Dr Billi Randall

My work in the Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain currently covers the areas of morphology and semantics. I design and run experiments for use on normal and patient populations. In morphology, I am working on aspects of inflectional morphology, particularly, the past tense in English and the way that it is represented and processed in intact and damaged systems. I am particularly interested in exploring the relationship between phonological and morphological variables in the auditory comprehension of inflected words. In semantics, I have been looking at the structure of conceptual knowledge and how this may differ across the domains of living things and artefacts. I have also been working on a theoretical account of the differences between the way that nouns and verbs are processed.

I have recently completed a PhD in the relationship between lexical and syntactic processing with particular reference to morphology. My work here has been based on self-paced reading. I have manipulated type of sentential context, type of morphology (inflectional or derivational), and type of derivational affix (prefix, suffix, productive or unproductive) to explore the relationship between lexically-based morphological processing and higher level processes, such as syntax.