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Research Project

The Language of Kim

Project Team:

2017 – 2018

Project Summary

Studying “Kim,” an individual with a radically limited sensory palate, researchers formalized a new method of understanding the link between linguistic encoding of sensory perception and actual perception.

Research Team

Lenore Grenoble

Lenore Grenoble

John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Linguistics and Humanities Collegiate Division

University of Chicago

Lenore Grenoble specializes in the study of language contact and shift in Indigenous settings, with particular attention to the Arctic. Her work is empirically driven, and her current interests focus on language usage in multilingual settings, with particular attention to Arctic Indigenous...

Peggy Mason

Peggy Mason

Professor of Neurobiology

University of Chicago

After a 25-year focus on the cellular mechanisms of pain modulation (how does morphine work? and related questions), Peggy Mason's laboratory is now focused on the biological basis of empathy and helping. Important questions include:

Do rats help another in distress? Yes.

Who do...

Project Narrative

Reading List

Boroditsky, L.

How language shapes thought Scientific American. 304:62-5 (2011) Read

Burton, S. & L. Matthewson

"Targeted Construction Storyboards in Semantic Fieldwork" in Semantic Fieldwork. M. R. Bochnak & L. Matthewson, eds. 135-156. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015) Read

Cole, J.

Pride and a Daily Marathon (Boston: MIT Press, 1995) Read

Nagel, T.

What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4:435-50 (1973) Read

Viberg, Å.

The verbs of perception: a typological study Linguistics 21, 123-162 (1983) Read

Winawer, J., N. Witthoft, M. C. Frank, L. Wu, A. R. Wade & L. Boroditsky

Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination PNAS 104:7780-85 (2007) Read

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