Kristin & Erik
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I work at CASTL - Center for
Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics, a Norwegian Center of
Excellence, where I have been Director since January 1, 2009. This is an active and vibrant linguistics community, and a
wonderful place to work. I
also lead an active research group on language acquisition at CASTL/The Department of Language
and Linguistics.
My
research
interests include first, second and bilingual language acquisition, as
well
as comparative English and Norwegian syntax, both modern and
diachronic. For many years, the focus of my research in these areas has
been on the syntax of word
order. More recently, my interest has shifted to the internal structure
of the DP, especially the acquisition of grammatical gender,
definiteness and word order in possessive constructions (see presentations and publications).
I am involved in several research projects and networks. An important
project is VIA - Variation in the
Input in Acquisition,
where I collaborate with
Kristine Bentzen, Merete
Anderssen, Yulia Rodina and Roksolana Mykhaylyk. Variation in the Input was the theme of a
workshop we
organized at GLOW 2007, and the papers from this were published in 2010 in the series Studies in Theoretical
Psycholinguistics by Springer Verlag. The VIA
project also has a diachronic component, and here is a relevant paper, published in 2008 in Lingua,
‘Acquisition
and Change: On the Robustness
of the
Triggering Experience for Word Order Cues.’ A subproject of VIA
called VAMOS Variation and Acquisition: Multiple
Object and Subject Positions, run by Professor Paula Fikkert, is funded by the Tromsø
Research Foundation.
In 2010, we started an interdisciplinary research group on multilingualism
at the HSL faculty. We have also recently received external funding for
several research projects on bilingual acquisition, e.g. the BIC project
(on Russian-Norwegian immigrant children) funded by the Regional
Research Fund of North Norway and the Tromsø Research Foundation. In
cooperation with Antonella Sorace and Bilingualism Matters at the University of Edinburgh, we have started an advice and information service called Flere språk til flere for bilingual families and the general public, based on current research in the field.
Here is my 2009 book, The Acquisition of Word Order: Micro-cues, Information Structure and Economy, published in the series Linguistik Aktuell
by John Benjamins. And these are some recent articles: ‘Cues and input
frequency in the acquisition of grammatical gender in Russian’ (with
co-author Yulia Rodina) forthcoming in Journal of Child Language, ‘Subject positions and information structure: The effect of frequency on acquisition and change’ published 2011 in Studia Linguistica, ‘Frequency and economy in the acquisition of variable word order’ (with co-author Merete Anderssen) published 2010 in Lingua, ‘Usage-based vs. Rule-based
Learning: The Acquisition of Word Order in Wh-Questions in English and
Norwegian’, published 2009 in Journal
of Child Language, and ‘The Development of
Word Order in Old and Middle English: The Role of Information Structure
and First Language Acquisition’, published 2009 in Diachronica. And for those
who read Norwegian, this one
came out in 2008 in the
journal BARN, ‘Hvordan barn lærer
språk: En sammenligning mellom ordstilling i engelsk og norsk.’
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