As part of its 150th birthday celebration, MIT will be holding an Open House called Under the Dome on April 30, from 11:00am to 4:00pm. Even though MIT Linguistics is not located under a dome, strictly speaking – but instead resides in a multi-colored oddly-shaped Gehry-designed thingamajig, we are proud to be an important part of this great event!
Our contribution is called “Language and the Human Mind”. From 1:00pm-4:00pm, we will be welcoming the public to our department (32-D850) for a variety of language-themed activities. Here’s the description:
We will showcase a variety of examples of research on language and the human mind. Experts on some very interesting languages (such as the Mayan languages of Central America, and the Wampanoag language of the native inhabitants of Massachusetts) will be available to answer your questions about these languages and explain how they differ and do not differ from English.
You can also watch and learn about some experiments which were designed to reveal the unconscious mechanisms by which people generalize from examples when they learn a language, and by which fluent speakers produce and interpret speech and text.
We look forward to seeing you, your friends, your friends’ friends, and their families at our Open House!