Language Acquisition

Baby in front of blackboard

Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the ability to comprehend and produce language, either as their first or second (third, etc.) language. The study of language acquisition provides evidence for theoretical linguistics and has practical applications in language pedagogy.

 

 

 

 

Personnel

Usree Bhattacharya

Assistant Professor, Dept. of Language and Literacy Education

Language and literacy socialization, Language ideology, Language policy

Liang Chen

Associate Professor, Dept. of Communication Sciences and Special Education

Language Acquisition, Bilingualism, Clinical Linguistics, Chinese Linguistics

Timothy Gupton

Professor, Dept. of Romance Languages

Syntax, Second language acquisition, Romance languages

Linda Harklau

Professor, Dept. of Language and Literacy Education

Second language acquisition in adolescents and adults, Literacy and academic instruction for language minority students, Role of culture and identity in second language learning, Qualitative research methods in SLA

Victoria Hasko

Associate Professor

Second/foreign language acquisition and instructed learning, Computer-assisted language learning and teaching, Language and cognition, Learner corpus analysis.

Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Associate Professor of Linguistics

Syntax, Syntax-Phonology-Pragmatics interface, Language acquisition, Germanic languages

Margaret Lubbers Quesada

Professor Emerita

Language acquisition, Historical linguistics, Hispanic linguistics

Paula Mellom

Senior Research Scientist, The MERIT Center

Second language acquisition, Discourse analysis

Akinloye Ojo

Professor, Dept. of Comparative Literature & Intercultural Studies

Yoruba language and linguistics, Applied linguistics and language teaching, Language, culture and society

Olga Thomason

Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Germanic & Slavic Studies

Historical Indo-European linguistics, Prepositional semantics, Slavic linguistics and folklore, Acquisition of Russian by foreign and heritage language learners