FUNLAT

Together with colleague Agustín Vicente, I am the PI of the project called FUNLAT (Functional Language in Atypical Development) for the 2022-2026 period. It is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Spanish Research Agency (AEI), with the support of the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER, EU), with reference PID2021-122233OB-I00. Its members are our colleagues at Lindy Lab .

The present proposal concerns functional language in atypical development, with special attention to Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) but also Developmental Language Disorders (DLD). By functional language we refer to the use of language in general, including communication exchanges, such as the ability to comprehend non-literal uses of language, to perform and comprehend a variety of speech acts, to enter into conversations, and to produce narratives. We also include in functional language the capacity to understand how language as a representational system works, paying special attention to linguistic labeling. We are innovative in: (a) testing different problems that ASC and DLD groups experience regarding non-literal language: not understanding non-literal language (DLD) vs. understanding it literally (ASC); (b) testing pragmatics in production with two different methodologies and using tools provided by the formal study of discourse and conversation; (c) testing how children with language problems understand how labels work when learning new words and in categorization.

The overarching goal of this project is twofold: First, we aim at obtaining a better knowledge of the difficulties that atypical populations face in the domain of functional language. Second, from the point of view of linguistic theorizing, we want to advance in the understanding of the role played by structural language and other predictors in the development of certain pragmatic abilities. Unlike several researchers, we think that the problems that ASC and DLD groups face concerning functional language are very different. While DLD pragmatic difficulties probably relate to structural language, autists exhibit issues that are characteristic of the profile, and for which there is as yet no good explanation.