Project description DEENESFRITPL Machines break language barriers An easy and fast way to translate a text is to have a machine do the job online - instantly. Machine translation (MT) systems use machine-learning technologies to translate hundreds of billions of words online daily. The EU-funded MTrill project will examine the impact of MT systems on the learning and processing of English as a second language. As regards language acquisition, the research will focus on language binding – the ability to combine single words properly in a sentence. The project will conduct a syntactic priming experiment. Here, participants will be tested on whether they produce the same syntactic structures that had been previously seen during an MT task. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective The MTrill is a process-oriented research that aims at investigating how online freely available Machine Translation (MT) systems are impacting the acquisition and processing of English as a second language. The research will shed light on issues involving a central aspect of language acquisition: the so-called language binding, i.e. the ability to combine single words properly in a grammatical sentence in a second language. To pursue this goal, a syntactic priming experiment will be carried out in which participants will be tested as whether they produce the same syntactic structures that had been previously seen during a translation task using a MT. The project brings a brand-new methodological approach within MT process-oriented evaluation research and it goes beyond the existing state-of-the-art approaches since it will focus on translation processing complemented by product analysis (oral production). The project will be conducted under the supervision of Professor Andy Way and Doctor Monica Ward in the ADAPT Centre based in Dublin City university. A four-months secondment will be carried out in the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics (MPI) in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in the Neurobiology of Language research group under the supervision of Professor Peter Hagoort. The knowledge acquired during the secondment will be consolidated in the return phase through implementation of the experiments carried out for this project as well as through teaching and co-supervision activities. Results of this research will be disseminated through conferences and journal paper publications and will be communicated to multiple audiences through articles published in non-academic magazines, blogs and social media. The fellowship will attract academic networking opportunities, skill-set improvements and a personal and professional transformative experience to the researcher since it will establish her as the new leading light in research of an interdisciplinary field. Fields of science natural sciencesbiological sciencesneurobiologysocial sciencespsychologypsycholinguistics Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Main Programme H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility Topic(s) MSCA-IF-2018 - Individual Fellowships Call for proposal H2020-MSCA-IF-2018 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF Coordinator DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY Net EU contribution € 184 590,72 Address Glasnevin 9 Dublin Ireland See on map Region Ireland Eastern and Midland Dublin Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00