Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics Research

The "syntax research area" is a group of staff and students carrying our syntax-related research in Cambridge. Members of the area organise and participate in a wide range of events, including:

• reading groups;
• talks;
• short courses and lecture series;
• student-run workshops involving both local PhD students and invited speakers from outside the Linguistics Department; and
• local and international conferences.

This website includes a list of area members, details of the various syntax-related events taking place in Cambridge and information on members' projects and research.

See more information about Research Projects, Research Students, Senior Researchers

The Computational Linguistics Research Area is a group of staff and graduate students interested in computational processing (i.e. analysis, understanding and generation) of human language. Research in Computational Linguistics has now been carried out in DTAL for over a decade. During this time the group of computational linguists has grown with an increasing number of researchers, research students and projects. The area's research activities span from Corpus Linguistics to nearly all the active areas of Natural Language Processing, and cover both basic and applied research.

There are three major research groups within the area:

• EF Education First Research Unit
• The Institute for Automated Language Teaching and Assessment (ALTA)
• Language Technology Lab (LTL)

These group websites provide information about on-going research projects, publications and opportunities. Further information can be found on the websites of individual area members.

Since computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary research field, the area has close links with other university departments in Cambridge that conduct research on language sciences, including the Computer Laboratory, the Departments of Experimental Psychology and Engineering, and the Cambridge Brain Science Unit.

Members of the Area

The Phonetics and Phonology Research Area brings together PhD students and academics interested in linguistic structure and its acoustic manifestations in speech.

We organise one or two workshops each year, where invited speakers and students can present and discuss their research. Our inaugural workshop was on the Phonetics and Phonology Interface, with talks by Marilyn Vihman and Bob Ladd.

Other activities include:

• reading groups
• training sessions in research skills for PhD students
• occasional talks

Members of the Area

This research cluster concerns language acquisition at all moments across the lifespan and in all possible and imaginable contexts (typical and a-typical). Researchers specialize in child monolingual and bilingual, and adult language learning. They study children longitudinally in their natural environment over the first 3-4 years of their lives or study them cross-sectionally across more age groups, and involving larger groups of learners. They may also study grammatical aspects of the language, semantic aspects, or indeed look at the level beyond the sentence, and understand how learners organize information across clauses and in discourse. And in all of the research the English language plays an important role (as source or as target language). Some of the researchers take a linguistic perspective, whereas others take a psychological perspective, and as the department is oriented in both theoretical and applied directions, it also is involved in a number of projects that strive to innovate language teaching and assessment through cross-fertilization of linguistic research and teaching and assessment techniques beyond the walls of this University. Finally, the department also has researchers who look at non-typically developing children, i.e., those that can be characterized by normal intelligence but show specific problems with the use and production of language. This, in turn, can inform the medical profession, and psycholinguists interested in understanding how and where language is stored in the brain. 

The Mechanisms of Language Change research area is a group of staff and graduate students interested in all areas of language variation and change. It brings together not only staff within the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, but also from the wider Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.

Much of the work by members of the area is characterised by either the creation and exploitation of corpora or by detailed philological work. The cluster's research activities are focused around three main themes which highlight some of the research strengths of its members:

• Historical morphology and syntax
• Language contact
• Standardization and prescriptivism

Cluster themes

Who are we?

The Semantics, Pragmatics and Philosophy research area consists of a community of graduate students, researchers and academics with a broad spectrum of interests, ranging from the philosophy of language to experimental pragmatics, and including the interfaces between syntax and semantics, and semantics and pragmatics. Our individual foci merge in our common aim to investigate and understand ‘meaning’.

What do we do?

Our main goal is to conduct theory-critical research that results in psychologically and philosophically plausible theories of meaning, using methods that range from conceptual argumentation to empirical linguistic observations, experimental data and corpus-based studies. The diverse interests of our members allow an exchange of ideas which delve into the depths of specific investigations, while maintaining sight of the bigger picture that emerges from the interdisciplinary approach to the study of meaning.

How do I sign up?

The activities of the area include a fortnightly reading group meeting involving both the discussion of current papers, and presentations from members on their on-going research where they can receive constructive feedback in an informal setting. The cluster also organises one to two workshops per year, in which a guest speaker is invited to participate. All members of the university and guests in Cambridge with an interest in ‘meaning’ are welcome to participate in the activities of the cluster. 

Please email  Anastasiia Petrenko (ap2315@cam.ac.uk) to be added to the mailing list. 

Members

• View the list of members of the group

Meetings

• Read our list of group meetings for 2025-26
• Previous meetings

Researchers in the lab specialize in child monolingual and bilingual, and adult language learning. They study children longitudinally in their natural environment over the first 3-4 years of their lives, or cross-sectionally across more age groups, and involving larger groups of learners. They may also study grammatical aspects of the language, semantic aspects, or indeed look at the level beyond the sentence, and understand how learners organize information across clauses and in discourse.

Some researchers take a linguistic perspective, whereas others take a psychological perspective, and as the department is oriented in both theoretical and applied directions, it also is involved in a number of projects that strive to innovate language teaching and assessment through cross-fertilization of linguistic research and teaching and assessment techniques. Finally, the lab also has researchers in psycholinguistics, some of whom look at non-typically developing children who experience specific problems around the use and production of language.

For more information see the CamPAL Google Site.