Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "FLaCIS - First Language Acquisition of Information Structure: the acquisition of topic and focus in French." "Karen Lahousse" "Functional and Cognitive Linguistics: Grammar and Typology (FunC), Leuven" "Information Structure (IS) concerns the way in which sentences are integrated into the information flow between speaker and hearer, it is a tool that guides speakers in the way they express their thoughts, and has an influence on the ordering of constituents in the clause. Although IS was already introduced in linguistics in the 60s, it is only in the last few decades that systematic research on IS has started. However, the way in which IS (function) interacts with syntax (form) is still poorly understood, as well as the place of IS in language and human cognition. The goal of this research project is to investigate the development, in French first language acquisition, of the relationship between the semantic/pragmatic functions of 'topic' and 'focus' and the corresponding formal devices, on the basis of linguistic and psycholinguistic methods." "Brain of words. The impact of form- and meaning-focused instruction on L2 lexical acquisition as measured by behavioral and neurocognitive indices" "Piet Desmet" "Comparative, Historical and Applied Linguistics, Kulak Kortrijk Campus, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Kulak Kortrijk Campus" "A fundamental question in research on instructed second language (L2) acquisition concerns the impact of form- or meaning-focused instruction on L2 learning. While substantial research has addressed the impact of those types of instruction on the acquisition of grammar, far fewer studies have compared their effectiveness for vocabulary acquisition. In addition, those studies have often exclusively assessed student’s acquisition of word meaning using explicit tests, which may provide an inaccurate picture of the actual vocabulary learning gains (e.g., at the earliest stages of acquisition) and the effectiveness of a particular treatment.Therefore, this project investigates the effects of three instructional treatments: focus on meaning, focus on form, and focus on forms, on lexical acquisition at three levels of word knowledge (form, meaning, and use) and measured by means of three types of tests. Tests will range from explicit (e.g., provide the L1 translation of a novel word), over tacit (i.e. reaction time measurement), to neurological measures (recording Event-related potentials, ERPs) in order to detect lexical gains at different levels of sensitivity and track partial knowledge gains.The effectiveness of the instructional treatments on L2 lexical acquisition will be investigated in two experimental studies. Participants, L1 Dutch speaking 16 to 17 years old L2 learners of French,  will be assigned to one of the three conditions: Focus-on-Forms, Focus-on-Form and Focus-on-Meaning. While study 1 will use a behavioural test battery to measure vocabulary gains (explicit and psycholinguistic tests with reaction time measurement), study 2 will add neurological data (e.g., the “N400”, a negative-going brainwave peaking typically at 400 ms post-stimulus, indicates semantic processing). " "Developmental patterns and mechanisms in the acquisition of receptive grammar knowledge in a second language" "Alex Housen" "Language and literature" "The primary objective of the proposed research project is to broaden the scope of SLA research by investigating the dynamics of receptive grammar development. As a second objective, I will test the hypothesis that the pattern of receptive L2 grammar development, like productive L2 grammar development, is unaffected by first language (L1) background. Finally, by using cross-sectional and longitudinal data, I avoid the peril of drawing unjustifiable conclusions concerning grammar development on the basis of cross-sectional data alone. Thus, the proposed research project is innovative in that it studies, cross-sectionally and longitudinally (rather than just cross-sectionally), aspects of receptive (rather than productive) L2 grammar acquisition by very young (rather than older) L2 learners from two (rather than one) typologically different L1 backgrounds." "Multimodal storytelling in Virtual Reality: Impact from medium and gaze on vocabulary acquisition in children with Developmental Language Disorder and multilingual children" "Ellen Rombouts" "Research Group Experimental Oto-rhino-laryngology, Multimodality, Interaction and Discourse, Leuven" "Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) need more repetition than their typically developing (TD) peers to learn new words. Some successively multilingual children may receive limited extramural language input in their second language. Therefore, both groups of children can benefit from additional, individually tailored language input to enhance their vocabulary acquisition. Digital storytelling supported with gestures is an effective way to provide multimodal language input at home and can be presented in a relatively accessible and life-like manner through Virtual Reality (VR). I study the effect of narrations supported with iconic gestures on vocabulary acquisition in children with DLD and multilingual TD children to determine the optimal characteristics of this language input in terms of medium and speaker gaze. I expect that children show better word learning if narrations are presented through VR compared to on-screen and when the speaker gazes upon their own gestures compared to when they do not. Furthermore, I expect eye-tracking data to show that the children gaze towards the speaker’s gestures more often if the story is presented through VR and with speaker gaze. The project’s findings give us fundamental insights into the word-learning mechanisms of children with DLD and multilingual children. Based on these insights, we can provide recommendations on the application of gesture-supported digital storytelling as additional language input." "Learning , reasoning and data acquisition in high-dimensional, multimodal, yet sparse data contexts." "Pieter Libin" "Informatics and Applied Informatics, Faculty of Sciences and Bioengineering Sciences" "FWO Aspirant Mandaat + benchfee Promotor: Pieter Libin" "The emergence of syntactic complexity. The first language acquisition of cleft sentences as a window onto the syntax – prosody – information structure interface." "Karen Lahousse" "Functional and Cognitive Linguistics: Grammar and Typology (FunC), Leuven" "This project will investigate how complex language is acquired. We will focus on how children, in their first language acquisition, produce and understand meaning making use of complex form (syntax), pronunciation (prosody) and discourse context. To this extent, we will analyze the emergence and development of two types of “cleft sentences” (1-2) in French, with children between ages 2 and 8. (1) Child (age 2;9): C'est toi qui m(e) fait les tortues. ‘It’s you who does the turtles for me.’ (1’) ~ Tu me fais les tortues. ‘You do the turtles for me.’ (2) Child (age 3;11): Il y a quelqu'un qui vole un parapluie. ‘There is somebody who is stealing an umbrella.’ (2’) ~ Quelqu’un vole un parapluie. ‘Somebody is stealing an umbrella.’ Clefts pose an intriguing puzzle for linguistic research on first language acquisition and the interaction between syntax, prosody and interpretation, because they communicate the same basic information as the corresponding simple sentence (1’ and 2’), but have a more complex form, and a specific interpretation and prosody. They consist of two clauses (a main clause and an embedded clause) and emphasize that one part of the sentence (toi ‘you’ in (1)) or the whole sentence (in (2)) constitutes new information for the hearer. Moreover, c’est clefts (1), but not il y a clefts (2) often have a special (contrastive and exhaustive) interpretation, and imply that ‘it’s you and nobody else who will do the turtles’." "Learning Dutch in Flanders. The acquisition of sociolinguistic variation with adult L2 learners" "Chloé Lybaert" "Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication" "Acquisition of sociolinguistic variation is increasingly considered essential for L2 speakers. At the same time it poses challenges, especially for late language learners. This project focuses on the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation by late starting learners in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Flanders offers a fascinating context for this project, because the linguistic landscape is strongly dominated by non-standard language variation (mainly Colloquial Belgian Dutch), while Standard Dutch still occupies a superior position ideologically (also in L2 education). More specifically, the following questions are focused on- What are L2 speakers' attitudes towards Standard and Colloquial Belgian Dutch?- To what extent do L2 speakers incorporate non-standard language variation into their L2 system?These questions will be answered by compiling and analyzing a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews with L2 speakers and informal conversations between L2 and L1 speakers." "Non-profit organizations and face-to-face fundraising: Research on the ethical judgment of donors and recruiters, and the influence of this ethical judgment on donor acquisition and retention." "Tine De Bock" "Department of Marketing (main work address Brussels)" "The growing non-profit sector has an increasing degree of competition and financial viability as one of the biggest challenges. It is therefore crucial for non-profit organizations to approach fundraising in a more strategic and professional way, with increased attention to cost-effectiveness and building long-term relationships with donors. Face-to-face fundraising (e.g. street recruitment, door-to-door recruitment) is often mentioned as a promising fundraising technique because of a number of advantages: the technique is cost-efficient, appropriate for donor retention, less limited by the increasingly stringent GDPR, and interesting for tapping into new and younger donors. Despite these advantages and the growing popularity of the technique, face-to-face fundraising also brings with it a number of ethical concerns (e.g. too much pressure) that can stop its growth. However, to date, little is known about the ethical judgment of both donors and recruiters with respect to face-to-face fundraising practices. In addition, little is known about the relationship between the ethical judgment of donors on face-to-face fundraising and the effectiveness of this technique in the short and long term. The aim of this doctoral project is to address these gaps in both professional and academic literature and to contribute substantially to this unexplored field of fundraising ethics." "Towards a mechanistic understanding of the emergence, evolution, acquisition and processing of human-like languages in populations of autonomous agents" "Paul Van Eecke" "Informatics and Applied Informatics" "The overall mission of the research programme that I propose is to gain a deep and precise understanding of the computational mechanisms underlying the emergence, evolution, acquisition and processing of human-like languages in populations of autonomous agents. Unravelling and computationally modelling these mechanisms will not only contribute to a better understanding of how human languages function, but will also allow us to equip truly intelligent autonomous agents with the necessary means to co-construct conceptual and linguistic structures that are adequate for interacting with humans and each other in their native environment. This research programme is fundamental, yet applicable in nature. While it investigates fun- damental questions about the origins, evolution, acquisition and processing of human communication and language, the results of the experiments are directly relevant to a variety of real-world applications that tackle important industrial and societal challenges. Examples of such applications include intelligent conversational agents, collaborative robots, human-centric opinion observatories and facilitators, intelligent tutoring systems, and adaptive self-organising multi-agent systems." "The emergence of syntactic complexity. The first language acquisition of cleft sentences in French as a window onto the syntax - prosody - Information Structure interface." "Karen Lahousse" "Functional and Cognitive Linguistics: Grammar and Typology (FunC), Leuven, Université de Paris, University College London, University of Leeds" "This project will investigate how complex language is acquired. We will focus on how children, in their first language acquisition, produce and understand meaning making use of complex form (syntax), pronunciation (prosody) and discourse context. To this extent, we will analyze the emergence and development of two types of “cleft sentences” (1-2) in French, with children between ages 2 and 8. (1) Child (age 2;9): C'est toi qui m(e) fait les tortues. ‘It’s you who does the turtles for me.’ (1’) ~ Tu me fais les tortues. ‘You do the turtles for me.’ (2) Child (age 3;11): Il y a quelqu'un qui vole un parapluie. ‘There is somebody who is stealing an umbrella.’ (2’) ~ Quelqu’un vole un parapluie. ‘Somebody is stealing an umbrella.’ Clefts pose an intriguing puzzle for linguistic research on first language acquisition and the interaction between syntax, prosody and interpretation, because they communicate the same basic information as the corresponding simple sentence (1’ and 2’), but have a more complex form, and a specific interpretation and prosody. They consist of two clauses (a main clause and an embedded clause) and emphasize that one part of the sentence (toi ‘you’ in (1)) or the whole sentence (in (2)) constitutes new information for the hearer. Moreover, c’est clefts (1), but not il y a clefts (2) often have a special (contrastive and exhaustive) interpretation, and imply that ‘it’s you and nobody else who will do the turtles’."