Author archives: Itziar Laka

Image of Itziar Laka

Itziar Laka graduated in basque philology (UPV/EHU) and received a PhD in linguistics and philosophy from MIT. After five years as assistant professor at the University of Rochester, she is now full professor at the Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies and director of The Bilingual Mind research group at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Her current research combines theoretical linguistics and experimental methods from psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics to inquire into the neural representation and processing of language, with a strong focus on syntax and bilingualism.

Freeing the Language Within: on how babies extract words out of sounds.

Freeing the Language Within: on how babies extract words out of sounds.

Neurolinguistics

By Itziar Laka

Michelangelo famously claimed he merely carved out sculptures he saw trapped inside the stone. His genius involved a powerful internal vision that he masterly imposed on external matter. We can think of Michelangelo’s conception of sculpture when we look at human babies acquiring language, because babies, like sculptors, carve out the language they hear in […]