Readers actively construct representational models of meaning when reading text, and they do so by drawing on a range of kinds of information, from the specifi c linguistic forms of the sentences to knowledge about how the world works (Ferretti, Kutas, & McRae, 2007 ; Madden & Zwaan, 2003 ). The present set of studies focused on how grammatical aspect is integrated into a situation model and ho...

The study explores the difficulties of native English speakers in acquiring the Chinese word order, aiming to relate it to the markedness theories. According to the Differential Markedness Hypothesis (DMH), the degrees of learner difficulty in second language acquisition can be predicted according to the degrees of typological markedness between learners’ first language (L1) and their second la...

Though communicative goals are an important element in language production, few studies investigate the extent to which these goals might affect the form and content of referring expressions. In this study, we directly contrast two tasks with different goals: identification and instruction giving. Speakers had to refer to a target building nearby or further away, so that their addressee would d...

Spatial language in signed language is assumed to be shaped by affordances of the visual-spatial modality – where the use of the hands and space allow the mapping of spatial relationships in an iconic, analogue way – and thus to be similar across sign languages. In this study, we test assumptions regarding the modality-driven similarity of spatial language by comparing locative expressions (e.g...

Human activities are constrained by interconnected and overlapping factors of: biological abilities, time, space, and social narratives. I focus on how the interplay between two of these factors, space and narratives, can be mediated with cultural tools of locative technologies such as Augmented Reality games and GPS units. In order to understand how place-based pedagogies affect learning and h...