Grammar and lexicon distinction in a neurocognitive context

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The ProGram project (Information Prominence and Grammar in the brain) was an interdisciplinary project at University of Copenhagen. I did my PhD as a part of that project. We carried out research based on a linguistic theory and a neurocognitive model. The project was a collaboration between three different faculties at the University of Copenhagen with Kasper Boye as the PI and Jesper Mogensen and Hartwig Siebner the co-PIs.

The linguistic theory, also known as the GRAM theory, places itself between the extremes of generative and construction grammar and defines grammar as being “less important” and always conveying secondary information. Lexicon, on the contrary, can carry the main point of an utterance. For instance, in the expression The

Description, theory and linguistics as a science – an interview with William B. McGregor

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Professor William B. McGregor is an Australian-born linguist who works at Aarhus University in Denmark. He has published various books on linguistic theory and Australian languages, which include Semiotic Grammar (1997), Verb classification in Australian languages (2002), The Languages of the Kimberley, Western Australia (2004), Linguistics: An Introduction (2009, 2015 second edition) and Sign Languages of the World: A Comparative Handbook (2015, coeditor with Julie Bakken Jepsen, Goedele A. M. De Clerck and Sam Lutalo-Kiingi). He has written extensively on a wide range of topics which include optional case marking, zero-markers, Australian historical linguistics and Shua syntax. He is also the author of various grammatical descriptions of Australian languages including Warrwa, Gooniyandi and Nyulnyul.

I interviewed him in Aarhus about …