I work as a post-doctoral fellow in the Speech and Language Laboratory headed by Dr. Nandini Singh at the National Brain Research Centre of India, where I am at present the PI [that's 'principal investigator' for those who don't speak research-ese] on a project aimed at developing a comprehensive battery for assessing metalinguistic awareness in Hindi. The population that claims Hindi as either a native or a second (or third) language numbers over 400 million people across India (2011 census: http://www.censusindia.gov.in/) and neighbouring countries including Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, besides a sizeable population of immigrants and settlers of Indian origin across the world (ethnologue.com: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=hin).
[Metalinguistic awareness reflects one's knowledge of and ability to manipulate language, for example, being able to count the number of words in an utterance or sounds (syllables or phonemes) in a word, and even being able to judge the relative length of words (e.g., BUS vs. MOTORCYCLE) and solve syllogistic reasoning problems such as the following: All sparrows are now called monkeys. Can a monkey lay eggs? Research across countries, continents and cultures shows that meta-linguistic awareness is closely tied to literacy levels (Morais et al., 1979; Olson, 1991; Reis & Castro-Caldas. 1997). Illiterates, like little children, do rather poorly on these tasks... for example, an illiterate might answer, "A bus is bigger than a motorcycle, everyone knows that!" or, "Of course a monkey can't lay eggs!" One might wonder why we need metalinguistic awareness at all: Accumulated research shows that higher levels of metalinguistic awareness are correlated not only with superior literacy skills (Durgunoğlu & Oney, 2002; Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Treiman, 1991), but also with better language learning, analytical thinking and inferential reasoning (Dellatolas et al., 2003; Luria, 1976).]
I am also currently involved in projects aimed at (1) establishing the neural network underlying reading in Hindi (written in the Devanagari script) and (2) investigating the neuro-behavioural correlates of processing the emotional states invoked by Indian classical music. Further details of these projects can be found at: http://www.nbrc.ac.in/faculty/nandini/.
