Workshop on New Frontiers in Psycholinguistic Studies of Chinese, Santa Barbara, CA, July 13-15, 2001

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In the last fifty years, linguists and psycholinguists have produced a large body of work on language processing in adults and language learning in children. Most of our knowledge in this domain has come from studies of Indo-European languages, in particular, English. Such results are usually interpreted as universal properties of language, and generalized accordingly. In recent years, however, there has been a surge of interest in the study of non-Indo-European languages. This interest to a certain degree reflects a 'paradigm shift', a reconceptualization of the role of cross-linguistic variation, in place of an emphasis on linguistic universals. The psycholinguistic study of Chinese represents one very important step in this direction. The phonological, orthographic, lexical, and grammatical structures of the Chinese language differ significantly from those of Indo-European languages on which major theories of linguistics and psycholinguistics are based. One the one hand, Chinese presents a major challenge to psycholinguists who attempt to understand the dynamics of language processing and language acquisition; on the other hand, it also presents new windows on cognitive processes and new opportunities for psycholinguistic analyses. In the last two decades, researchers have used a variety of theoretical and experimental paradigms to examine Chinese language processing and its acquisition. More recently, they have used Chinese as a crucial test case, applying neural and computational approaches to examine core problems in psycholinguistics. These new approaches have not only examined the psycholinguistic processes of Chinese, but also attempted to shed new light on language processing and language acquisition in general.The specific aim of this project is to advance our understanding of the psycholinguistic processes and mechanisms in Chinese language processing and language acquisition by organizing a workshop as part of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) Summer Linguistic Institute 2001 (to be held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, July 13-15, 2001). The workshop draws together eminent scholars who have done pioneering work in Chinese psycholinguistics. It provides an ideal forum for researchers to disseminate and integrate their exciting new ideas and share their aspirations for future directions.