Language and Cognitive Sciences

The goal of the Language and Cognitive Sciences Research Institute is the analysis of the results of empirical, theoretical, experimental, comparative and lab-simulation studies conducted in cognitive linguistics and related fields, and their placement within a practical context.

The Institute focuses on the following main research directions:

Methods of large-scale data collection, collation, graphical-visual presentation and analysis;
refining qualitative, quantitative, statistical, metacognitive and mixed methods of linguo-cognitive research;
brain lateralization in the process of production and perception of prosodic-syntactic structures;
brain lateralization in the production-acquisition-retrieval process of lexical semantic units;
biolinguistics and evolutionary stages of human and language development;
research and analysis of cutting edge topics in experimental phonetics and experimental syntax;
analysis and consideration of cutting edge topics in psycholinguistics and methodological advancements (EEG, Eye-Tracking, fMRI);
research of bilingualism and multilingualism through methodological contingencies of cognitive sciences;
biolinguistics and evolutionary stages of human and language development;
linguo-cognitive theories of language acquisition;
research of phylogenetic development of language, language groups and families based on stochastic processes and MCMC analysis;
evolutionary theories of language;
cognitive-pragmatic analysis of metaphors and their meta-discursive reconsideration;
Zipf law, word frequency and information theory;
large-scale corpora analysis across languages;
corpus-based multi-media discourse analysis;
inferential analysis of discourse;
linguistic analysis of the texts on rights and obligations;
Research of legal corpus within Lingua Legis framework;
mass media corpus analysis through the method of memetic engineering;
scientific corpus analysis based on metacognitive analysis;
syntactic-pragmatic analysis of ambiguous speech and Relevance theory;
mental spaces of grammar modular architecture of grammar;
comparative-contrastive study of generative and functional grammar on the examples of various languages;
analysis of universal-relativist theories of language;
Research of language-cognition relations in the context of modern technologies (IT, computer sciences and language).

The statement-theses and the analytical-illustrative material obtained as a result of the scientific-research activities of the Institute are actively used in the teaching process, which is the basis for the course or bachelor's works of the students of the Humanities and Liberal Arts School.

Students of the School of Humanities and Liberal Arts undergo internships on the basis of the Institute, under the guidance of the Institute's researchers. The results of their work are discussed at university conferences.

The Institute periodically conducts scientific conferences and seminars, where the staff of the Institute presents their research together with invited scientists.

Get acquainted with the regulation of Scientific-Research Institute Language and Cognitive Sciences.

Mariam Orkodashvili

Director of Scientific-Research Center

maiaorkodashvili@gau.edu.ge

Mariam Orkodashvili has been working at Georgian American University since the day of its establishment. She has also been affiliated with MIT, The University of Cambridge, Pennsylvania University,...

College of Education, Vanderbilt University, USA, Tbilisi State University, The Parliament of Georgia, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany, Education Research Institute in Washington, D.C., and Edinburgh University, Scotland, UK.

She is the recipient of the following fellowships and grants: Fulbright Research and Teaching Fellowship at U.S. universities, Carnegie Research Grant, Chevening Scholarship, DAAD/ OSI fellowship, Muskie Scholarship, Cambridge Education

Research Grant, Comparative and International Education Society distinguished fellowship, USAID grant for education reform, Washington, D.C., INTAS TACIS research grant.

Her research interests include: neuroscience and biolinguistics, brain and language, education sciences, second language acquisition and neuroplasticity, psycholinguistics, language change, evolution and variation, cognitive mapping of grammar, neural theory of metaphor, cognitive linguistics, higher education management.

Her publications and scholarly activities are reflected in Clarivate analytics, semantic scholar, google scholar, Scopus, researchgate, academia.edu.

Mariam Orkodashvili’s publications have appeared in international scientific journals of the following publishers: Routledge: Taylor &Francis, SAGE Encyclopedia, Oxford Studies, Oxford Symposium Books, Elsevier, Sense Publishers, Emerald Publications, Peter Lang Publishers, The Jon Ben Sheppard Journal of Practical

Leadership (UTPB Publication), Heldref Publications, Raabe Publishers, Heldref publication.

She has 150 publications, 4 monographs and citation index 256.

Language and Cognitive Sciences