I am a PhD candidate in Psychology in my final year, working with Alec Marantz at the Neuroscience of Language Lab at New York University.
My main interest is in morphosemantics, or the interface of morphology and meaning. I ask questions on particularly how a language uses its systems of word formation to create conceptual networks among related word meanings based on word forms. This process lets us easily understand many new words we encounter, without even noticing that they were new. Our intuition of our language’s morphosemantics is so reliable that we fill our children’s books and sense of humor with such new words.
Such an intuitive linguistic process must surely have a brain basis then, and it does, as my line of research is dedicated to show.
My current work is on the neural basis of derivational morphology and its semantic role, which I’ve explored in Arabic and English, in both existing words and completely new words, and currently, I am investigating it using an artificial grammar paradigm, with a new aspect of grammar and meaning.
This interest in language and how they connect across meaning differently does not come out of the blue. I grew up in Lebanon, a trilingual country that balances three distinct languages: Arabic (which is two languages in one, diglossia), French, and English. In such a rich linguistic landscape, I had long enjoyed thinking of language and the different cultures with every one of them, and what each of them can offer me. In writing, social interactions, classes, media, and politics, it seemed to me that language was a question humming in the background of everything. With some years, I decided to be a language researcher and bring language to the foreground.
Maybe not every child marveling at the behavior of their different languages ended up being a neuroscientist, but they might share other things in common with what I also am very dedicated to. I also write essays and poetry, and am a singer-songwriter and song translator/adapter (the latter of which is the most challenging exercise form and meaning!). You can find out more about this here.
Marianne Azar 