Events

Time - location

Friday 07/11/2025 at 14h:00 - Room S.M. 104

Abstract

​Over the past few decades, cognitive-functional approaches have transformed how we think about the primitive units of language. Gone are the rigid syntax trees and mechanical slot-and-filler templates of earlier theories; in their place stand constructions: flexible, multidimensional pairings of form and function. This shift has opened up new research avenues for understanding language as a meaning-driven, dynamic, and evolving system. At the same time, the spectacular success of contemporary language models has shown that data-driven learning can capture many of the surface regularities with astonishing fluency. Yet this very success has also sharpened an old question: how can we formalize the richness of linguistic structure in ways that are both scientifically insightful and computationally scalable?

In this presentation, I will argue that part of the answer lies in embracing population thinking and complex systems perspectives. Rather than treating constructions as static entities in the grammar, we can view them as members of evolving populations that interact, compete, and cooperate within a linguistic ecosystem. Through these locally situated interactions, higher-order structures emerge – patterns that cannot be reduced to the sum of their parts. Drawing on insights from Construction Grammar, cognitive science, and agent-based modelling, I will show how this ecological view helps us rethink functional diversity, network organization, and the elusive “strata” of linguistic structure as emergent layers rather than fixed hierarchies.

Bio

Remi van Trijp is a researcher at the Sony Computer Laboratories in Paris, where he uses agent-based experiments and computational modelling to explore the intersections of linguistics, complex systems science, human-centric artificial intelligence, and language philosophy. He is one of the chief architects of Fluid Construction Grammar, an open-source platform for exploring constructional language processing as well as the emergence and evolution of language. Delighted to return to his alma mater – where he earned both his Master’s and doctoral degree – he looks forward to exchanging ideas with fellow researchers and the next generation of curious minds.

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Time - location

Thursday 03/07/2025 - Room S.R.012

Schedule:

11:30 - 12:15: presentation

12:15 - 12:30: coffee break

12:30 - 13:15: discussion

Abstract 

In this talk, I will give an overview of work that shows how different aspects of bilingual syntax can be modeled as error-based implicit learning. I will first introduce the Dual-path model (Chang et al., 2006) and the Bilingual Dual-path model (Tsoukala et al., 2021) and I will give a short overview of the previous work that has been done with these models (Khoe & Frank, 2024). I will then discuss in more depth the simulated experiments that I have conducted on cross-language structural priming using the Bilingual Dual-path model (Khoe et al., 2023). The results of these simulations increase support for implicit learning as an account for structural priming by extending the account from within-language to crosslanguage structural priming. Next, I will present simulated ERP experiments on P600/N400 effects in L2 learners in response to syntactic violations (Verwijmeren et al., 2023). Then, I will give an overview of ongoing work on how proficiency might modulate the strength of cross-language structural priming in the model. Finally, I will present a study on how codeswitching increases cross-language structural priming in the Bilingual Dual-path model and in Spanish-English bilinguals.

References 

- Chang, F., Dell, G. S., & Bock, K. (2006). Becoming syntactic. Psychological Review, 113(2), 234. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.113.2.234 

- Khoe, Y. H., Tsoukala, C., Kootstra, G.J., Frank, S. (2023). Is structural priming between different languages a learning effect? Modelling priming as error-driven implicit learning, Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 38 (pp. 537-557), https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2021.1998563 

- Khoe, Y.H., Frank, S.L. (2024). The Bilingual Dual-path model: Simulating bilingual production, comprehension, and development, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2021.1998563 

- Tsoukala, C., Broersma, M., Van Den Bosch, A., & Frank, S. L. (2021). Simulating codeswitching using a neural network model of bilingual sentence production. Computational Brain & Behavior, 4, 87–100. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42113-020-00088-6 

- Verwijmeren, S., Frank, S.L., Fitz, H. & Khoe, Y.H. (2023). A neural network simulation of event-related potentials in response to syntactic violations in second-language learning, Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Cognitive Modelling, preprint: http://www.stefanfrank.info/pubs/ICCM_paper_Stephan.pdf

Bio

I recently started as a postdoc in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. My research there focuses on implicit learning mechanisms for syntactic production in healthy older adults. It is part of a project that is funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant, supervised by Katrien Segaert, Linda Wheeldon (University of Agder, Norway) and Evelien Heyselaar (Radboud University, Netherlands). Until I defend my thesis, I am also still a PhD candidate at the Centre for Language Studies (CLS) at Radboud University in the Netherlands. My PhD research focused on understanding how people learn, process and produce (multiple) language(s) by using traditional experimental techniques paired with computational cognitive models. The PhD is supervised by Stefan Frank, Gerrit Jan Kootstra and Rob Schoonen.