Hendriks, Prof. Petra

Petra Hendriks conducts research into meaning in language – the meaning of words and sentences. Words often have multiple meanings, which makes the number of possible meanings of sentences containing such words enormous. However, people usually don’t notice this and automatically pick the right meaning without even realising that many more meanings may have been possible. You don’t notice how many meanings a certain sentence can actually have until you start to analyse it with a computer.
Hendriks’s research focuses on the differences between language production and language comprehension. The aim is to gain more insight into human linguistic capability and how we combine our knowledge as speakers with our knowledge as listeners. Her research group systematically studies language production and language comprehension in children, adults and autistic adolescents, thus enabling an evaluation of which grammatical knowledge is needed for optimum communication.
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Last modified: | 09 June 2023 8.36 p.m. |