Language and Cognition Lab

The Language and Cognition Lab investigates the relationship between language and thought.

Word Evolution

My current project involves finding the cognitive basis by which the words we use evolve over time. Because words often exist over large periods of time and consist of several different existing and now non-existing senses (i.e. the definitions it encompasses), we believe that there is a mechanism by which word senses influence other senses over time.

The current hypothesis relates to the idea that the least cognitively taxing (i.e. least work to evolve from one sense in a word to another) evolutionary paths are those that predominantly determine the course of word evolution.

Evolution Models

Analysis

Current Work