The Language Acquisition Laboratory (LAL) was established in 2006 to promote the theoretical study of language acquisition and empirical research on the acquisition of Chinese languages and dialects from a perspective informed by linguistic theory and cognitive science. It is dedicated to interdisciplinary inquiries, aiming to develop theories of language that capture the deep principles governing the mapping of meaning and structure in natural language, as well as the interface between linguistic knowledge and other psychological domains. Since language is a sub-system of the mind, studying language acquisition is a vital aspect of cognitive development within the broader field of cognitive science.

Our research focuses on understanding the nature of linguistic knowledge by investigating its complex underlying patterns, and their acquisition, processing and use. We study the acquisition of first and second languages in individuals across various developmental stages, including toddlers, preschool children, and adults, within multilingual and multidialectal contexts. Our methodology combines naturalistic observation and diverse experimental techniques, including behavioral measures such as eye-tracking, reaction times, accuracy rates, and large-scale corpus analyses. Through our research, we aim to uncover both the universals of language acquisition and processing, as well as the unique cognitive mechanisms involved in acquiring and processing Chinese languages and dialects.