Lead supervisor:
Dr Lise Fontaine
Start date: October 2016
Award: General
Subject Pathway:
Linguistics and Bilingualism
Thematic Cluster:
Language, Learning and Behaviour Cluster
A cognitive functional account of indeterminate verbal categories
My proposed research focuses on the indeterminate nature of certain types of verbs. Theories address the categorisation of verbs in terms of grammatical and semantic approaches, however do not identify the language processes involved and whether these categories have any psychological validity. Certain verbs are problematic with regards to categorisation, for example in behavioural processes the grammar and the semantics encode different information. Therefore, this research proposes to merge what is already known about these problematic verbs with psycholinguistic testing, in order to identify how conceptual events that are being represented are processed and categorized by speakers.