DFG Awards Research Grant to Prof. Dr. Rosario Tomasello for Project on Brain Signatures of Communication
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has awarded Prof. Dr. Rosario Tomasello a research grant of ca. 400.000 Euros to carry out the project »Brain Signatures of Communication 2« over the next three years.
The project addresses the young field of neuropragmatics, which targets the brain mechanisms and neural indicators of language use for communication. It aims to identify the spatiotemporal brain signatures of speech acts, including common ground, prosody, and social contextual cues. Using high-density EEG, source localization, and behavioral methods, the project will determine ›when‹ and ›where‹ pragmatic information is processed and whether it is late and sequential or early and parallel to grammatical/semantic access. It will also map signatures across Searle’s speech-act classes (assertives, directives, expressives, commissives) and compare closely related acts within categories to assess the biological validity of the taxonomy. The project continues previous research conducted by Tomasello within the DFG Schwerpunktprogramm »Experimental Pragmatics (XPrag.de)«, led by Prof. Dr. Dr. Friedemann Pulvermüller. This project will also involve Dr Isabella Boux (RTWH Aachen), an expert collaborator in neuropragmatics.
Prof. Dr Tomasello currently holds a Visiting Professorship (Gastprofessor) in Linguistics at Freie Universität Berlin, substituting half of the professorship in the Neuroscience of Language and Pragmatics (Chair: Pulvermüller), and is also a research associate and co-project leader at the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. In the summer term 2024, he also served as a replacement professor in Cognitive Modelling at the University of Osnabrück. He earned his PhD in Linguistics at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) and was previously a research associate on an interdisciplinary project across Berlin, Plymouth, and Manchester.