Morten H. Christiansen, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), has been elected to the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.

Credit: Cornell Research

Founded in 1760, more than 50 years before Norway’s first university, the society has about 435 members in humanities and natural sciences. Christiansen was elected in the Language Science category for being “one of the most prominent international contemporary scholars in the field of the cognitive and cultural foundations of language.”

Christiansen’s research focuses on the interaction of biological and environmental constraints in the evolution, acquisition and processing of language. He uses a variety of techniques, including computational modeling, corpus analyses, statistical learning, psycholinguistic experiments and neuroimaging.

In his 2022 popular science book “The Language Game,” Christiansen explains how humans learn and use language, arguing that language is a product of cultural, not biological, evolution. The recipient of an A&S New Frontier Grant, Christiansen will facilitate, with Laurent Dubreuil, professor of Romance studies and comparative literature (A&S), a conversation on the use of AI in humanistic research during “ChatGPT and the Humanities” March 24 at 3:30 p.m. in the A.D. White House.

Read the full story on the College of Arts and Sciences website.