New Ideas in Language Sciences: Linguistics

About this Research Topic

Background

The language sciences are inherently interdisciplinary, intersecting with disciplines such as cognitive sciences, neuropsychology, informatics, musicology, and social sciences. New ideas in interdisciplinary sub-disciplines such as psycho-, neuro-, or computational linguistics have informed and enriched core topics in linguistics such as comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. For example, advances in computational linguistics have made it possible to challenge traditional approaches by providing powerful stochastic or Bayesian models of human language, or to improve quantitative methods. Novel methodological approaches (e.g., co-registration) emerging from cognitive psychology have contributed to shed light on the mechanisms of language processing and helped link it to other cognitive modalities while uncovering its underlying neural circuitry. Neurolinguistic research (e.g., comparisons of degenerative and non-degenerative language disorders) demonstrates the importance of including neurodiverse populations in linguistic research to fully understand the neural underpinnings of linguistic processes. Concurrently, renewed efforts investigating language in social interaction emphasize ecological validity, thus focusing usage-based linguistic approaches and challenging traditional concepts of modular ones.

Despite these new advances and achievements transpiring from the various sub-disciplines, the field of Linguistics is still in need of a comprehensive overarching framework that may tie together and account for the various aspects of ‘how language works’. This editorial initiative is focused on collecting new insights, novel developments, latest discoveries, and recent advances in the inherently interdisciplinary field of Linguistics that will help to work towards such a framework. Integrating new ideas gained from computational models, new methodological approaches, as well as findings from language processing in ecologically valid contexts and in diverse populations will benefit and further our understanding of language and human communication. Our hope is to identify challenges to existing models, theories, and practices that will then serve as a base for future developments in this field.

This Research Topic welcomes forward-looking empirical contributions outlining recent developments and novel theoretical approaches that link developments across different linguistic subdisciplines, methodologies, and populations. Examples of potential insights include work on the role of prediction, situated (event) perception, language comprehension and processing at the interfaces, the role of intonation and rhythm in speech comprehension and the acquisition of proficiency in reading, processing under adverse conditions, the use of co-registration methods, unification accounts, among others. We welcome all article types on new advancements within the field of Linguistics, including those addressing any potential challenges to existing linguistic models, theories, and empirical practices.

Keywords: psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, computational linguistics, sociolinguistics, prediction, perception, language processing, co-registration, interdisciplinarity, novel methods and approaches, ecological validity

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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