Conference: Computational and Psycholinguistic Approaches to Second Language Acquisition

语言是人类的一种独特属性。儿童可以根据他们接受的输入获得一种，两种或多种语言，许多人在一生中继续学习新语言。语言研究的学术领域是语言学，其中一个语言学框架是生成语言学理论。这一领域的重要研究领域包括语言如何在人类头脑中表现，这些心理表征如何被儿童获得，双语或第二语言学习者的不同语言如何相互影响，以及语言习得如何在存在发育障碍的情况下进行。第二语言习得的研究不仅有助于科学地理解人类的思维方式和学习过程，而且对识字能力的培养、外语教学、语言障碍的识别和治疗等许多领域都有实际意义。本次会议汇集了从生成视角研究第二语言习得和双语的资深研究人员和初级学者。会议讨论了关于第二语言和双语语言习得如何进行的核心问题，并举行了一次特别会议，重点关注心理语言学和计算方法的进展。特别会议探讨了第二语言学习者和双语者如何处理语言输入和第二语言习得的机制，以及计算建模和工具的最新进展如何开辟了新的研究范式和新的见解。行为数据和计算模型的融合使用可以成为促进理论发展、促进行为研究结果的解释以及为新的第二语言研究提出假设的有力工具。 会议邀请了四位在语法现象的双语和第二语言习得方面具有专业知识的杰出研究人员进行演讲，两位特别会议发言人还邀请了心理语言学和计算建模。会议鼓励广泛参与：三位受邀演讲者是女性，会议为研究生和博士后学者演讲者提供旅行奖励，会议论文精选发表在会议记录卷中。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Language is a unique property of human beings. Children can acquire one, two, or multiple languages depending on the input that they receive, and many people continue to learn new languages throughout their lives. The scholarly field for language study is linguistics, and one linguistic framework is generative linguistic theory. Important areas of study in this domain include how languages are represented in the human mind, how these mental representations are acquired by children, how the different languages of a bilingual or a second language learner influence each other, and how language acquisition proceeds in the presence of developmental disabilities. In addition to advancing a scientific understanding of how the human mind works and how learning proceeds, research on second language acquisition has practical implications for many other fields including literacy development, foreign language instruction, and the identification and treatment of language disorders.This conference brings together established researchers and junior scholars who study second language acquisition and bilingualism from the generative perspective. The conference addresses core questions on how second and bilingual language acquisition proceeds and features a special session focusing on advances in psycholinguistics and computational approaches. The special session examines how second language learners and bilinguals process linguistic input and the mechanisms for second language acquisition, as well as how recent advances in computational modelling and tools have opened new research paradigms and novel insights. The convergent use of behavioral data and computational modeling can be a powerful tool to promote theory development, facilitate the interpretation of behavioral findings, and generate hypotheses for new second language research. The conference features four invited talks by prominent researchers with expertise in bilingual and second language acquisition of grammatical phenomena, and, in the case of the two special session speakers, psycholinguistics and computational modelling. The conference encourages broad participation: three invited speakers are women, the conference provides travel awards to graduate student and post-doctoral scholar presenters, and selected papers from the conference are published in a proceedings volume.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.