DyLan Lab

The Dylan Lab investigates the dynamic relationships between language and cognition through the development and integration of theoretical models, empirical evidence and computer simulations

The Dylan Lab is the interdisciplinary outcome of a long-lasting research partnership between the CNR group on Language, Cognition and Computation, based at the "Antonio Zampolli" CNR Institute for Computational Linguistics and the Computational Linguistics Lab at the “Tristano Bolelli” Department of Linguistics of Pisa University.

The lines of activity pursued by the Dylan Lab focus on the intersection of a wide range of disciplinary approaches to the study of language, ranging from Theoretical, General and Computational Linguistics to Pyscho-linguistics, Neuro-linguistics, Dialectology, Socio-linguistics, Historical linguistics and Cognitive Sciences. The Lab's overall objective is to develop theoretical and computational models of language usage, with particular emphasis on language comprehension, production, learning and variation, studied in ecological contexts of communicative interaction.

The development of these models is based on hybrid architectures for Natual Language Processing, Machine Learning algorithms and stochastic language models, artificial neural networks, symbolic, sub-symbolic and distributional models of language processing, predictive models of human behaviour, cognitive mechanisms subserving perception, theoretical models of language usage.

The Dylan Lab is also actively engaged in acquiring, structuring, analyzing and using a large array of empirical data: prysho-linguistic experimental evidence, distributional data of language usage sampled from large annotated corpora of speech and writing,  typological, diachronic, diamesic, and diastratic evidence representative of a wide spectrum of languages and language varieties.