issues to therapies
aimed at helping stroke patients struggling with language
disorders.
Johns Hopkins is one of 125 IGERT sites nationwide.
The National Science Foundation started the program in 1997
to alter the culture of graduate education by encouraging
collaborative research transcending traditional
disciplinary boundaries.
GO TO