CSCA debate: Language and cognition - Two distinct skills?

What is the relation between language and cognition? On the one hand, researchers like Noam Chomsky thought of language as an independent function with its own rules. However, other people – mainly psychologists – thought that language as a system is embedded in cognition and subject to all models of cognition.

How do researchers currently view the relation between language and cognition? Have new techniques for brain research and research on cognitive functions led to a great change in this regard?

Panel

Rens Bod is professor in Computational and Digital Humanities at the Faculties of Humanities and Science (UvA). His research is aimed at the computational study of language, music, and reasoning, and he studies the history of the humanities.

Annette de Groot is professor in Experimental Psycholinguistics at the  Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (UvA). She studies bilingualism, with a focus on word recognition and word production in bilinguals, word learning in a second language and simultaneous translation

Jeannette Schaeffer is assistant professor Dutch Linguistics at the Faculty of Humanities (UvA). Her research is focused on  Specific Language Impairment, en the role of modularity in this.

Hedde Zeijlstra is assistant professor in Dutch Linguistics at the UvA. His research is aimed at the relation between structure and meaning of language. He focuses on differences between languages in this respect.