Dr Marcus Perlman BA, MA, MS, PhD

Dr Marcus Perlman

Department of Linguistics and Communication
Associate Professor in Linguistics and Communication
Acting Director of PGR for ELAL

Contact details

Address
Frankland Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

I am an Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics. My research examines iconicity in speech and gesture, with special interest in the evolution of human communication. I also study the gesturing and vocal behaviour of great apes.

Qualifications

  • PhD in Cognitive Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • MS in Cognitive Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • MA in Applied Linguistics, Georgia State University
  • BA in Linguistics, Rice University

Biography

I joined the Department of English Language and Linguistics in September of 2017. Before coming to Birmingham, I earned my PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with Raymond Gibbs. Following this, I was a postdoc at the Gorilla Foundation, where I studied under the gorilla Koko. I then did postdocs in Cognitive and Information Sciences at the University of California, Merced, and in Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most recently, I was a postdoc in the Language and Cognition department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

Teaching

This academic year I will be teaching modules in:

  • Investigating Language (BA)
  • Language, Senses, and Sound Symbolism (BA, with Bodo Winter)
  • Psycholinguistics (MA)

Postgraduate supervision

I am looking to supervise postgraduate research on topics at the intersections of psycholinguistics, multimodality, metaphor, and especially iconicity. Some specific points of interest include:

Experimental studies of iconicity and metaphor in language production and understanding
Multimodal approaches to iconicity and metaphor in natural conversation, including the use of multimodal corpora
Experimental studies of iconicity and metaphor in the emergence and evolution of communication systems


Find out more - our PhD English Language and Applied Linguistics  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

My research is driven by two big questions. What is language? and Where did it come from? My main angle into these questions is through iconicity – resemblance between the form of a signal and its meaning. My work examines iconicity across a range of phenomena, from prosody in the production of spoken sentences, to word learning by children, to the gesturing of gorillas. I am especially interested in the role of iconicity in the evolution of human communication and the ongoing historical development of languages.

Other activities

Please visit http://mperlman.org to see my CV and a complete list of publications. You might also take a look at some of the following media attention to my work:

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Lameira, AR & Perlman, M 2023, 'Great apes reach momentary altered mental states by spinning', Primates. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-023-01056-x

Winter, B, Perlman, M, Lupyan, G, Perry, L & Dingemanse, M 2023, 'Iconicity ratings for 14,000+ English words', Behavior Research Methods. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02112-6

Woodin, G, Winter, B, Littlemore, J, Perlman, M & Grieve, J 2023, 'Large-scale patterns of number use in spoken and written English', Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2022-0082

Winter, B, Sóskuthy, M, Perlman, M & Dingemanse, M 2022, 'Trilled /r/ is associated with roughness, linking sound and touch across spoken languages', Scientific Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, 1035. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-04311-7

Ćwiek, A, Fuchs, S, Draxler, C, Asu, EL, Dediu, D, Hiovain, K, Kawahara, S, Koutalidis, S, Krifka, M, Lippus, P, Lupyan, G, Oh, GE, Paul, J, Petrone, C, Ridouane, R, Reiter, S, Schümchen, N, Szalontai, Á, Ünal‑Logacev, Ö, Zeller, J, Winter, B & Perlman, M 2021, 'Novel vocalizations are understood across cultures', Scientific Reports, vol. 11, no. 1, 10108. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89445-4

Winter, B & Perlman, M 2021, 'Size sound symbolism in the English lexicon', Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1-13. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1646

Perlman, M, Paul, J & Lupyan, G 2021, 'Vocal communication of magnitude across language, age, and auditory experience', Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001103

Woodin, G, Winter, B, Perlman, M, Littlemore, J & Matlock, T 2020, ''Tiny numbers' are actually tiny: Evidence from gestures in the TV News Archive', PLoS ONE, vol. 15, no. 11, e0242142. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242142

Perlman, M, Little, H, Thompson, B & Thompson, RL 2018, 'Iconicity in Signed and Spoken Vocabulary: A Comparison Between American Sign Language, British Sign Language, English, and Spanish', Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 9, 1433. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01433

Perlman, M & Lupyan, G 2018, 'People Can Create Iconic Vocalizations to Communicate Various Meanings to Naïve Listeners', Scientific Reports, vol. 8, 2634. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-20961-6

Edmiston, P, Perlman, M & Lupyan, G 2018, 'Repeated imitation makes human vocalizations more word-like', Royal Society of London. Proceedings B. Biological Sciences, vol. 285, no. 1874. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2709

Chapter

Perlman, M 2024, Iconic prosody is deeply connected to iconic gesture, and it may occur just as frequently. in O Fischer, K Akita & P Perniss (eds), Oxford Handbook of Iconicity in Language. Oxford University Press.

Comment/debate

Perlman, M & Woodin, G 2021, 'A Complete Real-World Theory of Language Should Explain How Iconicity Remains a Stable Property of Linguistic Systems', Journal of Cognition, vol. 4, no. 1, 43. https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.166

Conference contribution

Green, K & Perlman, M 2022, Iconic words may be common in early child interactions because they are more engaging. in A Ravignani, R Asano, D Valente, F Ferretti, S Hartmann, M Hayashi, Y Jadoul, M Martins, Y Oseki, ED Rodrigues, O Vasileva & S Wacewicz (eds), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE). Proceedings of the International Conference on the Evolution of Language, Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE), pp. 248-255, Joint Conference on Language Evolution, 5/09/22. https://doi.org/10.17617/2.3398549

Editorial

Leongómez, JD, Pisanski, K, Reby, D, Sauter, D, Lavan, N, Perlman, M & Valentova, JV 2021, 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 376, no. 1840, 20200386. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0386

View all publications in research portal