Mission Statement

The Center for Research in Language emphasizes the combination of theoretical and experimental approaches to language study. The main role of the Center is to coordinate research on language at UCSD. The Center brings together members of various scholarly communities whose work includes language learning (spoken and signed), language disorders, literacy between deaf mothers and children, and neuroimaging of language. The Center builds upon UCSD's strengths in neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, and psychology, with internationally-renowned faculty who interact across their home departments. The director is Cognitive Science Professor Marta Kutas. Previous directors include Ed Klima, Jeff Elman, Elizabeth Bates and Masha Polinsky.

The Center offers pre- and postdoctoral training opportunities to students and researchers who are interested in language acquisition and decline, psycholinguistics, neuroimaging of language, sign languages and gesture, and computational models of language.

The Center's facilities, designed to accommodate laboratory research projects by the faculty and graduate students, include high-performance work stations, a flexible open laboratory, extensive equipment for audio recording and analysis, and equipment for psycholinguistic experimentation. The open-lab design promotes effective training of graduate students and helps researchers acquire new experimental methodologies.