Associate professor, Linguistics and Cognitive Science, UC Berkeley
| Email: | terry dot regier at berkeley dot edu |
| Office: | Evans 553, and ICSI rm. 561 (phone: 510.666.2954) |
I study the relation of language and thought - exploring how universals of cognition shape languages, and to what extent speakers of different languages think differently.
Recently, I have been pursuing two broad ideas. The first is that across languages, systems of word meanings near-optimally partition a universal semantic space. This idea accommodates both universal tendencies of meaning, and some observed deviation from those tendencies. The second idea is that language affects perception primarily in the right visual field - a pattern suggested by the functional organization of the brain. Both lines of work highlight the interplay of universal constraints and linguistic convention. Specific recent projects concern spatial language, color naming, word learning, and the “poverty of stimulus” argument in language learning.
My work is broadly collaborative. I am a member of the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC).
You can read a short news article about my work