Benjamin K. Bergen




UC San Diego

Department of Cognitive Science


News

Public engagement


December 19, 2023. Interviewed in Communications of the ACM.
June 14, 2023. Interviewed in Discover Magazine.
March 15, 2023. Interviewed in Ars Technica.
August 21, 2022. Interview on the Meredith For Real podcast.
August 9, 2022. Interview with Deb Tannen on WNYC.
May 27, 2022. Interview on Dan Abrams Live.
May 3, 2022. Interviewed Carol Padden for the Signing Science series.
March 23, 2022. Interview in OnlySky.
November 18, 2021. Interview in Discover.
April 29, 2021. Co-hosted Event Getting Our Climate Act Together: Addressing Climate Change at All Levels.
January 31, 2021. Talk for the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago.
January 1, 2021. Interviews in History of Swear Words on Netflix.
November 4, 2020. Interview in Discover.
October 10, 2020. Interview on the Taboo Science podcast
October 8, 2020. Interview on the Renegade Ape podcast
April 9, 2020. Interview on The Dissenter podcast
December 6, 2019. Interview on But Why: A Podcast For Curious Kids
November 8, 2019. Article (by me) in The Conversation
October 12, 2019. Interview in Voice of America.
September 15, 2019. Opinion piece (by me) in the L.A. Times on strategic politician swearing
September 9, 2019. Interview in The Wrap
August 18, 2019. Interview in The Hill
June 27, 2019. Opinion piece (by me) in the L.A. Times on a Supreme Court decision
June 10, 2019. Interview on the Every Little Thing podcast
March 22, 2019. Quoted in The Grist.
March 10, 2019. Quoted in Niche Gamer.
February 8, 2019. Quoted in the Washington Post
January 9, 2019. Quoted in Yahoo Style
October 10, 2018. Interview on Talk the Talk (on RTR FM, Australia)
June 6, 2018. Interview in Moneyish
May 15, 2018. Interview on the Curiosity podcast.
May 9, 2018. Interview on The Download on WGN.
April 26, 2018. Quoted in The Atlantic
March 30, 2018. Interview on RadioWest.
March 18, 2018. Quoted in the New York Times.
March 9, 2018. Interview on The Legends and Losers podcast.
January 17, 2018. Interview on The How-To Heretic podcast.
January 10, 2018. Quoted in Wired.
January 1, 2018. Interview on All Things Considered.
September 18, 2017. Interview in the Triton.
September 16, 2017. Interview with Paula Poundstone and Adam Felber on the Poundstone Institute podcast.
August 30, 2017. Interview on KOMO, Seattle.
August 7, 2017. Interview on Radio Times at WHYY.
August 7, 2017. Interview with John McComb on CKNW.
August 2, 2017. Opinion piece (by me) in the L.A. Times about Anthony Scarmucci and honesty.
July 28, 2017. Interview on CTV News Channel.
July 22, 2017. Interview in the New York Times.
June 28, 2017. Interview in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
May 13, 2017. Article in the New Yorker.
February 9, 2017. Review in The New York Review of Books.
January 23, 2017. Review in The AV Club.
January 11, 2017. Interview on Up Next.
January 7, 2017. Interview on C-SPAN.
January 2, 2017. Review in National Review.
December 15, 2016. Article in Time.
December 7, 2016. Review on PopMatters.
December 7, 2016. Interview on FiveGoodQuestions.
November 17, 2016. Interview on CBS Evening News.
November 16, 2016. Review on Strong Language.
November 11, 2016. Article in Newsweek.
November 5, 2016. Interview on the California Report.
October 30, 2016. Interview in the Chicago Tribune.
October 28, 2016. Interview on BBC News.
October 28, 2016. Interview on WCCO.
October 27, 2016. Interview on KUER.
October 26, 2016. Interview on WAMC's The Roundtable.
October 25, 2016. Interview on the David Pakman Show.
October 24, 2016. Interview on CBC's The Current.
October 22, 2016. Subjected to the Page 99 Test.
October 22, 2016. Article on ABC News (Australia).
October 20, 2016. Authors@Google Talk at the GooglePlex in Mountain View.
October 18, 2016. Interview on Wisconsin Public Radio.
October 17, 2016. Interview on KPCC's AirTalk.
October 16, 2016. Interview at the Skeptic Society's Science Salon.
October 9, 2016. Excerpt in the Guardian.
October 7, 2016. Interview on the Popzara podcast.
October 6, 2016. Review in the Economist.
October 5, 2016. Interview on WGN Morning News.
October 4, 2016. Interview on ABC's RN Drive (Australia).
September 30, 2016. Review on Big Think.
September 27, 2016. Interview on the Arik Korman Show.
September 27, 2016. Review in Quartz.
September 26, 2016. Review in the New York Times.
September 26, 2016. Interview on WGN radio.
September 26, 2016. Interview on KABC.
September 24, 2016. Review in Ars Technica.
September 23, 2016. Interview in Vice magazine.
September 23, 2016. Article on Stuff (New Zealand).
September 22, 2016. Interview on WHYY's The Pulse.
September 22, 2016. Interview on PRI's Innovation Hub.
September 22, 2016. Opinion piece (by me) in the Chicago Tribune
and Los Angeles Times.
September 21, 2016. Review on Arrant Pedantry.
September 20, 2016. Excerpt in Wired.
September 20, 2016. Interview on KUOW, Seattle. [8:50]
September 20, 2016. Discussion on the Today Show.
September 19, 2016. Article in New York Magazine.
September 16, 2016. Review in the Seattle Times.
September 16, 2016. Review in the Wall Street Journal.
September 15, 2016. Review in the Atlantic.
September 15, 2016. Interview with Salon.com.
September 15, 2016. Review in The National Post.
September 14, 2016. Interview in the Huffington Post.
September 13, 2016. Live interview on San Diego Living.
September 13, 2016. Opinion piece (by me) in Time.
September 13, 2016. Interview on KPBS.
September 9, 2016. Review in the New York Observer.
September 9, 2016. Review in The Globe and Mail.
September 9, 2016. Review in Science magazine.
September 5, 2016. Review in Science News.
September 3, 2016. Interview in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
September 1, 2016. Interview in Psychology Today.
August 15, 2016. Interview in Gizmodo.
August 13, 2016. Review in MacLean's.
May 31, 2016. Interview with Jon McWhorter on Lexicon Valley podcast.

 

 

 

Research

Language, cognition, computation, and the brain.

Benjamin K. Bergen

UC San Diego

Professor, Department of Cognitive Science.
Director, Language and Cognition Lab.

Meaning

How does the mind compute meaning of words and sentences? What brain systems does this process use, and how do these systems support other aspects of human and animal cognition?

Metaphor

We talk about abstract things in concrete terms. Do we also think about them in that way?

Systematicity

Words with similar meanings also tend to sound alike. Is this reflected in psychological processes? How can we use computational tools to discover regions of systematicity automatically?

Grammar

Grammar choices convey meaning. Which choices convey which meanings?

Talking and driving

Why and when does talking interfere with safe control of a vehicle? How can smart vehicles most effectively communicate with drivers, passengers, and other road users?

Profanity

Why do we swear? Why do we swear the way we do? What are the consequences of swearing? How is profanity fleshed out in the brain and in the body?

Books

Cognitive Science for everyone.


What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves. (2016)

Nearly everyone swears—whether it’s over a few too many drinks, in reaction to a stubbed toe, or in flagrante delicto. And yet, we sit idly by as words are banned from television and censored in books. We insist that people excise profanity from their vocabularies and we punish children for yelling the very same dirty words that we’ll mutter in relief seconds after they fall asleep. Swearing, it seems, is an intimate part of us that we have decided to selectively deny.

That’s a shame. Swearing is useful. It can be funny, cathartic, or emotionally arousing. It also opens a new window onto how our brains process language and why languages vary around the world and over time.

What the F answers intriguing questions: How can patients left otherwise speechless after a stroke still shout Goddamn! when they get upset? When did cock grow to be more than merely a rooster? Why is crap vulgar when poo is just childish? Do slurs make you treat people differently? Why is the first word that Samoan children say not mommy but eat shit? And why do we extend a middle finger to flip someone the bird?

What the F is mandatory reading for anyone who wants to know how and why we swear.


Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning (2012)

Whether it’s brusque, convincing, fraught with emotion, or dripping with innuendo, language is fundamentally a tool for conveying meaning—a uniquely human magic trick in which you vibrate your vocal cords to make your innermost thoughts pop up in someone else’s mind. You can use it to talk about all sorts of things—from your new labradoodle puppy to the expansive gardens at Versailles, from Roger Federer’s backhand to things that don’t exist at all, like flying pigs. And when you talk, your listener fills in lots of details you didn’t mention—the curliness of the dog’s fur or the vast statuary on the grounds of the French palace. What’s the trick behind this magic? How does meaning work?

Louder than Words draws together a decade’s worth of research in psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to offer a new theory of how our minds make meaning. When we hear words and sentences, we engage the parts of our brain that we use for perception and action, repurposing these evolutionarily older networks to create simulations in our minds. These embodied simulations are what makes it possible for us to become better baseball players by merely visualizing a well-executed swing; what allows us to remember which cupboard the diapers are in without looking, and what makes it so hard to talk on a cell phone while we’re driving on the highway. Meaning is more than just knowing definitions of words, as others have previously argued. In understanding language, our brains engage in a creative process of constructing rich mental worlds in which we see, hear, feel, and act.

Selected Scientific Publications

More at Google Scholar


Jones, C. & Bergen, B. (ms). Does GPT-4 Pass the Turing Test?

Chang, T, Tu, Z. & Bergen, B. (Under Review). Characterizing Learning Curves During Language Model Pre-Training: Learning, Forgetting, and Stability

Chang, T, Arnett, C., Tu, Z. & Bergen, B. (Under Review). When Is Multilinguality A Curse? Language Modeling For 252 High- And Low-Resource Languages

Trott, S., Bergen, B. (Under Review). Contextualized Sensorimotor Norms: multi-dimensional measures of sensorimotor strength for ambiguous English words, in context

Michaelov, J., & B. Bergen (Under Review). Emergent inabilities? Inverse scaling over the course of pretraining.

Jones, C. & Bergen, B. (in press). Does word knowledge account for the effect of world knowledge on pronoun interpretation? Language and Cognition

Chang, T. & B. Bergen (2024). Language Model Behavior: A Comprehensive Survey. Computational Linguistics.

Michaelov, J., Arnett, C., Chang, T., & Bergen, B. (2023). Structural priming demonstrates abstract grammatical representations in multilingual language models. The 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP2023).

Trott, S., Jones, C., Chang, T., Michaelov, J., & Bergen, B. (2023). Do Large Language Models know what humans know? Cognitive Science 47(7): e13309.

Michaelov, J. & B. Bergen (2023). Ignoring the alternatives: The N400 is sensitive to stimulus preactivation alone. Cortex.

Michaelov, J. & B. Bergen. (2023). 'Rarely' a problem? Language models exhibit inverse scaling in their predictions following 'few'-type quantifiers. Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

Michaelov, J., S. Coulson, & B. Bergen (2023). Can Peanuts Fall in Love with Distributional Semantics? Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Michaelov, J., Bardolph, M., Van Petten, C., Bergen, B., & S. Coulson. (2023). Strong Prediction: Language model surprisal explains multiple N400 effects. Neurobiology of Language.

Trott, S., & Bergen, B. (2023). Word meaning is both categorical and continuous. Psychological Review.

Trott, S., Bergen, B., & Wittenberg, E. (2022). SCARFS Database: Spontaneous, Controlled Acts of Reference between Friends and Strangers. Language Resources and Evaluation.

Chang, T., Tu, Z., & Bergen, B. (2022). The Geometry of Multilingual Language Model Representations. Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP).

Schütt, E., Dudschig, C., Bergen, B. & Kaup, B. (2022). Sentence-based mental simulations: Evidence from behavioral experiments using garden-path sentences. Memory and Cognition.

Michaelov, J., & Bergen, B. (2022). Collateral facilitation in humans and language models. Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL).

Ruytenbeek, N., Bergen, B., & Trott, S. (2022). Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests. Journal of French Language Studies.

Michaelov, J. & Bergen, B. (2022). Do language models make human-like predictions about the coreferents of Italian anaphoric zero pronouns? Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics.

Michaelov, J., Coulson, S., & Bergen, B. (2022). So Cloze yet so Far: N400 Amplitude is Better Predicted by Distributional Information than Human Predictability Judgements. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems.

Jones, C., Chang, T., Coulson, S., Michaelov, J., Trott, T., & Bergen, B. (2022). Distributional Semantics Still Can't Account for Affordances. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Chang, T. & Bergen, B. (2022). Does Contextual Diversity Hinder Early Word Acquisition? Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Trott, S. & Bergen, B. (2022). Can a pressure against homophones explain phonological neighborhoods? Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Trott, S., & Bergen, B. (2022). Languages Are Efficient, But For Whom? Cognition 225.

Trott, S., Reed, S., Kaliblotzky, D., Ferreira, V., & Bergen, B. (2022). The role of prosody in disambiguating English indirect requests. Language and Speech.

Chang, T., & Bergen, B. (2021). Word Acquisition in Neural Language Models. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

Trott, S. & Bergen, B. (2021). RAW-C: Relatedness of Ambiguous Words in Context (A New Lexical Resource for English). In Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics..

Jones, C. & Bergen, B. (2021). The Role of Physical Inference in Pronoun Resolution. In Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society..

Michaelov, J., Coulson, S. & Bergen, B. (2021). Different kinds of cognitive plausibility: why are transformers better than RNNs at predicting N400 amplitude? In Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society..

Morey, R., ..., Bergen, B., ... Davis, J., ... Trott, S., et al. (2021). A Pre-registered, Multi-lab Non-replication of the Action-sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE) Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.

Trott, S. & Bergen, B. (2020). Why do human languages have homophones? Cognition 205(104449).

Trott, S. & Bergen, B. (2020). When do comprehenders mentalize for pragmatic inference? Discourse Processes 57(10):900-920.

Michaelov, J. & Bergen, B. (2020). How well does surprisal explain N400 amplitude under different experimental conditions? In Proceedings of the 24th Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning.

Liebscher, A., Trott, S. & Bergen, B. (2020). Effects of Battle and Journey Metaphors on Charitable Donations for Cancer Patients. In Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society..

Trott, S., Reed, S., Ferreira, V., & Bergen, B. (2019). Prosodic cues signal the intent of potential indirect requests. Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Bergen, B. (2019). Do gestures retain mental associations with their iconic origins, even after they become emblematic? An analysis of the middle-finger gesture among American English speakers. PLOS ONE 14(4): e0215633. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215633

Trott, S. & Bergen, B. (2018). Individual Differences in Mentalizing Capacity Predict Indirect Request Comprehension. Discourse Processes, 1-33.

Hendricks, R., Bergen, B., & Marghetis, T. (2018). Do metaphors move from mind to mouth? Evidence from a new system of linguistic metaphors for time. Cognitive Science 42(8):2950-2975.

Trott, S., Bergen, B. (2017). A theoretical model of indirect request comprehension. AAAI Fall Symposium Series: Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction.

Hendricks, R.K., Marghetis, T., & Bergen, B.K. (2017). When metaphors in the mind become metaphors in the mouth: Documenting the emergence of a new system of linguistic metaphors for time. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Nishimi, A., Walker, E., Bergen, B. K., & Marghetis, T. (2017). Listeners integrate speech, gesture, and discourse structure to interpret the temporal structure of complex events. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Walker, Esther, Benjamin Bergen, and Rafael Nunez. (2017). The spatial alignment of time: Differences in alignment of deictic and sequence time along the sagittal and lateral axes. Acta Psychologica 175, 13-20.

Liu, Nian, and Benjamin Bergen. (2016). When do language comprehenders mentally simulate locations? Cognitive Linguistics, 27(2), 181-203.

Gutierrez, E.D., Roger Levy, & Benjamin Bergen. (2016). Finding Non-Arbitrary Form-Meaning Systematicity Using String-Metric Learning for Kernel Regression. Proceedings of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

Gutierrez, E.D., Ekaterina Shutova, Tyler Marghetis, & Benjamin Bergen. (2016). Literal and Metaphorical Senses in Compositional Distributional Semantic Models. Proceedings of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

Hendricks, R.K., Walker, E.J., Boroditsky, L., Bergen, B.K. & Núñez, R. (2016). Left-right mental timeline is robust to visuospatial or verbal interference. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Lupyan, Gary & Benjamin Bergen (2015). How language programs the mind. Topics in Cognitive Science.

Marghetis, Tyler and Benjamin Bergen. (2015). Embodied meaning, inside and out: The coupling of gesture and mental simulation. In Cornelia Mueller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill & Sedinha Tessendorf (Eds.), Body-Language-Communication. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Bergen, Benjamin. (2015). Embodiment. In Dabrowska, E., & Divjak, D. (Eds.) Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 10-30.

Bergen, Benjamin. (2015). Embodiment, simulation, and meaning. The Routledge Handbook of Semantics, 142.

Marghetis, Tyler, Luke Eberle, & Benjamin Bergen. (2015). The mental number-line spreads by gestural contagion. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

Bergen, Benjamin, and Kim Binsted. (2015). Embodied grammars and linguistic humor. To Appear in Cognitive Linguistics and Humor Research, Geert Brone, Tony Veale, and Kurt Feyaerts (eds.). Mouton de Gruyter.

Sato, Manami, Amy Schafer, & Benjamin Bergen. (2014). Metaphor priming in sentence production: Concrete pictures affect abstract language production. Acta Psychologica.

Walker, Esther, Benjamin Stillerman, John Iversen, Aniruddh Patel, and Benjamin Bergen. (2014). Does beat perception rely on the covert use of the motor system? Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Paul Bello, Marco Guarini, Marjorie McShane, and Brian Scassellati (Eds): 3061-3066.

Walker, Esther, Benjamin Bergen, & Rafael Núñez. (2014). Disentangling Spatial Metaphors for Time Using Non-spatial Responses and Auditory Stimuli. Metaphor and Symbol 29(4): 316-327.

Troyer, Melissa, Lauren B. Curley, Luke Edward Miller, Ayse Pinar Saygin, & Benjamin Bergen. (2014). Action verbs are processed differently in metaphorical and literal sentences depending on the semantic match of visual primes. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Marghetis, Tyler, Rafael Núñez, and Benjamin Bergen. (2014). Doing arithmetic by hand: Hand movements during exact arithmetic reveal systematic, dynamic spatial processing. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Sato, Manami, Amy Schafer, and Benjamin Bergen. (2013). One word at a time: Mental representations of object shape change incrementally during sentence processing. Language and Cognition 5 (4): 345-373.

Marghetis, Tyler, Jasmeen Kanwal, and Benjamin Bergen. (2013). Placing Numbers in Behavioral Space: Activity-Specific Interactions between Number and Space with a Single Response Button Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society.

Liu, Nian & Benjamin Bergen. (2013). When Tuesday comes before Threesday: Cross-linguistic differences in numerical transparency of time words predicts temporal reasoning strategy and performance. In M. Knauff, M., Pauen, N., Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (Eds.) Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 924-929). Austin TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Sato, Manami and Benjamin Bergen. (2013). The case of the missing pronouns: Does mentally simulated perspective play a functional role in the comprehension of person?. Cognition 127(3):361-74.

Bergen, Benjamin and Nancy Chang. (2013). Embodied Construction Grammar. Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar, Thomas Hoffmann and Graeme Trousdale (Eds.). Oxford University Press.

Bergen, Benjamin, Nathan Medeiros-Ward, Kathryn Wheeler, Frank Drews, & David Strayer. (2013). The crosstalk hypothesis: Why language interferes with driving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 142(1): 119-130.

Parrill, Fey, Bergen, Benjamin, and Patricia Lichtenstein. (2013). Grammatical aspect, gesture, and conceptualization: Using co-speech gesture to reveal event representations. Cognitive Linguistics 24(1): 135-158.

Bergen, Benjamin, and Ting Ting Chan Lau. (2012). Writing direction affects how people map space onto time. Frontiers in Cultural Psychology 3:109.

Winter, Bodo and Benjamin Bergen. (2012). Language comprehenders represent object distance both visually and auditorily. Language and Cognition, 4:1, 1-16.

Sato, Manami, Hiromu Sakai, Jennifer Wu, and Benjamin Bergen. (2012). Towards a Cognitive Science of Literary Style: Perspective-Taking in Processing Omniscient versus Objective Voice. Proceedings of the 34th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

Marghetis, T., Walker, E., Bergen, B., & Nunez, R. (2011). Making SNAP judgments: Rethinking the spatial representation of number. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1781-1786). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Parrill, F., Bergen, B., & Lichtenstein, P. (2011). Grammatical aspect in language production: Using gesture to reveal event representations. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Bergen, Benjamin, Avis Lau, Shweta Narayan, Diana Stojanovic, and Kathryn Wheeler. (2010). Body part representations in verbal semantics. Memory and Cognition 38(7):969-981.

Bergen, Benjamin, and Kathryn Wheeler. (2010). Grammatical aspect and mental simulation. Brain & Language 112:150-158.

Dennison, Heeyeon and Benjamin Bergen. (2010). Language-driven motor simulation is sensitive to social context. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

Wheeler, Kathryn, and Benjamin Bergen. (2010). Meaning in the palm of your hand. In Sally Rice and John Newman (eds.) Empirical and Experimental Methods in Conceptual structure, Discourse, and Language. Stanford: CSLI.

Kaplan, Frederic, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, and Benjamin Bergen. (2008). Computational Models in the Debate over Language Learnability. Infant and Child Development 17:55-80.

Bergen, Benjamin, and Jerome Feldman. (2008). Embodied concept learning. In Paco Calvo and Toni Gomila (eds.) Handbook of Cognitive Science. Elsevier.

Bergen, Benjamin, Shane Lindsay, Teenie Matlock, and Srini Narayanan. (2007). Spatial and linguistic aspects of visual imagery in sentence comprehension. Cognitive Science 31: 733-764.

Tseng, Meylysa, Yiran Hu, Wen-Wei Han, and Benjamin Bergen. (2007). "Searching for happiness" or "Full of joy"? Source domain activation matters. Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Bergen, Benjamin. (2007). Experimental methods for simulation semantics. In Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Irene Mittelberg, Seana Coulson, and Michael J. Spivey (eds.) Methods in Cognitive Linguistics: Ithaca.

de Beule, Joachim, and Benjamin Bergen. (2006). On the Emergence of Compositionality. Proceedings of the 6th evolution of language conference.

Bergen, Benjamin, and Seana Coulson. (2006). Frame-Shifting Humor in Simulation-Based Language Understanding. IEEE Intelligent Systems.

Bergen, Benjamin. (2005). Mental simulation in literal and figurative language. In Seana Coulson and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (eds.) The iteral and nonliteral in language and thought.

Bergen, Benjamin. (2005). Mental Simulation in Spatial Language Processing. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

Bergen, Benjamin and Kathryn Wheeler. (2005). Sentence Understanding Engages Motor Processes. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

Bergen, Benjamin, and Nancy Chang. (2005). Embodied Construction Grammar in Simulation-Based Language Understanding. In Jan-Ola Östman and Miriam Fried (Eds.), Construction Grammars: Cognitive grounding and theoretical extensions.

Bergen, Benjamin, and Madelaine Plauché. (2005). The convergent evolution of radial constructions: French and English deictics and existentials. Cognitive Lingusitics 16(1): 1-42.

Tseng, Meylysa and Benjamin Bergen. (2005). Lexical Processing Drives Motor Simulation. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

Chan, Ting Ting, and Benjamin Bergen. (2005). Writing Direction Influences Spatial Cognition. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

Narayan, Shweta, Benjamin Bergen, and Zachary Weinberg. (2004). Embodied Verbal Semantics: Evidence from a Lexical Matching Task. Proceedings of the 30th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Bergen, Benjamin, Nancy Chang, and Shweta Narayan. (2004). Simulated Action in an Embodied Construction Grammar. Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

Bergen, Benjamin. (2004). The psychological reality of phonaesthemes. Language, 80(2).

Bergen, Benjamin, and Kim Binsted. (2004). To awaken a sleeping giant: Blending and metaphor in editorial cartoons after September 11. In Michel Achard and Suzanne Kemmer (Eds.) Language, Culture, and Mind. CSLI.

Bergen, Benjamin. (2004). The cognitive linguistics of scalar humor. In Michel Achard and Suzanne Kemmer (Eds.) Language, Culture, and Mind. CSLI.

Bergen, Benjamin, Shweta Narayan, and Jerome Feldman. (2003). Embodied verbal semantics: evidence from an image-verb matching task. Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society

Bergen, Benjamin. (2001). Of sound, mind, and body: neural explanations for non-categorical phonology. Ph.D. Dissertation. Department of Linguistics, U.C. Berkeley. (Advisor: George Lakoff)

Bergen, Benjamin. (2001). Nativization processes in L1 Esperanto. Journal of Child Language. 28(3): 575-595.

Bergen, Benjamin, and Madelaine Plauché. (2001). Voilà voilà: Extensions of deictic constructions in French. In Alan Cienki, Barbara Luka, and Michael Smith (Eds.), Conceptual and Discourse Factors in Linguistic Structure. CSLI.

Bergen, Benjamin. (2000). Probability in phonological generalizations: Modeling optional French final consonants. In Alan Yu et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Bergen, Benjamin. (2000). Ramifications of phonology-syntax interactions for phonological models. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquim, 27-36.

Plauché, Madelaine and Benjamin Bergen. (1999). Markedness and the Evolution of Binary Spatial Deictics: French voilà and voici. In Steve Chang et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Language and Cognition Lab


Information here about

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In Meatspace


Department of Cognitive Science
UC San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA
92093-0515

In the Ether


Email:
bkbergen@ucsd.edu

Office:
(858)534-2523