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Department of Linguistics is pleased to announce the establishment of an exciting new research centre: the Centre for Language Sciences (CLaS).

CLaS is led by Professor Stephen Crain, it involves academic staff who were previously attached to the Speech, Hearing and Language Research Centre, the Dictionary Research Centre, and other research groupings at Macquarie University. It will be funded as a Macquarie University Research Centre for five years, starting in 2007.

The Centre for Language Sciences will focus on experimental and computational research in linguistics, psycholinguistics, lexicography, audiology and speech science, as well as related research interests from MACCS, ELS and Humanities. It aims to foster interdisciplinary linguistic research with both theoretical and empirical goals, targeting both human and computer acquisition of language, and the languages of Europe as well as Asia.

The Centre focuses on four major project areas:

Core and periphery, led by Dr Rosalind Thornton and Associate Professor Trevor Johnston. This project area investigates the acquisition of language systems by children and second language learners, and the sociolinguistic differentiation of languages in diverse communities.

Linguistic representation, led by Emeritus Professor Pam Peters. Research in this area embraces questions of ambiguity in language, as well as multimodal representations of concepts: verbal (oral and textual, graphic), and cross-language differences in the encoding of concepts.

Production systems and performance systems, led by Associate Professor Linda Cupples and A/P Lyndsey Nickels. The research here centres on how linguistic knowledge is accessed and composed, and how linguistic elements may be manipulated by the speech community to maintain group relationships.

Auditory processing, led by Dr Catherine McMahon. In this project area the focus is on normal development and function of the auditory processing system, as well as the impact on it of central and peripheral deficits (i.e hearing loss) in younger and older people.

Staff, graduates and research students interested in collaborating in any of those areas are very welcome to contact the principals.

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