CASTL

Comparative syntax, dialect syntax, first language acquisition, Scandinavian languages, Sami, verb placement, object shift, scrambling

She is currently employed half time as a project leader and principal investigator in a project on North Sami child language acquisition (DASAGO) and half time as a researcher in NorDiaCorp, a project on Nordic dialect syntax.

Her research interests include (first) language acquisition, comparative syntax, and dialect syntax.

Language Acquisition

Kristine Bentzen is currently running the project DASAGO (Davvisámegiel mánáid giellaovdáneapmi -- North Sami child language development), which she and Berit Anne Bals Baal landed a 7 million NOK grant from the Norwegian Research Council for. The project started in July 2011, and will run for 5 years. See our web-page for ongoing work in this project.

The language acquisition group in Tromsø investigates how children acquire word order in cases where there is variation in the input that they are exposed to. In one of the recent - and ongoing - projects the group has looked at how Norwegian-speaking children acquire Object Shift (Merete Anderssen, Kristine Bentzen, and Yulia Rodina). Data from several children aged 4-7 (obtained through experiments at TROLL, TROmsø Language acquisition Lab) show that this phenomenon is acquired surprisingly late (it is not yet fully in place at the age of seven). Results from this study has been presented at several conferences (such as GALA (Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition) in 2009 and at the workshop Information Structure in Language Acquisition at DGfS 32 in 2010). A paper based on our results is published in Language Acquisition in 2012. We also re-tested the 7-year-olds from our previous study at the age of 9-10 years. Initial analysis of the results suggest that their performance is more 'adult-like' at that age.

Another project in the acquisition group focuses on children's acquisition of verb placement and finiteness (Kristine Bentzen and Marit Westergaard). This project investigates verb placement in both main and embedded clauses in both Norwegian- and English-speaking children, using corpora and experimental data. Results from this project have been presented at BULCD 34 in 2009, at the Finiteness Fest in Trondheim in 2010, at the Workshop on Tense and Aspect in 2010, and at CIAL in 2010. We are currently (Fall 2011-Spring 2012) collaborating with Antonella Sorace and Caroline Heycock (University of Edinburgh) on a priming experiment on word order in embedded clauses.

Together with Merete Anderssen and Marit Westergaard, Bentzen edited a volume on acquisition published with Springer Verlag (2010), in the series Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics. The book, Variation in the Input: Studies in the Acquisition of Word Order, is a proceedings volume from the workshop on language acquisition organized in Tromsø in April 2007 as part of GLOW XXX.

Comparative Syntax and Dialect Syntax

Bentzen's research interests within comparative syntax include verb placement and verb movement ('V-to-I' and V2), root phenomena, subject placement, object shift and scrambling. One recent and ongoing project re-examines object shift in Mainland Scandinavian (joint with Merete Anderssen). Results of this work has been presented at CGSW 26, 2011, at the workshop Uralic and Scandinavian languages, 2011, at the CASTL colloquium (February 2012), at a workshop on Object Shift in Gothenburg (March 2012), and in a poster at GLOW in Potsdam (March 2012). Parts of these results are written up in a paper in Nordlyd 39.1: The Grammar of Objects, 1-23, 2012.

Another ongoing interest involves root phenomena. In joint work with Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir, and Anna-Lena Wiklund, Bentzen has investigated the availability of root phenomena such as V2, non-subject topicalisation, and extraction in embedded clauses in various Scandinavian languages. Bentzen was an invited speaker at a workshop on Root Phenomena at ZAS Berlin in September 2009 and at the Workshop on Main/embedded clause asymmetries in the Scandinavian languages in Lund in April 2011. This material was also presented in an invited guest lecture at UMass, Amherst in November 2009.

She is currently working on this issues both related to object shift and to root phenomena in connection with the NorDiaCorp project, making use of the data resources The Nordic Syntax Database and The Nordic Dialect Corpus.

Bentzen is the leader of the Tromsø group in the dialect network N'CLAV (Nordic Collaboration on Language Variation).

She is currently co-editing several books and special issues:

• Studies in Övdalian Syntax (together with Henrik Rosenkvist, Lund University), to be published with John Benjamins.

• A special issue of Studia Linguistica on "The acquisition of language variation" (together with Marit Westergaard).

• The German Middle Field in a Comparative and Diachronic Perspective (together with Roland Hinterhölzl, Augustin Speyer, and Luka Szucsich), to be published with Mouton de Gruyter.

• A special issue of Nordic Journal of Linguistics on Object Shift in the Nordic languages (together with Maia Andréasson and Elisabet Engdahl).

Recent publications, manuscripts, etc.

2012

• ‘Topicality and complexity in the acquisition of Norwegian Object Shift.’ (Joint with Merete Anderssen & Yulia Rodina) Language Acquisition, 19.1:39-72.

• ‘Norwegian Object Shift as IP-internal topicalization,’ (Joint with Merete Anderssen) Nordlyd 39.1: The Grammar of Objects, 1-23.

• Nordlyd 39.1: Special issue on The Grammar of Objects, edited jointly with Antonio Fábregas.

• 'Vet du kor du bør helst sette inn verbet hen? Om verbplassering i nordnorsk,' [Do you know where you should rather place the verb? on verb placement in Northern Norwegian]. (Joint with Marit Westergaard and Merete Anderssen). CASTL Special issue of Ottar 2.290: 25-31.

• 'Det vil æ ikke eller Det vil ikke æ: Ordstilling i nordnorsk barnespråk,' [Det vil æ ikke or Det vil ikke æ: Word order in Northern Norwegian child language]. (Joint with Marit Westergaard and Merete Anderssen). CASTL Special issue of Ottar 2.290: 10-16.

• 'Min bil eller bilen min: Eiendomskonstruksjoner i norsk barnespråk og amerikanorsk,' [Min bil or bilen min: Possessive constructions in Norwegian child language and America-Norwegian]. (Joint with Merete Anderssen and Marit Westergaard). CASTL Special issue of Ottar 2.290: 17-24.

2011

• ‘Splitting up the V-to-I parameter.’ In Suzi Lima, Kevin Mullin and Brian Smith (eds.) Proceedings of North Eastern Linguistic Society (NELS) 39, GLSA Amherst, pp. 83-95.

To appear

• ‘Are movement paths punctuated or uniform?’ (Joint with Klaus Abels). To appear in Artemis Alexiadou, Tibor Kiss, and Gereon Müller (eds.) Local Modelling of Non-Local Dependencies in Syntax, Linguistische Arbeiten, Niemeyer.

• Studies in Övdalian Syntax (Jointly edited with Henrik Rosenkvist). To be published with John Benjamins (The Linguistik Aktuell series).

Upcoming talks

• November 14, 2012: ‘Flerspråklighet og samisk språkinnlæring’ [Multilingualism and Sami language acquisition]. Invited talk at Samisk nasjonal barnehage- og skolekonferanse [Sami national kindergarten and school conference]

• November 19, 2012: ‘Flere språk til flere! Tospråklighet gir mer enn bare to språk,’ invited talk on behalf of Flere språk til flere at the annual Morsmålskonferanse [Mother tongue conference] in Bergen.

• January 10, 2013: ‘Svenska drag i norska dialekter, och norske trekk i svenske dialekter,’ invited talk at Nordisk dialektforskning – seminar om talespråket i Nordisk dialektkorpus [Nordic dialect research – seminar on spoken language in the Nordic Dialect Corpus], University of Oslo (joint with Piotr Garbacz, Ida Larsson, and Björn Lundquist).

Selected previous papers, etc.

(Go here for list of earlier papers/manuscripts)

2010

• ‘Exploring embedded main clause phenomena: The irrelevance of factivity and some challenges from V2 languages.’ In Theoretical Linguistics, 36.2, 163-172, 2010.

• ‘Observations on extraction from V2 clauses in Scandinavian.’ (Joint with Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson and Anna-Lena Wiklund). In Nordic Journal of Linguistics 33.3, 299-309, 2010.

• Variation in the Input: Studies in the Acquisition of Word Order (Jointly edited with Merete Anderssen and Marit Westergaard). Springer Verlag, 2010.

• ‘The acquisition of apparent optionality: Word order in subject and object shift constructions in Norwegian.’ (Joint with Merete Anderssen, Yulia Rodina, and Marit Westergaard). In Merete Anderssen, Kristine Bentzen, and Marit Westergaard (eds.) Variation in the Input: Studies in the Acquisition of Word Order. Springer Verlag, 2010.

2009

Earlier

• Order and Structure in Embedded clauses in Northern Norwegian, PhD dissertation, CASTL, University of Tromsø, Norway. 2007. [Downloadable here.]

• ‘Rethinking Scandinavian verb movement,’ (joint with Anna-Lena Wiklund, Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, and Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir), Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 10(3), pp. 203-233. 2007.

• ‘The (non-) effect of input frequency on the acquisition of word order in Norwegian embedded clauses,’ (joint with Marit Westergaard), in Insa Gülzow and Natalia Gagarina (eds.) Frequency Effects in Language Acquisition. Defining the limits of frequency as an Explanatory Concept, pp. 271-306. 2007. [a previous version of the paper is available on LingBuzz].

• ‘What’s the better move? On verb placement in Standard and Northern Norwegian,’ Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 28.2, pp.153-188. 2005. [a previous version of the paper is available on Lingbuzz]

Recent talks

• August 13-16, 2012: ‘Norwegian gjøre det: Deep or surface anaphora?’ (joint with Peter Svenonius and Jason Merchant) at the N'CLAV Grand Meeting at Lysebu, Oslo, Norway.

• May 31-June 1, 2012: ‘Deep properties of surface pronouns: Pronominal predicate anaphors in Norwegian and other Germanic languages,’ (joint with Jason Merchant and Peter Svenonius) at The 27th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop, Yale University.

• May 11, 2012: ‘Extraction from embedded V2 clauses in Norwegian,’ at the Mini workshop in connection with Éva Dékány's doctoral defence, University of Tromsø, Norway.

• March 28-30, 2012: ‘Discourse Effects on the Availability of Object Shift,’ (joint with Merete Anderssen). Poster presentation at GLOW 35, Potsdam, Germany.

• March 22-23, 2012: ‘Norwegian Object Shift: The role of reference and topichood,’ (joint with Merete Anderssen) at a workshop on Object Shift in Gothenburg, Sweden.

• February 23, 2012: ‘New perspectives on Norwegian Object Shift: The importance of topichood,’ (joint with Merete Anderssen) at the CASTL Colloquium, Tromsø, Norway.

• January 12, 2012: ‘DASAGO — MCDI adaptation into North Sami,’ (joint with Berit Anne Bals Baal) at the NorPhLex seminar (Phonological and lexical acquisition in mono- and bilingual children in the Nordic and the Baltic states), Oslo, Norway.

• November 29, 2011: ‘Fordeler med å være tospråklig: Gir mer enn bare to språk!’ invited talk at a seminar for parents on children's multilingualism (joint with Yulia Rodina), Trondheim, Norway.

• November 29, 2011: ‘Tilegnelse av flere språk samtidig: Fordeler med å være tospråklig’ invited talk at a seminar for teachers on multilingualism as a resource (joint with Yulia Rodina), Trondheim, Norway.

• November 10, 2011: ‘Barneprat er ikke bare babbel! — Om barnespråksforskningen ved HSL-fakultetet,’ invited talk on language acquisition at a seminar for the administration at our faculty, (joint with Merete Anderssen), Tromsø, Norway.

• October 18, 2011: 'Flere språk til Flere! Språktilegnelse og fordeler med tospråklighet,' invited talk at Tromsdalen Barnehage (joint with Merete Anderssen), Tromsø, Norway.

• ‘Scandinavian Object Shift revisited: The relevance of (types of) topichood,’ (joint with Merete Anderssen) at the 10th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian, Lund, Sweden, August 25-28, 2011.

• ‘DASAGO - a new project on North Sami child language,’ at the 2nd N'CLAV Grand Meeting, Göteborg, Sweden, August 22-25, 2011.

• ‘The acquisition of word order in questions in English and Norwegian: Frames vs. micro-cues,' (Joint with Marit Westergaard) at the symposium Rules versus Constructions: A debate on question acquisition at the International Congress for the Study of Child Language (IASCL), Montreal, Canada, July 19-23, 2011.

• ‘Scandinavian Object Shift reanalysed as TP-internal topicalization,’ (joint with Merete Anderssen) at CGSW 26 (Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 23-24, 2011.

• ‘The (over)production of prenominal determiners in definite contexts in a Norwegian/English bilingual child,’ (joint with Merete Anderssen) at ISB8 (International Symposium on Bilingualism), Oslo, June 15-18, 2011.

• ‘The status of the embedded V-Neg word order,' invited talk at the Workshop on Main/Embedded Clause Asymmetries in Scandinavian, Lund, Sweden, April 14-15, 2011.

• ‘Topicality and complexity in the acquisition of Norwegian Object Shift’ at the VAMOS workshop, Tromsø, April 4-5, 2011.

• ‘Introduction on Object Shift’ at the DGfS workshop Word Order Variation and Typology: The German Middle Field in a Comparative and Diachronic Perspective, Göttingen, Germany, February 23-25, 2011.

• ‘Embedded V2 and extraction in Faroese and Norwegian: Results from parallel experiments’ (Joint with Caroline Heycock) at the workshop Verb Movement: Its nature, triggers, and effects, Amsterdam, December 11-12, 2010.

• ‘What microvariation studies can tell us about children's errors,’ at Nordic Language Variation: Grammatical, Sociolinguistic and Infrastructural Perspectives, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, October 7-9, 2010.

• ‘The acquisition of finiteness and inversion in English and Norwegian wh-questions,’ (joint with Marit Westergaard), at the CIAL 6, Barcelona, Spain, September 8-10, 2010.

• ‘Finiteness and word order in the acquisition of English and Norwegian wh-questions,’ (joint with Marit Westergaard), at the Workshop on Tense and Aspect in Generative Grammar, Lisbon, Portugal, July 1-2, 2010.

• 'The movement of verbs around Scandinavia,' (Joint with Piotr Garbacz and Caroline Heycock) at the NORMS Closing Seminar in Tromsø, Norway, June 10, 2010.

• ‘Finiteness in wh-questions in English and Norwegian child language,’ at a CASTL mini workshop in Tromsø, Norway, May 19, 2010.

• ‘Finiteness and word order: The acquisition of wh-questions in English and Norwegian,’ (Joint with Marit Westergaard) at a workshop on Finiteness at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway, May 6-7, 2010.

• ‘The acquisition of Object Shift: A challenge at the syntax-pragmatics interface,’ (Joint with Merete Anderssen and Yulia Rodina) at the workshop Information Structure in Language Acquisition at DGfS 32 (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft), at the Humboldt University, Berlin, February 23-26, 2010.

• ‘Word order and finiteness in English and Norwegian child language: Parameters vs. cues,’ (Joint with Marit Westergaard) at BUCLD 34 (Boston University Conference on Language Development), Boston, Mass., November 6-8, 2009.

• ‘Embedded root phenomena in Scandinavian and English: The (ir)relevance of assertion and presupposition,’ guest talk at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, November 3, 2009.

• ‘Nordnorske barns tilegnelse av “Object Shift”,’ (Joint with Merete Anderssen and Yulia Rodina), at Seminar om nordnorske språkforhold [Seminar on languages in Northern Norway], University of Tromsø, Norway, September 28, 2009.

• ‘The Acquisition of Focus: The case of object shift,’ (Joint with Merete Anderssen and Yulia Rodina), at Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition (GALA), Lisbon, Portugal, September 9-11, 2009.

• ‘Embedded root phenomena, assertion, presupposition, and main point of utterance,’ Invited talk at the workshop Root Phenomena, Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin, Germany, September 2-4, 2009.

• ‘The development of syntax in micro-Scandinavians: Object Shift in Norwegian child language,’ (Joint with Merete Anderssen and Yulia Rodina), at The 2009 Grand Meeting for the Network for Scandinavian Dialect Syntax, Älvdalen, Sweden, August 25-29, 2009.