John Grinstead, professor and interim chair in Spanish and Portuguese, researches developmental linguistics, developmental semantics and pragmatics, and children's comprehension of syntax. Ten years ago, he began using stop-motion movies in his experiments on language development, and the Despicable Me minions were a well-known and experimentally useful choice. For more about how minions reveal the workings of language acquisition, listen to his discussion with David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence