Formal Linguistics research

We conduct internationally recognised research in the following main topic areas:

Language development and processing

• Child and adult multilingualism
• Syntax and cognition
• Early language and literacy

Linguistic diversity

• Minoritised languages and language endangerment
• Linguistic politeness
• Accent bias and inequalities

Meaning and grammar

• Syntax and semantics
• Pragmatics
• Morphology

Speech production and perception

• Variation between and within speakers
• Perception of accents and speech timing.

Jointly, we have expertise in languages including Dutch, English, Finnish, Galician, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Saami, Turkish and Welsh.

We work with various national and international collaborators, as well as with colleagues at the University of Leeds through the Language@Leeds network.

We work with practitioners in health, policy, education and forensic science to maximise the societal impact of our research. We have developed resources for practitioners and the wider research community, including:

• Q-BEx
• LMS Corpus of Southern Standard British English
• Statement to tackle accent bias in Higher Education

We house the Leeds Child Development Unit.