Welcome to the Language Variation and Cognition Lab! We are located in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. The lab is directed by Meredith Tamminga.
We work on a broad range of topics at the intersection of sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. We are brought together by our shared interests in:
- Modeling the mental representation and processing of inter- and intra-speaker linguistic variability
- Using psycholinguistic evidence as a window on the relationship between social and grammatical influences in language use
- Integrating experimental and naturalistic linguistic data across diverse populations
- Relating individual and group-level linguistic behavior and phenomena, especially with respect to language change
- Developing quantitative approaches to the microtemporal dynamics of language variation in perception and production
For selected papers and grants, see the Research page.
Like other Penn Linguistics labs, we welcome the involvement of researchers from across and outside of the department. You can learn more about who’s around the lab these days from the People page. We work especially closely with Dave Embick and his lab, including a long history of joint lab meetings. We also have active research connections with the Phonetics Lab (Mark Liberman, Jianjing Kuang), the Cultural Evolution of Language Lab (Gareth Roberts), the Child Language Lab (Katie Schuler), the Experimental Study of Meaning Lab (Florian Schwarz), and the Plotkin Research Group in Mathematical Biology (Josh Plotkin).
We are affiliated with MindCORE, Penn’s hub for the integrative study of the mind, as well as several of its supported research groups: the Integrated Language Sciences and Technology Initiative, the Social and Behavioral Sciences Initiative, and the Social and Cultural Evolution Working Group.
Inquiries from both prospective undergraduate RAs and prospective Ph.D. students should be directed to Meredith Tamminga.