Teaching

My Language Development students work together in small groups over the course of a semester to create deliverables aimed at community outreach, which help them to synthesize all they’re learned, practice time management and teamwork, and convey this knowledge in an inviting, accessible way to a lay audience.

We promote these beautiful, informative, carefully researched, curated, and edited resources when reaching out to caregivers, preschools, and daycares for our language acquisition research.

Learn more here!

Check out this Powtoon
video

 

Follow us on Instagram

child_developmental_milestones
link

oopsin_babybabble (The Sleepy Babblers)
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languagemilestones
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unscrabble_your_babys_babble
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mybabysaidwhatnow
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BabyyZoomer
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TinyTalkerz
link

We’re on TikTok

link

Explore our websites 

Developmental Milestones
link

How Can I Understand My Child?
link

How Caregiver’s Input Can Help
link

Infant-Directed Speech v. Adult-Directed Speech
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Talking Tots Toolbox
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Chatter Matters
link

Read our posters and brochures

Infant and Child Directed Speech
resource

Speech Errors
resource

Word Learning
resource

How You Can Help Your Child Learn Language
resource

Understanding Your Child’s Speech
resource

My Language Development (from a child’s perspective)
resource

 

We’re on Tumblr

Anonymous Speechies

 

Listen to this Podcast

SooTrue Podcast

If you are interested in working on a senior honors thesis with me or becoming a research assistant in my lab, please see my lab website for more information.

Honors Theses and Graduate School Paths

Hanna Murphy (2024): Linguistic support for the acquisition of emotion adjectives (highest honors, Departmental Research Excellence Award) [Hanna went on to pursue a Masters in Speech Language Pathology from Syracuse University.]

Alison English (2023) (co-advised with Pete Alrenga): Investigating the pragmatic factors licensing but (highest honors, Departmental Research Excellence Award, Henry Rutgers Scholar Award)

Amy Rosen (2022): Communication across modalities: An investigation of co-speech gesture in a lexical suppression task (highest honors, Departmental Research Excellence Award, Henry Rutgers Scholar Award) [Amy earned her Masters in Speech Language Pathology from Montclair State University.]

Nishtha Trivedi (2022): Prosodic marking of information structure and contrastive focus in autistic adults (Cognitive Science) (highest honors, Henry Rutgers Scholar Award) [Nish followed up on this research in her 2024 Masters thesis from CUNY Graduate School, Prosodic marking of focus in autistic and neurotypical adults; I was an external member of her thesis committee.]

Karen Li (2021): A proposal for the meaning of the Mandarin sentence final particle a (highest honors, Henry Rutgers Scholar Award) [Karen went on earn her Masters in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.]

Joy Lu (2021): Calling Stella long distance: Free classification of regional United States dialects, international dialects, and Asian Nonnative accents by listeners from a diverse demographic (highest honors) [Joy’s thesis eventually fed into this 2024 publication in Glossa Psycholinguistics] [Joy earned her Masters in Speech Language Pathology from Montclair State University.]

Nathaniel Serio (2021): Concepts, essences, and mental representation (high honors) [Nate went on to pursue his PhD in Philosophy at Yale University.]

Talia Lang (2020): You called her a what?! Experimental evidence for the expressive and descriptive dimensions of slurs (high honors)

Kathryn Slusarczyk (2020): Can speakers recruit sound symbolic cues in novel Korean ideophones to distinguish manner of motion? (highest honors) [Kat was awarded a Fulbright to teach English in Korea after graduation.]

Ilana Torres (2020): “Who’s” right: Accent and accuracy in assessments of object labels and instances of faultless disagreement (high honors, Departmental Research Excellence Award) [Ilana earned her Masters in Forensic Linguistics from Hofstra University.]

Zachary Dau (2019): The linguistic status of emojis (high honors) [Zach went on to earn his Masters in Computational Linguistics from Montclair State University.]

Zehra Husnain (2018): Domain restriction with plural definite descriptions in child language (high honors) [Zehra earned her Masters in Speech Language Pathology from Northeastern University.]

Anna Goldin (2017): I suppose that I presuppose: An experimental investigation of factors affecting presupposition projection (high honors)

Laura Simon-Pearson (2017): Assessing truth and knowledge: How children differ from adults in assessment of truth values and speaker knowledge (highest honors, Henry Rutgers Scholar Award) [Also see Our 2018 BUCLD conference proceedings paper] [Laura went on to pursue her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Hofstra University.]

Hannah Baker (2013): An experimental investigation of the epistemic effect of ‘algun’ in Spanish language learners 

Kirsten Nisula (2012): Perception of prosodic and acoustic cues for sentence disambiguation [see Syrett et al_prosodic disambiguation NELS_14 and Syrett et al_prosodic disambiguation JoL_14] [Kirsten earned her Masters in Music from The Ohio State University.]

Language Development

(Please see previous semesters for sample syllabus.)

Graduate-Level Qualifying Paper (and Professional Development) Workshop

Language Development

syllabus

Administration and research, not teaching

Language Development

syllabus

Administration and research, not teaching

Language Development

syllabus

Pragmatics

(Please see previous semesters for sample syllabus.)

Language Development

syllabus

Seminar in Language Acquisition (Graduate): Acquisition of Nouns

syllabus

Acquisition of Semantics: LSA Summer Institute, UC Davis

syllabus

Pragmatics

(Please see previous semesters for sample syllabus.)

Advanced Topics in Cognitive Science: Sound and Meaning

syllabus

participation rubric

On sabbatical

Pragmatics

syllabus

Semantics Seminar (Graduate): Acquisition of Semantics and Pragmatics

syllabus

Pragmatics

syllabus

Byrne Seminar: Language Games and Talking Heads

syllabus

Byrne Seminar: Language Games and Talking Heads

Pragmatics

Experimental Methods in Language Acquisition

syllabus

Linguistics 101: Introduction to the Study of Language

syllabus

Byrne Seminar: Language Games and Talking Heads (Honors version)

Semantics III (Graduate): Recent Advances in Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics

syllabus

Pragmatics

Byrne Seminar: Language Games and Talking Heads

Semantics in Language Acquisition: Advanced Core Training in Linguistics (ACTL), London

course materials

Linguistics 101: Introduction to the Study of Language

Linguistics 101: Introduction to the Study of Language

Pragmatics

Byrne Seminar: Language Games and Talking Heads

Pragmatics

Honors Seminar: Language, Categories, and Cognition

syllabus