Language: Systems and Interfaces

Ministry of Research and Innovation, Province of Ontario
Early Researcher Award, 2010-2015

Principal Investigator: Ash Asudeh, Carleton University

Linguistics studies our central cognitive capacity: language. Two important developments in theoretical and computational linguistics are: 1. Division of the language system into discrete modules; 2. Study of the interfaces between modules. This project investigates interfaces in a well-formalized theory that makes fine distinctions between different kinds of linguistic information, relating distinct modules to each other with mathematically well-understood functions. The theory of interfaces is developed by investigating properties of the formal objects that characterize these functions. The results have implications for linguistic theory and language-related information technology, which is crucial to reducing barriers to global communication.