Professor, Linguistics Department

Director, Developmental Psycholinguistics Laboratory, Linguistics Department

My teaching emphasizes cross-listed courses. My research emphasizes syntactic development and language production. Regarding syntax, I'm interested in questions about both universals and particulars that are evident during children's convergence on the adult grammar. My current project on fluency, articulation rate, and sentence planning was funded by NSF. My main collaborators are Merrill Garrett (retired from Pyschology, U. of Arizona), Sam Supalla (SERSP, U. of Arizona), Dana McDaniel (Linguistics, U. of Southern Maine), Sigridur Sigurjónsdóttir (Icelandic Linguistics, U. of Reykavijk, Iceland), and Maria Emiliani (USL, Imola, Italy). With student and community volunteers, I also describe linguistics in festivals and K-12 schools. Finally, I also study young children's informal science learning at Children's Museum Tucson.