Adam Psomakas

Adam is a Master student in the MA Linguistics at the Radboud University. He is currently also an intern in the Psychology of Language department at the Max Planck Institute. Originally, he is from Athens, Greece, where he obtained his Bachelor in Philology, with a major in Linguistics, from the University of Athens. His interest in Linguistics led him in 2020 to move to the Netherlands, Nijmegen, to further devote himself to the discipline. During his studies, he discovered his interest in the domain of the psychology of language and cultural cognition, and particularly in the notion of a multimodal language processing. He is now participating in an EEG experimental project with the aim of investigating the interaction of predictive processing and iconic gestures, with regard to language comprehension.

In his spare time, he likes hiking, listening to music and playing football.

Reviving long-forgotten knowledge

By Adam Psomakas / 6 September 2021

For most of us, the languages that we are — primarily or exclusively —exposed to as a child, becomes our native languages as an adult. This, of course, does not come as a surprise, nor as breaking news. It is almost always the case that, from the moment children are born until they start school, they are raised in a natural environment where they are constantly in interaction with the languages of their parents, and, if different, the languages of their society. Thus, their birth languages as infants become their dominant languages as adults. However, for some children, namely adoptees, this is not the case.