Stefan Pophristic

My primary research interests are in understanding grammatical units and how they are stored, processed, and produced in the mind. I am particularly interested in morphology because I believe that morphemes are fundamental to understanding language. Whatever theoretical models and cognitive processes underpin the phenomenon of language, we must have some notion of a base unit that serves as the common denominator between the interfaces of phonology, syntax, and semantics. By understanding how these base units are stored and processed, we can better understand these interfaces, and thus the cognitive architecture of language as a whole.

I like working in interdisciplinary research. Since theoretical data (from acceptability judgments) and experimental data (from behavioral, acquisitional, and neuroscientific studies) are produced by the same cognitive architecture that underpins the human capacity for language, the theories and models derived from both types of data explain different aspects of said architecture and its processes. Therefore, only by merging the findings across the theoretical and experimental domains can we begin to holistically understand language.

This research philosophy guides my current dissertation work, where I am exploring phonological, syntactic, and semantic statistical generalizations that exist over Spanish verbal and nominal inflectional classes (e.g. the AR, ER, and IR conjugation classes of verbs). By studying how these generalizations are accessed during processing using both behavioral and neuro-imaging methods, I hope to answer several open questions about the computations and structure underpinning the mental lexicon.