TOOLS AND METHODOLOGIES SEMINARS (SL) - MOD. 1

The curriculum in Language Sciences is aimed at the acquisition of theoretical knowledge and the development of critical skills that allow doctoral students to understand linguistic phenomena in all their complexity, developing the ability to plan research aimed at the acquisition of new data and their analysis, as well as at proposing applicative interventions with social and cultural impact. The curriculum includes a wide range of linguistic research perspectives (formal, synchronic and diachronic, philological, sociolinguistic, computational, language teaching analysis, also applied to bilingual and bimodal contexts), also addressed with experimental methodologies that use sophisticated instruments (eye-tracker, fNIRS) and advanced statistical analysis models.
The training objective of this module is to contribute to the development of methodological research skills in linguistics, including theoretical linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistics applied to language disorders and typical and atypical language acquisition, and linguistics computational.

- mastery of advanced experimental methodologies, including eye-tracking
- knowledge of experimental research methods in the sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic fields;
- ability to conceive, plan, implement and adapt a research process in the specific linguistic field with the probity required of the scholar, as in the collection of data and their processing;
- ability to critically analyze, evaluate and synthesize new and complex ideas, which allow one to contribute to the refinement of theoretical models and application methodologies of specific linguistic fields;
- ability to communicate with peers, and with the wider community of linguistics scholars, presenting their research in oral and written form in the semester tests of the current year.

knowledge and skills verified during the selection:
- good knowledge of formal linguistics, socio-linguistics, psycho-linguistics, Italian linguistics.
- basic statistical analysis knowledge
- excellent knowledge of the teaching languages ​​(Italian and English)

The seminars, aimed at the acquisition and consolidation of research methodologies and tools, are structured into two macro-areas, directed by two experts of the different subfields:

Prof. Mikhail Kissine (Université Libre de Bruxelles; Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, visiting professor)
Experimental methods in linguistics, with a specific focus on eye-tracking.
15 hours (1st and 2nd semester)

This interactive seminar will consist of a collaborative, hands-on introduction to experimental methods in linguistics. A first meeting, in fall 2024, will help delineate one or two research questions, based on the PhD students’ research interests (these may stem from their dissertation or be side projects); a targeted reading list will be provided after this meeting. In the second semester, we will collectively design one or two experimental paradigms, most likely involving eye-tracking, pilot different versions of the tasks, pre-register the final design and analytical plan on OSF and prepare the code for data visualisation. If time permits, students will collect the data before the end of the academic year and post the results on OSF.


Dr. Gianluca Lebani (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia)
Statistics for the Analysis of Linguistic Data.
15 hours (1st semester)

The main purpose of this course is to provide PhD students with the statistical tools needed to analyze the linguistic data collected during their doctoral research. On the one hand, the course covers the basic techniques for the preparation and analysis of linguistic data; on the other hand, it involves the analysis and discussion of selected real case studies. The objectives of this course are:
- to introduce PhD students to the use of the R scripting language;
- to introduce PhD students to the linear model for the statistical analysis of linguistic data.

This basic bibliography will be enriched in the course of the seminars

Statistics for the Analysis of Linguistic Data
Most of the activities will be based on teaching materials provided by the instructor. In addition, the following textbooks offer a more detailed explanation of the key concepts covered in the course:
- Wilke, C. O. (2019). Fundamentals of Data Visualization: A Primer on Making Informative and Compelling Figures. O'Reilly. Freely available at: https://clauswilke.com/dataviz/
- Winter, B. (2019). Statistics for Linguists: An Introduction Using R. Routledge.

Experimental Methods / Eye-tracking
- Edlund, J. E., & Nichols, A. L. (2019). Advanced Research Methods for the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Cambridge University Press.
- Podesva, R. J., & Sharma, D. (2013). Research Methods in Linguistics. Cambridge University Press.

The acquisition of the abilities and capacities will be checked through oral and written presentations and reports that students must hand in at the end of the semester

not present

(this field doesn't apply)

interactive seminars in person

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development