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Language Science Reading Groups

Language Science Reading Group

Language Science Reading Groups

Maryland Language Science Center Thursday, February 19, 2026 - May 14, 2026 H.J. Patterson Hall, 2130

Join us every other Thursday for Language Science Reading Groups. This semester, we will offer two different reading groups happening concurrently. Learn more about our reading groups below.

Don't be late, lunch is served at 12:15 PM and discussion begins at 12:30 PM.

Click here to RSVP 

Language Production and Mental Representations

Discussion leaders: Allison Dods, Sathvik Nair, Carmen Tang, and Utku Turk (LING)

This reading group will explore research questions related to this year's Mayfest workshop on language production: What are the data structures that support fluent production? What cognitive processes underlie their use? What are the evolutionary, neurobiological, and developmental origins of our production abilities? Each paper is by a researcher who has been invited to speak at Mayfest, so we hope to engage with your perspectives around language productions from different disciplines, and encourage you to attend Mayfest to represent our language science community!

Sessions and Readings:

February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

February 19th: Linguistic creatures think in lexical concepts

  • Description: When we go to say something, do we first think in some abstract, non-linguistic way and then translate that into words (as Levelt's classic model proposes), or do we actually think in a lexical format, corresponding to morphemes of the language we speak?
  • Reading: Vicente, A., & Collins, J. (2025). The expression of thoughts: on Levelt's 'message' and thinking in lexical concepts. Philosophical Psychology, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2025.2609897 (RSVP to receive PDF of paper!)

March 5th: Do you really think that much before speaking?

  • Description: Most language production research has focused on how the production process proceeds when there is no uncertainty in what a speaker wants to say. Based on findings of Gussow and MacDonald (2023), this week we are going to discuss how the production system needs to be structured so that a speaker can still start speaking without really knowing the full extent of the message and the intent.
  • Reading: Gussow, A.E., MacDonald, M.C. Utterance planning under message uncertainty: evidence from a novel picture-naming paradigm. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 23, 957–972 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-023-01103-6 (Click here to download PDF)

March 26th: Are exemplar theories of production exemplary theories of production?

  • Description: Classic generative models drew a clean line between abstract phonological knowledge and continuous phonetic detail. Exemplar theory blew that up, proposing that lexical, phonological, and phonetic knowledge are all smeared together in richly structured memory traces with no abstract mental structure proposed. But two decades in, has the mush delivered? This week we review what exemplar models have and haven't been able to tell us about speech production specifically, and ask whether it's time to demand more structure from our theories?
  • Reading: Goldrick, M., & Cole, J. (2023). Advancement of phonetics in the 21st century: Exemplar models of speech production. Journal of Phonetics, 99, 101254. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447023000438 

April 9th: How does data structure in speech production inform our theory of computation?

  • Description: When we speak, prosody distinguishes words that are focused from those that are given in the discourse. Previous phonological work has cast this prosodic contrast as the result of pitch accent or phrase boundaries. In this paper, Katz & Selkirk examine additional phonetic details of word pronunciation (duration, pitch, intensity), and argue that these cues encode even finer distinctions about a word's status in the discourse. They demonstrate that there are distinct patterns for contrastive focus, discourse-new, and discourse-given word prosody, even though some of these may appear identical if only pitch accent were considered. The emergence of this three-way contrast raises the question of how these contrasts are encoded/passed through in the grammar, because pitch accent alone is not sufficient to describe the phonetic outcome. In our discussion today, we'd like to focus on how this might shape our theory of speech planning and production. In this case, discourse information varies with phonetic detail that is independent of pitch accent. How is the information from the pragmatics transferred to the phonetic interpretation? Does prosody still mediate between the two, or are there direct connections between these modules? What are the limits on the kinds of information that fine phonetic detail can encode?
  • Reading: Katz, J., & Selkirk, E. (2011). Contrastive focus vs. discourse-new: Evidence from phonetic prominence in English. Language 87(4), 771-816. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/24/article/461766/pdf

April 30th: Coordination: Cognitive processes and their interaction with production

Language Science Elephant Graphic
  • Description: Different lenses provide different insights to production processes. But bridging these insights can lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon. This week, we will read Nozari's work on assembling a modal that marries psycholinguistic models of language production with theories of cognitive control.
  • Reading: Nozari, N. Monitoring, control and repair in word production. Nat Rev Psychol 4, 222–238 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00417-1 (Click here to download PDF)

May 14th: TBA


Early language access for deaf/HOH children in hearing families

Discussion leaders: Deborah Chen Pichler (Gallaudet), Tonia Bleam (LING), and Megh Krishnaswamy

An estimated 210 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children are born in Maryland every year, 90-95% of them to hearing families who have never met a deaf person before. Among the pressing challenges these families face is the decision of which language(s) to use with their DHH child: spoken English through hearing technology like cochlear implants? a natural sign language like ASL? both? As the home to the Maryland Cochlear Implant Center of Excellence, an expanding ASL program, and collaborations in sign language linguistics with nearby Gallaudet University, UMD can offer many resources for parents of DHH children as they navigate the daunting questions of language choice. This reading group will explore the diverse perspectives represented in the UMD community and discuss how we can work together to ensure early language access for all DHH children in MD.

Sessions and Readings: 

February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

March 5th: Overview of the variable outcomes for children with CIs

March 26th: 

April 9th: 

April 30th:

  • Description: This week’s readings deal with language ideology and who is considered a native speaker. A stark reminder that despite the many issues with the traditional "native-signer" vs. "non-native signer" dichotomy, there are still real, measurable differences in morphosyntactic behavior across these two populations, and some of these differences even extend beyond one generation (differences between deaf children who have deaf parents and hearing grandparents vs. deaf parents and deaf grandparents).
  • Readings:

May 14th: TBA

Event Dates

  • Thursday, Feb 19, 2026 12:15 pm
    02/19/26 12:15:00 02/19/26 13:30:00 America/New_York Language Science Reading Groups

    Join us every other Thursday for Language Science Reading Groups. This semester, we will offer two different reading groups happening concurrently. Learn more about our reading groups below.

    Don't be late, lunch is served at 12:15 PM and discussion begins at 12:30 PM.

    Click here to RSVP 

    Language Production and Mental Representations

    Discussion leaders: Allison Dods, Sathvik Nair, Carmen Tang, and Utku Turk (LING)

    This reading group will explore research questions related to this year's Mayfest workshop on language production: What are the data structures that support fluent production? What cognitive processes underlie their use? What are the evolutionary, neurobiological, and developmental origins of our production abilities? Each paper is by a researcher who has been invited to speak at Mayfest, so we hope to engage with your perspectives around language productions from different disciplines, and encourage you to attend Mayfest to represent our language science community!

    Sessions and Readings:

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    February 19th: Linguistic creatures think in lexical concepts

    • Description: When we go to say something, do we first think in some abstract, non-linguistic way and then translate that into words (as Levelt's classic model proposes), or do we actually think in a lexical format, corresponding to morphemes of the language we speak?
    • Reading: Vicente, A., & Collins, J. (2025). The expression of thoughts: on Levelt's 'message' and thinking in lexical concepts. Philosophical Psychology, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2025.2609897 (RSVP to receive PDF of paper!)

    March 5th: Do you really think that much before speaking?

    • Description: Most language production research has focused on how the production process proceeds when there is no uncertainty in what a speaker wants to say. Based on findings of Gussow and MacDonald (2023), this week we are going to discuss how the production system needs to be structured so that a speaker can still start speaking without really knowing the full extent of the message and the intent.
    • Reading: Gussow, A.E., MacDonald, M.C. Utterance planning under message uncertainty: evidence from a novel picture-naming paradigm. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 23, 957–972 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-023-01103-6 (Click here to download PDF)

    March 26th: Are exemplar theories of production exemplary theories of production?

    • Description: Classic generative models drew a clean line between abstract phonological knowledge and continuous phonetic detail. Exemplar theory blew that up, proposing that lexical, phonological, and phonetic knowledge are all smeared together in richly structured memory traces with no abstract mental structure proposed. But two decades in, has the mush delivered? This week we review what exemplar models have and haven't been able to tell us about speech production specifically, and ask whether it's time to demand more structure from our theories?
    • Reading: Goldrick, M., & Cole, J. (2023). Advancement of phonetics in the 21st century: Exemplar models of speech production. Journal of Phonetics, 99, 101254. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447023000438 

    April 9th: How does data structure in speech production inform our theory of computation?

    • Description: When we speak, prosody distinguishes words that are focused from those that are given in the discourse. Previous phonological work has cast this prosodic contrast as the result of pitch accent or phrase boundaries. In this paper, Katz & Selkirk examine additional phonetic details of word pronunciation (duration, pitch, intensity), and argue that these cues encode even finer distinctions about a word's status in the discourse. They demonstrate that there are distinct patterns for contrastive focus, discourse-new, and discourse-given word prosody, even though some of these may appear identical if only pitch accent were considered. The emergence of this three-way contrast raises the question of how these contrasts are encoded/passed through in the grammar, because pitch accent alone is not sufficient to describe the phonetic outcome. In our discussion today, we'd like to focus on how this might shape our theory of speech planning and production. In this case, discourse information varies with phonetic detail that is independent of pitch accent. How is the information from the pragmatics transferred to the phonetic interpretation? Does prosody still mediate between the two, or are there direct connections between these modules? What are the limits on the kinds of information that fine phonetic detail can encode?
    • Reading: Katz, J., & Selkirk, E. (2011). Contrastive focus vs. discourse-new: Evidence from phonetic prominence in English. Language 87(4), 771-816. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/24/article/461766/pdf

    April 30th: Coordination: Cognitive processes and their interaction with production

    Language Science Elephant Graphic
    • Description: Different lenses provide different insights to production processes. But bridging these insights can lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon. This week, we will read Nozari's work on assembling a modal that marries psycholinguistic models of language production with theories of cognitive control.
    • Reading: Nozari, N. Monitoring, control and repair in word production. Nat Rev Psychol 4, 222–238 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00417-1 (Click here to download PDF)

    May 14th: TBA


    Early language access for deaf/HOH children in hearing families

    Discussion leaders: Deborah Chen Pichler (Gallaudet), Tonia Bleam (LING), and Megh Krishnaswamy

    An estimated 210 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children are born in Maryland every year, 90-95% of them to hearing families who have never met a deaf person before. Among the pressing challenges these families face is the decision of which language(s) to use with their DHH child: spoken English through hearing technology like cochlear implants? a natural sign language like ASL? both? As the home to the Maryland Cochlear Implant Center of Excellence, an expanding ASL program, and collaborations in sign language linguistics with nearby Gallaudet University, UMD can offer many resources for parents of DHH children as they navigate the daunting questions of language choice. This reading group will explore the diverse perspectives represented in the UMD community and discuss how we can work together to ensure early language access for all DHH children in MD.

    Sessions and Readings: 

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    March 5th: Overview of the variable outcomes for children with CIs

    March 26th: 

    April 9th: 

    April 30th:

    • Description: This week’s readings deal with language ideology and who is considered a native speaker. A stark reminder that despite the many issues with the traditional "native-signer" vs. "non-native signer" dichotomy, there are still real, measurable differences in morphosyntactic behavior across these two populations, and some of these differences even extend beyond one generation (differences between deaf children who have deaf parents and hearing grandparents vs. deaf parents and deaf grandparents).
    • Readings:

    May 14th: TBA

     H.J. Patterson Hall false
  • Thursday, Mar 05, 2026 12:15 pm
    03/05/26 12:15:00 03/05/26 13:30:00 America/New_York Language Science Reading Groups

    Join us every other Thursday for Language Science Reading Groups. This semester, we will offer two different reading groups happening concurrently. Learn more about our reading groups below.

    Don't be late, lunch is served at 12:15 PM and discussion begins at 12:30 PM.

    Click here to RSVP 

    Language Production and Mental Representations

    Discussion leaders: Allison Dods, Sathvik Nair, Carmen Tang, and Utku Turk (LING)

    This reading group will explore research questions related to this year's Mayfest workshop on language production: What are the data structures that support fluent production? What cognitive processes underlie their use? What are the evolutionary, neurobiological, and developmental origins of our production abilities? Each paper is by a researcher who has been invited to speak at Mayfest, so we hope to engage with your perspectives around language productions from different disciplines, and encourage you to attend Mayfest to represent our language science community!

    Sessions and Readings:

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    February 19th: Linguistic creatures think in lexical concepts

    • Description: When we go to say something, do we first think in some abstract, non-linguistic way and then translate that into words (as Levelt's classic model proposes), or do we actually think in a lexical format, corresponding to morphemes of the language we speak?
    • Reading: Vicente, A., & Collins, J. (2025). The expression of thoughts: on Levelt's 'message' and thinking in lexical concepts. Philosophical Psychology, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2025.2609897 (RSVP to receive PDF of paper!)

    March 5th: Do you really think that much before speaking?

    • Description: Most language production research has focused on how the production process proceeds when there is no uncertainty in what a speaker wants to say. Based on findings of Gussow and MacDonald (2023), this week we are going to discuss how the production system needs to be structured so that a speaker can still start speaking without really knowing the full extent of the message and the intent.
    • Reading: Gussow, A.E., MacDonald, M.C. Utterance planning under message uncertainty: evidence from a novel picture-naming paradigm. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 23, 957–972 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-023-01103-6 (Click here to download PDF)

    March 26th: Are exemplar theories of production exemplary theories of production?

    • Description: Classic generative models drew a clean line between abstract phonological knowledge and continuous phonetic detail. Exemplar theory blew that up, proposing that lexical, phonological, and phonetic knowledge are all smeared together in richly structured memory traces with no abstract mental structure proposed. But two decades in, has the mush delivered? This week we review what exemplar models have and haven't been able to tell us about speech production specifically, and ask whether it's time to demand more structure from our theories?
    • Reading: Goldrick, M., & Cole, J. (2023). Advancement of phonetics in the 21st century: Exemplar models of speech production. Journal of Phonetics, 99, 101254. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447023000438 

    April 9th: How does data structure in speech production inform our theory of computation?

    • Description: When we speak, prosody distinguishes words that are focused from those that are given in the discourse. Previous phonological work has cast this prosodic contrast as the result of pitch accent or phrase boundaries. In this paper, Katz & Selkirk examine additional phonetic details of word pronunciation (duration, pitch, intensity), and argue that these cues encode even finer distinctions about a word's status in the discourse. They demonstrate that there are distinct patterns for contrastive focus, discourse-new, and discourse-given word prosody, even though some of these may appear identical if only pitch accent were considered. The emergence of this three-way contrast raises the question of how these contrasts are encoded/passed through in the grammar, because pitch accent alone is not sufficient to describe the phonetic outcome. In our discussion today, we'd like to focus on how this might shape our theory of speech planning and production. In this case, discourse information varies with phonetic detail that is independent of pitch accent. How is the information from the pragmatics transferred to the phonetic interpretation? Does prosody still mediate between the two, or are there direct connections between these modules? What are the limits on the kinds of information that fine phonetic detail can encode?
    • Reading: Katz, J., & Selkirk, E. (2011). Contrastive focus vs. discourse-new: Evidence from phonetic prominence in English. Language 87(4), 771-816. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/24/article/461766/pdf

    April 30th: Coordination: Cognitive processes and their interaction with production

    Language Science Elephant Graphic
    • Description: Different lenses provide different insights to production processes. But bridging these insights can lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon. This week, we will read Nozari's work on assembling a modal that marries psycholinguistic models of language production with theories of cognitive control.
    • Reading: Nozari, N. Monitoring, control and repair in word production. Nat Rev Psychol 4, 222–238 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00417-1 (Click here to download PDF)

    May 14th: TBA


    Early language access for deaf/HOH children in hearing families

    Discussion leaders: Deborah Chen Pichler (Gallaudet), Tonia Bleam (LING), and Megh Krishnaswamy

    An estimated 210 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children are born in Maryland every year, 90-95% of them to hearing families who have never met a deaf person before. Among the pressing challenges these families face is the decision of which language(s) to use with their DHH child: spoken English through hearing technology like cochlear implants? a natural sign language like ASL? both? As the home to the Maryland Cochlear Implant Center of Excellence, an expanding ASL program, and collaborations in sign language linguistics with nearby Gallaudet University, UMD can offer many resources for parents of DHH children as they navigate the daunting questions of language choice. This reading group will explore the diverse perspectives represented in the UMD community and discuss how we can work together to ensure early language access for all DHH children in MD.

    Sessions and Readings: 

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    March 5th: Overview of the variable outcomes for children with CIs

    March 26th: 

    April 9th: 

    April 30th:

    • Description: This week’s readings deal with language ideology and who is considered a native speaker. A stark reminder that despite the many issues with the traditional "native-signer" vs. "non-native signer" dichotomy, there are still real, measurable differences in morphosyntactic behavior across these two populations, and some of these differences even extend beyond one generation (differences between deaf children who have deaf parents and hearing grandparents vs. deaf parents and deaf grandparents).
    • Readings:

    May 14th: TBA

     H.J. Patterson Hall false
  • Thursday, Mar 26, 2026 12:15 pm
    03/26/26 12:15:00 03/26/26 13:30:00 America/New_York Language Science Reading Groups

    Join us every other Thursday for Language Science Reading Groups. This semester, we will offer two different reading groups happening concurrently. Learn more about our reading groups below.

    Don't be late, lunch is served at 12:15 PM and discussion begins at 12:30 PM.

    Click here to RSVP 

    Language Production and Mental Representations

    Discussion leaders: Allison Dods, Sathvik Nair, Carmen Tang, and Utku Turk (LING)

    This reading group will explore research questions related to this year's Mayfest workshop on language production: What are the data structures that support fluent production? What cognitive processes underlie their use? What are the evolutionary, neurobiological, and developmental origins of our production abilities? Each paper is by a researcher who has been invited to speak at Mayfest, so we hope to engage with your perspectives around language productions from different disciplines, and encourage you to attend Mayfest to represent our language science community!

    Sessions and Readings:

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    February 19th: Linguistic creatures think in lexical concepts

    • Description: When we go to say something, do we first think in some abstract, non-linguistic way and then translate that into words (as Levelt's classic model proposes), or do we actually think in a lexical format, corresponding to morphemes of the language we speak?
    • Reading: Vicente, A., & Collins, J. (2025). The expression of thoughts: on Levelt's 'message' and thinking in lexical concepts. Philosophical Psychology, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2025.2609897 (RSVP to receive PDF of paper!)

    March 5th: Do you really think that much before speaking?

    • Description: Most language production research has focused on how the production process proceeds when there is no uncertainty in what a speaker wants to say. Based on findings of Gussow and MacDonald (2023), this week we are going to discuss how the production system needs to be structured so that a speaker can still start speaking without really knowing the full extent of the message and the intent.
    • Reading: Gussow, A.E., MacDonald, M.C. Utterance planning under message uncertainty: evidence from a novel picture-naming paradigm. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 23, 957–972 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-023-01103-6 (Click here to download PDF)

    March 26th: Are exemplar theories of production exemplary theories of production?

    • Description: Classic generative models drew a clean line between abstract phonological knowledge and continuous phonetic detail. Exemplar theory blew that up, proposing that lexical, phonological, and phonetic knowledge are all smeared together in richly structured memory traces with no abstract mental structure proposed. But two decades in, has the mush delivered? This week we review what exemplar models have and haven't been able to tell us about speech production specifically, and ask whether it's time to demand more structure from our theories?
    • Reading: Goldrick, M., & Cole, J. (2023). Advancement of phonetics in the 21st century: Exemplar models of speech production. Journal of Phonetics, 99, 101254. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447023000438 

    April 9th: How does data structure in speech production inform our theory of computation?

    • Description: When we speak, prosody distinguishes words that are focused from those that are given in the discourse. Previous phonological work has cast this prosodic contrast as the result of pitch accent or phrase boundaries. In this paper, Katz & Selkirk examine additional phonetic details of word pronunciation (duration, pitch, intensity), and argue that these cues encode even finer distinctions about a word's status in the discourse. They demonstrate that there are distinct patterns for contrastive focus, discourse-new, and discourse-given word prosody, even though some of these may appear identical if only pitch accent were considered. The emergence of this three-way contrast raises the question of how these contrasts are encoded/passed through in the grammar, because pitch accent alone is not sufficient to describe the phonetic outcome. In our discussion today, we'd like to focus on how this might shape our theory of speech planning and production. In this case, discourse information varies with phonetic detail that is independent of pitch accent. How is the information from the pragmatics transferred to the phonetic interpretation? Does prosody still mediate between the two, or are there direct connections between these modules? What are the limits on the kinds of information that fine phonetic detail can encode?
    • Reading: Katz, J., & Selkirk, E. (2011). Contrastive focus vs. discourse-new: Evidence from phonetic prominence in English. Language 87(4), 771-816. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/24/article/461766/pdf

    April 30th: Coordination: Cognitive processes and their interaction with production

    Language Science Elephant Graphic
    • Description: Different lenses provide different insights to production processes. But bridging these insights can lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon. This week, we will read Nozari's work on assembling a modal that marries psycholinguistic models of language production with theories of cognitive control.
    • Reading: Nozari, N. Monitoring, control and repair in word production. Nat Rev Psychol 4, 222–238 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00417-1 (Click here to download PDF)

    May 14th: TBA


    Early language access for deaf/HOH children in hearing families

    Discussion leaders: Deborah Chen Pichler (Gallaudet), Tonia Bleam (LING), and Megh Krishnaswamy

    An estimated 210 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children are born in Maryland every year, 90-95% of them to hearing families who have never met a deaf person before. Among the pressing challenges these families face is the decision of which language(s) to use with their DHH child: spoken English through hearing technology like cochlear implants? a natural sign language like ASL? both? As the home to the Maryland Cochlear Implant Center of Excellence, an expanding ASL program, and collaborations in sign language linguistics with nearby Gallaudet University, UMD can offer many resources for parents of DHH children as they navigate the daunting questions of language choice. This reading group will explore the diverse perspectives represented in the UMD community and discuss how we can work together to ensure early language access for all DHH children in MD.

    Sessions and Readings: 

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    March 5th: Overview of the variable outcomes for children with CIs

    March 26th: 

    April 9th: 

    April 30th:

    • Description: This week’s readings deal with language ideology and who is considered a native speaker. A stark reminder that despite the many issues with the traditional "native-signer" vs. "non-native signer" dichotomy, there are still real, measurable differences in morphosyntactic behavior across these two populations, and some of these differences even extend beyond one generation (differences between deaf children who have deaf parents and hearing grandparents vs. deaf parents and deaf grandparents).
    • Readings:

    May 14th: TBA

     H.J. Patterson Hall false
  • Thursday, Apr 09, 2026 12:15 pm
    04/09/26 12:15:00 04/09/26 13:30:00 America/New_York Language Science Reading Groups

    Join us every other Thursday for Language Science Reading Groups. This semester, we will offer two different reading groups happening concurrently. Learn more about our reading groups below.

    Don't be late, lunch is served at 12:15 PM and discussion begins at 12:30 PM.

    Click here to RSVP 

    Language Production and Mental Representations

    Discussion leaders: Allison Dods, Sathvik Nair, Carmen Tang, and Utku Turk (LING)

    This reading group will explore research questions related to this year's Mayfest workshop on language production: What are the data structures that support fluent production? What cognitive processes underlie their use? What are the evolutionary, neurobiological, and developmental origins of our production abilities? Each paper is by a researcher who has been invited to speak at Mayfest, so we hope to engage with your perspectives around language productions from different disciplines, and encourage you to attend Mayfest to represent our language science community!

    Sessions and Readings:

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    February 19th: Linguistic creatures think in lexical concepts

    • Description: When we go to say something, do we first think in some abstract, non-linguistic way and then translate that into words (as Levelt's classic model proposes), or do we actually think in a lexical format, corresponding to morphemes of the language we speak?
    • Reading: Vicente, A., & Collins, J. (2025). The expression of thoughts: on Levelt's 'message' and thinking in lexical concepts. Philosophical Psychology, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2025.2609897 (RSVP to receive PDF of paper!)

    March 5th: Do you really think that much before speaking?

    • Description: Most language production research has focused on how the production process proceeds when there is no uncertainty in what a speaker wants to say. Based on findings of Gussow and MacDonald (2023), this week we are going to discuss how the production system needs to be structured so that a speaker can still start speaking without really knowing the full extent of the message and the intent.
    • Reading: Gussow, A.E., MacDonald, M.C. Utterance planning under message uncertainty: evidence from a novel picture-naming paradigm. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 23, 957–972 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-023-01103-6 (Click here to download PDF)

    March 26th: Are exemplar theories of production exemplary theories of production?

    • Description: Classic generative models drew a clean line between abstract phonological knowledge and continuous phonetic detail. Exemplar theory blew that up, proposing that lexical, phonological, and phonetic knowledge are all smeared together in richly structured memory traces with no abstract mental structure proposed. But two decades in, has the mush delivered? This week we review what exemplar models have and haven't been able to tell us about speech production specifically, and ask whether it's time to demand more structure from our theories?
    • Reading: Goldrick, M., & Cole, J. (2023). Advancement of phonetics in the 21st century: Exemplar models of speech production. Journal of Phonetics, 99, 101254. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447023000438 

    April 9th: How does data structure in speech production inform our theory of computation?

    • Description: When we speak, prosody distinguishes words that are focused from those that are given in the discourse. Previous phonological work has cast this prosodic contrast as the result of pitch accent or phrase boundaries. In this paper, Katz & Selkirk examine additional phonetic details of word pronunciation (duration, pitch, intensity), and argue that these cues encode even finer distinctions about a word's status in the discourse. They demonstrate that there are distinct patterns for contrastive focus, discourse-new, and discourse-given word prosody, even though some of these may appear identical if only pitch accent were considered. The emergence of this three-way contrast raises the question of how these contrasts are encoded/passed through in the grammar, because pitch accent alone is not sufficient to describe the phonetic outcome. In our discussion today, we'd like to focus on how this might shape our theory of speech planning and production. In this case, discourse information varies with phonetic detail that is independent of pitch accent. How is the information from the pragmatics transferred to the phonetic interpretation? Does prosody still mediate between the two, or are there direct connections between these modules? What are the limits on the kinds of information that fine phonetic detail can encode?
    • Reading: Katz, J., & Selkirk, E. (2011). Contrastive focus vs. discourse-new: Evidence from phonetic prominence in English. Language 87(4), 771-816. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/24/article/461766/pdf

    April 30th: Coordination: Cognitive processes and their interaction with production

    Language Science Elephant Graphic
    • Description: Different lenses provide different insights to production processes. But bridging these insights can lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon. This week, we will read Nozari's work on assembling a modal that marries psycholinguistic models of language production with theories of cognitive control.
    • Reading: Nozari, N. Monitoring, control and repair in word production. Nat Rev Psychol 4, 222–238 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00417-1 (Click here to download PDF)

    May 14th: TBA


    Early language access for deaf/HOH children in hearing families

    Discussion leaders: Deborah Chen Pichler (Gallaudet), Tonia Bleam (LING), and Megh Krishnaswamy

    An estimated 210 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children are born in Maryland every year, 90-95% of them to hearing families who have never met a deaf person before. Among the pressing challenges these families face is the decision of which language(s) to use with their DHH child: spoken English through hearing technology like cochlear implants? a natural sign language like ASL? both? As the home to the Maryland Cochlear Implant Center of Excellence, an expanding ASL program, and collaborations in sign language linguistics with nearby Gallaudet University, UMD can offer many resources for parents of DHH children as they navigate the daunting questions of language choice. This reading group will explore the diverse perspectives represented in the UMD community and discuss how we can work together to ensure early language access for all DHH children in MD.

    Sessions and Readings: 

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    March 5th: Overview of the variable outcomes for children with CIs

    March 26th: 

    April 9th: 

    April 30th:

    • Description: This week’s readings deal with language ideology and who is considered a native speaker. A stark reminder that despite the many issues with the traditional "native-signer" vs. "non-native signer" dichotomy, there are still real, measurable differences in morphosyntactic behavior across these two populations, and some of these differences even extend beyond one generation (differences between deaf children who have deaf parents and hearing grandparents vs. deaf parents and deaf grandparents).
    • Readings:

    May 14th: TBA

     H.J. Patterson Hall false
  • Thursday, Apr 30, 2026 12:15 pm
    04/30/26 12:15:00 04/30/26 13:30:00 America/New_York Language Science Reading Groups

    Join us every other Thursday for Language Science Reading Groups. This semester, we will offer two different reading groups happening concurrently. Learn more about our reading groups below.

    Don't be late, lunch is served at 12:15 PM and discussion begins at 12:30 PM.

    Click here to RSVP 

    Language Production and Mental Representations

    Discussion leaders: Allison Dods, Sathvik Nair, Carmen Tang, and Utku Turk (LING)

    This reading group will explore research questions related to this year's Mayfest workshop on language production: What are the data structures that support fluent production? What cognitive processes underlie their use? What are the evolutionary, neurobiological, and developmental origins of our production abilities? Each paper is by a researcher who has been invited to speak at Mayfest, so we hope to engage with your perspectives around language productions from different disciplines, and encourage you to attend Mayfest to represent our language science community!

    Sessions and Readings:

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    February 19th: Linguistic creatures think in lexical concepts

    • Description: When we go to say something, do we first think in some abstract, non-linguistic way and then translate that into words (as Levelt's classic model proposes), or do we actually think in a lexical format, corresponding to morphemes of the language we speak?
    • Reading: Vicente, A., & Collins, J. (2025). The expression of thoughts: on Levelt's 'message' and thinking in lexical concepts. Philosophical Psychology, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2025.2609897 (RSVP to receive PDF of paper!)

    March 5th: Do you really think that much before speaking?

    • Description: Most language production research has focused on how the production process proceeds when there is no uncertainty in what a speaker wants to say. Based on findings of Gussow and MacDonald (2023), this week we are going to discuss how the production system needs to be structured so that a speaker can still start speaking without really knowing the full extent of the message and the intent.
    • Reading: Gussow, A.E., MacDonald, M.C. Utterance planning under message uncertainty: evidence from a novel picture-naming paradigm. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 23, 957–972 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-023-01103-6 (Click here to download PDF)

    March 26th: Are exemplar theories of production exemplary theories of production?

    • Description: Classic generative models drew a clean line between abstract phonological knowledge and continuous phonetic detail. Exemplar theory blew that up, proposing that lexical, phonological, and phonetic knowledge are all smeared together in richly structured memory traces with no abstract mental structure proposed. But two decades in, has the mush delivered? This week we review what exemplar models have and haven't been able to tell us about speech production specifically, and ask whether it's time to demand more structure from our theories?
    • Reading: Goldrick, M., & Cole, J. (2023). Advancement of phonetics in the 21st century: Exemplar models of speech production. Journal of Phonetics, 99, 101254. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447023000438 

    April 9th: How does data structure in speech production inform our theory of computation?

    • Description: When we speak, prosody distinguishes words that are focused from those that are given in the discourse. Previous phonological work has cast this prosodic contrast as the result of pitch accent or phrase boundaries. In this paper, Katz & Selkirk examine additional phonetic details of word pronunciation (duration, pitch, intensity), and argue that these cues encode even finer distinctions about a word's status in the discourse. They demonstrate that there are distinct patterns for contrastive focus, discourse-new, and discourse-given word prosody, even though some of these may appear identical if only pitch accent were considered. The emergence of this three-way contrast raises the question of how these contrasts are encoded/passed through in the grammar, because pitch accent alone is not sufficient to describe the phonetic outcome. In our discussion today, we'd like to focus on how this might shape our theory of speech planning and production. In this case, discourse information varies with phonetic detail that is independent of pitch accent. How is the information from the pragmatics transferred to the phonetic interpretation? Does prosody still mediate between the two, or are there direct connections between these modules? What are the limits on the kinds of information that fine phonetic detail can encode?
    • Reading: Katz, J., & Selkirk, E. (2011). Contrastive focus vs. discourse-new: Evidence from phonetic prominence in English. Language 87(4), 771-816. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/24/article/461766/pdf

    April 30th: Coordination: Cognitive processes and their interaction with production

    Language Science Elephant Graphic
    • Description: Different lenses provide different insights to production processes. But bridging these insights can lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon. This week, we will read Nozari's work on assembling a modal that marries psycholinguistic models of language production with theories of cognitive control.
    • Reading: Nozari, N. Monitoring, control and repair in word production. Nat Rev Psychol 4, 222–238 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00417-1 (Click here to download PDF)

    May 14th: TBA


    Early language access for deaf/HOH children in hearing families

    Discussion leaders: Deborah Chen Pichler (Gallaudet), Tonia Bleam (LING), and Megh Krishnaswamy

    An estimated 210 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children are born in Maryland every year, 90-95% of them to hearing families who have never met a deaf person before. Among the pressing challenges these families face is the decision of which language(s) to use with their DHH child: spoken English through hearing technology like cochlear implants? a natural sign language like ASL? both? As the home to the Maryland Cochlear Implant Center of Excellence, an expanding ASL program, and collaborations in sign language linguistics with nearby Gallaudet University, UMD can offer many resources for parents of DHH children as they navigate the daunting questions of language choice. This reading group will explore the diverse perspectives represented in the UMD community and discuss how we can work together to ensure early language access for all DHH children in MD.

    Sessions and Readings: 

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    March 5th: Overview of the variable outcomes for children with CIs

    March 26th: 

    April 9th: 

    April 30th:

    • Description: This week’s readings deal with language ideology and who is considered a native speaker. A stark reminder that despite the many issues with the traditional "native-signer" vs. "non-native signer" dichotomy, there are still real, measurable differences in morphosyntactic behavior across these two populations, and some of these differences even extend beyond one generation (differences between deaf children who have deaf parents and hearing grandparents vs. deaf parents and deaf grandparents).
    • Readings:

    May 14th: TBA

     H.J. Patterson Hall false
  • Thursday, May 14, 2026 12:15 pm
    05/14/26 12:15:00 05/14/26 13:30:00 America/New_York Language Science Reading Groups

    Join us every other Thursday for Language Science Reading Groups. This semester, we will offer two different reading groups happening concurrently. Learn more about our reading groups below.

    Don't be late, lunch is served at 12:15 PM and discussion begins at 12:30 PM.

    Click here to RSVP 

    Language Production and Mental Representations

    Discussion leaders: Allison Dods, Sathvik Nair, Carmen Tang, and Utku Turk (LING)

    This reading group will explore research questions related to this year's Mayfest workshop on language production: What are the data structures that support fluent production? What cognitive processes underlie their use? What are the evolutionary, neurobiological, and developmental origins of our production abilities? Each paper is by a researcher who has been invited to speak at Mayfest, so we hope to engage with your perspectives around language productions from different disciplines, and encourage you to attend Mayfest to represent our language science community!

    Sessions and Readings:

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    February 19th: Linguistic creatures think in lexical concepts

    • Description: When we go to say something, do we first think in some abstract, non-linguistic way and then translate that into words (as Levelt's classic model proposes), or do we actually think in a lexical format, corresponding to morphemes of the language we speak?
    • Reading: Vicente, A., & Collins, J. (2025). The expression of thoughts: on Levelt's 'message' and thinking in lexical concepts. Philosophical Psychology, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2025.2609897 (RSVP to receive PDF of paper!)

    March 5th: Do you really think that much before speaking?

    • Description: Most language production research has focused on how the production process proceeds when there is no uncertainty in what a speaker wants to say. Based on findings of Gussow and MacDonald (2023), this week we are going to discuss how the production system needs to be structured so that a speaker can still start speaking without really knowing the full extent of the message and the intent.
    • Reading: Gussow, A.E., MacDonald, M.C. Utterance planning under message uncertainty: evidence from a novel picture-naming paradigm. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 23, 957–972 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-023-01103-6 (Click here to download PDF)

    March 26th: Are exemplar theories of production exemplary theories of production?

    • Description: Classic generative models drew a clean line between abstract phonological knowledge and continuous phonetic detail. Exemplar theory blew that up, proposing that lexical, phonological, and phonetic knowledge are all smeared together in richly structured memory traces with no abstract mental structure proposed. But two decades in, has the mush delivered? This week we review what exemplar models have and haven't been able to tell us about speech production specifically, and ask whether it's time to demand more structure from our theories?
    • Reading: Goldrick, M., & Cole, J. (2023). Advancement of phonetics in the 21st century: Exemplar models of speech production. Journal of Phonetics, 99, 101254. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447023000438 

    April 9th: How does data structure in speech production inform our theory of computation?

    • Description: When we speak, prosody distinguishes words that are focused from those that are given in the discourse. Previous phonological work has cast this prosodic contrast as the result of pitch accent or phrase boundaries. In this paper, Katz & Selkirk examine additional phonetic details of word pronunciation (duration, pitch, intensity), and argue that these cues encode even finer distinctions about a word's status in the discourse. They demonstrate that there are distinct patterns for contrastive focus, discourse-new, and discourse-given word prosody, even though some of these may appear identical if only pitch accent were considered. The emergence of this three-way contrast raises the question of how these contrasts are encoded/passed through in the grammar, because pitch accent alone is not sufficient to describe the phonetic outcome. In our discussion today, we'd like to focus on how this might shape our theory of speech planning and production. In this case, discourse information varies with phonetic detail that is independent of pitch accent. How is the information from the pragmatics transferred to the phonetic interpretation? Does prosody still mediate between the two, or are there direct connections between these modules? What are the limits on the kinds of information that fine phonetic detail can encode?
    • Reading: Katz, J., & Selkirk, E. (2011). Contrastive focus vs. discourse-new: Evidence from phonetic prominence in English. Language 87(4), 771-816. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/24/article/461766/pdf

    April 30th: Coordination: Cognitive processes and their interaction with production

    Language Science Elephant Graphic
    • Description: Different lenses provide different insights to production processes. But bridging these insights can lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon. This week, we will read Nozari's work on assembling a modal that marries psycholinguistic models of language production with theories of cognitive control.
    • Reading: Nozari, N. Monitoring, control and repair in word production. Nat Rev Psychol 4, 222–238 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00417-1 (Click here to download PDF)

    May 14th: TBA


    Early language access for deaf/HOH children in hearing families

    Discussion leaders: Deborah Chen Pichler (Gallaudet), Tonia Bleam (LING), and Megh Krishnaswamy

    An estimated 210 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children are born in Maryland every year, 90-95% of them to hearing families who have never met a deaf person before. Among the pressing challenges these families face is the decision of which language(s) to use with their DHH child: spoken English through hearing technology like cochlear implants? a natural sign language like ASL? both? As the home to the Maryland Cochlear Implant Center of Excellence, an expanding ASL program, and collaborations in sign language linguistics with nearby Gallaudet University, UMD can offer many resources for parents of DHH children as they navigate the daunting questions of language choice. This reading group will explore the diverse perspectives represented in the UMD community and discuss how we can work together to ensure early language access for all DHH children in MD.

    Sessions and Readings: 

    February 5th: CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

    March 5th: Overview of the variable outcomes for children with CIs

    March 26th: 

    April 9th: 

    April 30th:

    • Description: This week’s readings deal with language ideology and who is considered a native speaker. A stark reminder that despite the many issues with the traditional "native-signer" vs. "non-native signer" dichotomy, there are still real, measurable differences in morphosyntactic behavior across these two populations, and some of these differences even extend beyond one generation (differences between deaf children who have deaf parents and hearing grandparents vs. deaf parents and deaf grandparents).
    • Readings:

    May 14th: TBA

     H.J. Patterson Hall false