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Cognitive Science of Language Lecture Series talk by Dr. de Almeida
By Linguistics and Languages Department
Free Lecture for Faculty, Graduate Students, Researchers
Overview
You are invited to the next talk of the Cognitive Science of Language lecture series organized by McMaster’s Department of Linguistics and Languages. The lecture will be delivered online by Dr. Roberto de Almeida, Concordia University. Please email lingdept@mcmaster.ca to request a link.
Title: How the brain composes meaning (metaphors included)
Abstract: How is meaning attained in the brain? And how do we make sense of the world from the fragmented pieces of information we get from linguistic utterances and visual scenes? Crucial to answer these broad questions is an account of what meaning is, and how concepts, the elements of meaning, are put together (i.e., ‘compose’) to form propositions. In this talk, I will address these questions by presenting a series of experiments investigating the nature of conceptual representations, relying on diverse techniques (eye-tracking, priming, fMRI), populations (e.g., healthy individuals, individuals with Alzheimer’s disease) and systems (language, vision). I will focus on different phenomena on conceptual tokening and semantic composition, including deviations from literal meaning, such as metaphors. At the center of this investigation is an attempt to characterize conceptual representations attained via words and sentences, objects and scenes, and how language and vision “talk” to each other.