Centre for Language Sciences (CLaS)

The Centre for Language Sciences (CLaS) was established as a Macquarie University Research Centre (MQRC) in 2007 with Distinguished Professor Stephen Crain as Director. With the commencement of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders and the appointment of CLaS Founding Director, Distinguished Professor Crain, as its Director, Mark Johnson, Professor of Language Sciences (CORE) in the Department of Computing, took up the appointment as CLaS Director in March 2011. Centre research encompasses theoretical, experimental and computational issues in a variety of areas, including linguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, lexicography, audiology and speech science. The mission of the Centre is to foster interdisciplinary research, with several researchers being involved in more than one of the following major research areas.

CLaS Major Research Project Areas

Language Acquisition. Involves studies of both First Language Acquisition (L1) and Second Language Acquisition (L2) across populations and languages. Distinguished Professor Stephen Crain (semantics/pragmatics), Associate Professor Rosalind Thornton (syntax) and Professor Katherine Demuth (phonology and morpho-syntax).

Computational linguistics. Includes machine learning and probabilistic/Bayesian approaches to modeling language acquisition and language processing in the brain (Professor Mark Johnson) as well as corpus-based research into language variation and terminology (Emeritus Professor Pam Peters & Dr Jan Tent.).

Hearing and Speech Science. Includes research on auditory processing and its impact on central and peripheral deficits (i.e. hearing loss) in children and adults (Dr Catherine McMahon, Dr Mridula Sharma & Dr Robert Mannell) as well as issues in speech production and dialectal variation (Dr Felicity Cox).

Psycholinguistics. Investigates how linguistic knowledge is accessed, composed, and put to use in different social circumstances (Professor Linda Cupples & Professor Lyndsey Nickels).

Sign Language. Examines socio-linguistic variation and language change in signing deaf communities in order to test hypotheses about the relationship between usage and grammar (Professor Trevor Johnston & Associate Professor Jemina Napier.)

Translation and Interpreting. Research that focuses on translator and interpreter competence drawing on psycho-, socio- and cognitive linguistic analyses of authentic or experimental data, and on translation and interpreting pedagogy, scrutinising the quality and outcomes of T&I teaching and testing through action research and various other quantitative and qualitative research methods (Associate Professor Jemina Napier & Ms Helen Slatyer).