Center for Language, Brain and Learning

But that is not all! There will be two additional guest lectures on Tuesday:
Klaus Abels (UCL) - Do Phases Need Unlocking? The View from Waray
Chris Golston (Fresno State) - Animal cognition and UG

We will use the occasion to host a workshop "Multilectal Acquisition, Processing and Use at the Crossroads of Oracy and Literacy" on Thursday 🤩
🔗https://uit.no/tavla/artikkel/920080/multilectal_acquisition_processing_and_use_at_th

✨This week at C-LaBL✨ is back, and what a week!
The biggest event of the week is Anya Vinichenko 's defense on Wednesday:
🔗https://uit.no/tavla/artikkel/920068/disputas_anya_vinichenko
We will welcome her opponents Raphael Berthele (@unifr.bsky.social) & Alissa Melinger (@dundee.ac.uk) in person 🎉

❓ How do Mandarin-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder process and produce non-canonical structures?
🔗https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716425100386

❓How do child heritage speakers of Bosnian and Serbian navigate direct object usage in a Norwegian contact setting?
🔗https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069251386267

Happy New Year from C-LaBL!
We are pleased to start 2026 with two recently published articles by our members, Yulia Rodina & Jiuzhou Hao, and their collaborators. These studies contribute valuable insights into bilingual language acquisition and developmental language disorders

New #Eyetracking study:
German morphological case in L1 speakers in Germany vs L1 speakers residing abroad
#realtimeprocessing #L1attrition #multilingualism #bilingualism #langsky
🔗 doi.org/10.1017/S014...

Får 10 millionar til språkforsking i Volda HVOs førsteamanuensis Jade Sandstedt har nådd opp i den knallharde konkurransen om midlar til banebrytande forsking. No ventar fire år med nyskapande gransking av korleis dialektvariasjon påverkar les...

🌟Nytt samarbeid🌟
❓Korleis språkleg variasjon blir representert og prosessert i hjernen – både mellom dialektar og mellom tale og skrift?
🔗 www.hivolda.no/forsking-og-...

❓Hvordan påvirker unges bruk av engelsk på sosiale medier utviklingen av det norske språket, og hvilke typer anglisismer har størst sannsynlighet for å bli en varig del av språket?

Anne Mette Sunde har skrevet nettopp om dette temaet 😁⤵️
septentrio.uit.no/index.php/ma...

🌟This week at C-LaBL🌟
📢Language reading group
📅26.11 14:15 CET
📄Cognate facilitation in... (Koutamanis et. al, 2024)
📄The role of cognates and language distance in...(Koutamanis et. al, 2025)
🔗Teams: lnkd.in/dBhRBD26

📢Issues in Phonological Typology
📅27 & 27.11
🔗 phontyp.github.io

Anderssen, Merete; Jensberg, Helene; Lohndal, Terje; Lundquist, Björn; Westergaard, Marit (2025). Verb second word order and finite verb placement in North American Norwegian. A reference guide to the syntax of North American Norwegian
🔗https://zenodo.org/records/15274572

🔗https://www-cambridge-org.mime.uit.no/core/journals/bilingualism-language-and-cognition/article/unpredictable-role-of-language-distance-in-bilingual-cognition-a-systematic-review-from-brain-to-behavior/FC02329FD6823FF5C966F0807352DD8C

Leivada, Evelina; Kelly-Iturriaga, Lara; Masullo, Camilla; Westergaard, Marit; Rothman, Jason (2025). The unpredictable role of language distance in bilingual cognition: A systematic review from brain to behavior.

🔗https://www-cambridge-org.mime.uit.no/core/journals/journal-of-child-language/article/unpacking-the-richness-of-language-experience-as-a-predictor-of-bilingual-childrens-language-proficiency/4F0C635BB88F341514B7FD32127FEBDD

Unsworth, Sharon; Gusnanto, Arief; Kašćelan, Draško; Prévost, Philippe; Serratrice, Ludovica; Tuller, Laurie; Cat, Cécile De (2025). Unpacking the Richness of Language Experience as a Predictor of Bilingual Children’s Language Proficiency.

C-LaBL members are working hard 💪
Four fresh publications involving our members ⤵️

Wulff, Stefanie; Ellis, Nick C.; Rothman, Jason (2025). Dichotomies as points of departure: A response to Truscott and Sharwood Smith (2024).
🔗https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02676583251389445

Last week, C-LaBL & LINC hosted a workshop with Ukrainian psychologist Anna Lenchovska, Director of Kyiv’s #TolerSpace. It focused on #Ukraine, #Multilingualism & #RefugeeSupport.

Thanks to Anna & all who joined!

🔗 en.uit.no/project/linc
🔗https://www.tolerspace.org.ua/

In this talk I aim to clarify the outlines of the debate and the question of what is at issue.

...it is a matter of concern that there is no widely accepted definition of word. In fact, the very notion has come under attack on multiple fronts, with both formal and functional linguists questioning its validity.

Languages are regularly described as having more or less morphology than other languages in one domain or another, and the very division of grammar into morphology and syntax is predicated on the assumption that there is a word. Given the centrality of the notion...

Pretheoretically, the word​ appears to be a fundamental unit of language, and much linguistic research operates on that assumption, for example counting words uttered, testing knowledge of words, measuring speed and accuracy of word recognition, measuring time elapsed from word boundaries, and so on

📢Lunch Seminar this week with Peter Svenonius
📄What is a word?
📅Thursday at 12:15 CEST
🔗Teams: lnkd.in/dB3Ne5Qs

Abstract ⤵️

Holding it Together Over Time: Multilingual engagement, working memory and resting state brain activity

Our very own Anders Gabrielsen will talk about whether degree of multilingual engagement contributes to the maintenance of working memory (WM) performance across the adult lifespan 🇳🇴🇬🇧🧠👶👧👩‍🦰👵

https://en.uit.no/tavla/artikkel/911687/practical_workshop_on_trauma-informed_approaches

❓Are you a researcher, educator, or practitioner working with displaced or war-affected communities?
🎙️Anna Lenchovska
✅ Trauma-informed teaching
✅ Trauma-informed research
✅ Self-care and burnout prevention
📅 11.11
📍 UiT /Zoom

💻Register by November 3 nettskjema.no/a/557151
en.uit.no/tavla/artikk...

And also:
📢Phonology Reading Group
📅28.10, 14:15 CEST
📄Prosodic Faithfulness and correspondence: Evidence from a Japanese Argot (Itoh et al., 1996)
🔗Teams: lnkd.in/dcpaexHX

2/2
📢 Joint Seminar w/ Lancaster University
📅29.10, 16:00 CEST
🎙️Tania Leal
📄Where Topic Meets Focus: Examining Information Structure Across Methods
🔗Teams: lnkd.in/dc4FucMh

📢 Lunch Seminar
📅30.10, 12:15 CEST
🎙️Antti Saloranta
📄To be announced!
🔗 Teams: lnkd.in/dC7u325u

Antti Saloranta

Tania Leal

Tekabe Legesse Feleke

🌟This week at C-LaBL 🌟 1/2

📢Language Reading Group
📅29.10, 14:15 CEST
🎙️Tekabe Feleke
📄Mapping the dimensions of linguistic distance: A study on South Ethiosemitic languages (2020)
🔗Teams: lnkd.in/dsc6d2Vx

2/
📢Brain domain seminar with Lancaster University
📅22.10 (tomorrow!), 15:00 UK time
🎙️Morten H. Christiansen (Cornell University & Aarhus University)
📄Squeezing through the Bottleneck: The Importance of Chunking in Language Learning
🔗Zoom: lnkd.in/d6JQFrfb

🌟This week at C-LaBL🌟
1/
📢Phonology Reading Group
📅21.10 (today!), 14:15 CEST
🎙️Nick Kalivoda
📄Properties of the Italo-Romance coda typology
🔗Teams: lnkd.in/dzHksVQn

The Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures at AMU, Poznań (Poland) will host the workshop “Bidirectional cross-linguistic effects of structural similarity in child multilingualism”. Keynote lectures by leading international experts on child bilingualism and language attrition 🌟