The Cognitive Science of Language lecture series next talk is taking place on Tuesday October 31, 2:30-4:20pm, location TBD. The lecture will be delivered by Dr. Mohamed Jlassi. Mohamed Jlassi is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Advanced Research in Experimental and Applied Linguistics (ARiEAL) at McMaster University, Canada. He holds a PhD in theoretical linguistics from the Newcastle University, UK. His main specialization and research interests are theoretical linguistics, comparative linguistics and second language acquisition Arabic dialect syntax language pedagogy.

Please email lingdept@mcmaster.ca if you are interested to attend.

Title: Revisiting the Cognitive Revolution: Its Impact on Linguistics, Language Learning and Arabic Linguistics 

Abstract: More than half a century now since science and scholarship have been revolutionized by a radical shift of paradigms in the study of mind, knowledge and learning culminating in what would afterwards be known as the cognitive revolution. The impact of the cognitive revolution on science and academia has been immeasurable by considerably altering and/or leading to new disciplines: psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, computer science, anthropology and philosophy. This talk will revisit the significant impact of this major scientific shift on linguistics and language learning. It will, as well, consider the ways Arabic linguistics adhered to such mainstream paradigm freeing therefore itself from ideologically-confined and somehow occult approaches to language.

Background Reading:

Bolhuis, JJ, S. Crain and I. Roberts (2023) Language and learning: the cognitive revolution at 60-odd. Biological Reviews 98.3, 931-941.

Chomsky, N. (1959). Review of B. F. Skinner’s “Verbal Behavior”. Language, 35, 26-58.

Suleiman, C. (2010). Contending Visions of Arabic Linguistics and their Historical Roots. Middle East Critique 19.2, 115-134.