Tübingen Center for the Study of Language

The proposed cluster Tübingen Center for the Study of Language will institutionalize an innovative research structure focusing on language. It will unify research across disciplines and thus overcome the traditional separation of linguistic investigation. More specifically, the Cluster will integrate linguistic, psychological, computational, biological, and cultural perspectives on the structure, processing, and development of human languages. Methods from natural sciences will be imported into a field traditionally that is part of the humanities, thus bridging the gap between the two cultures.

Tübingen’s acclaimed tradition in linguistic research manifests itself in three consecutive collaborative research centers: SFB 340 Linguistic Foundations for Computational Linguistics (together with the University of Stuttgart, 1989-2000), SFB 441 Linguistic Data Structures: On the Relation between Data and Theory in Linguistics (1999-2008), and the recently established SFB 833 The Construction of Meaning: The Dynamics and Adaptivity of Linguistic Structures (since 2009).

The Cluster will build on this tradition – in particular, on the ongoing interdisciplinary research in the SFB 833 – creating an infrastructure that combines the expertise of the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Science, the Faculty of Medicine, and the three Tübingen based Max Planck Institutes (MPI for Biological Cybernetics, MPI for Developmental Biology, and MPI for Intelligent Systems). It thereby expands the usual domain of linguistic inquiry to other fields with a language oriented focus. The Cluster will integrate linguistic expertise from the humanities with psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and the life sciences. Furthermore, by its cross-disciplinary nature, TüCSL will offer the unique chance to develop a new generation of language applications with technical and social relevance. The Cluster’s basic research is structured into four tightly connected areas:

• Evidence based grammatical architectures.

• Linguistic and non-linguistic cognition.

• Dynamics of linguistic communication.

• Structured data exploration.

This basic research will feed into a wide range of applications:

• Applications. The insights originating from basic research and data exploration are relevant for many practical domains of human activity. We will specifically explore applications in information technology, medicine, language acquisition, and education.