Cognitive science applies diverse tools and perspectives to study human language.
Recently, an exciting body of work has examined linguistic phenomena through the lens of …

Understanding language requires more than the use of fixed conventions and more than
decoding combinatorial structure. Instead, comprehenders make exquisitely sensitive …

Modern machine learning has subverted and bypassed the theoretical framework of
Chomsky's generative approach to linguistics, including its core claims to particular insights …

Modeling human cognition is challenging because there are infinitely many mechanisms
that can generate any given observation. Some researchers address this by constraining the …

How does language inform our downstream thinking? In particular, how do humans make
meaning from language--and how can we leverage a theory of linguistic meaning to build …

Memory is fleeting. New material rapidly obliterates previous material. How, then, can the
brain deal successfully with the continual deluge of linguistic input? We argue that, to deal …

The frequency distribution of words has been a key object of study in statistical linguistics for
the past 70 years. This distribution approximately follows a simple mathematical form known …

Abstract Language exhibits striking systematic structure. Words are composed of
combinations of reusable sounds, and those words in turn are combined to form complex …

Explaining the variation between human languages and the constraints on that variation is a
core goal of linguistics. In the last 20 y, it has been claimed that many striking universals of …

If the structure of language vocabularies mirrors the structure of natural divisions that are
universally perceived, then the meanings of words in different languages should closely …