The University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Research and Publications

Our faculty and graduate students' research is frequently represented in top linguistic journals. Several faculty members have also published books that make linguistic research and its implications accessible to the general public.

Selected Works

Oiry 2011b. A case of true optionality: Wh-in-situ patterns like Long Movement in French in The Optionality of Wh-Movement. Edited by Anna Roussou and Christos Vlachos (University of Patras). Linguistic Analysis (37:1-2): 112-136.2011.

Oiry and Roeper 2009. How Language Acquisition Reveals Minimalist Symmetry in the Wh-System. Selected papers from the Cyprus Syntaxfest. Edited by Kleanthes K. Grohman and Phoevos Panagiotidis. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Chapter 1, 11-28. 2009.

Hirsch, Christopher and Jeremy Hartman. 2006. Some (wh-) questions concerning passive interactions. In A. Belletti et al., (eds.) Proceedings of the Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press

Green, Lisa, and Tracy Conner. "Rhetorical Markers in Developing African American English-Speaking Girls’ Language." African American Women’s Language: Discourse, Education and Identity. Ed. Sonja Lanehart. Cambridge University Press, 91-109. (2009).

Roeper, Tom and Charles Yang. (in press) Minimalism and Language Acquisition

Roeper, Tom. (in press) Minimalism and Bilingualism: How and Why Bilingualism Could Benefit Children with SLI

Roeper, Tom and Jill DeVilliers. (2011) The Acquisition Path for Wh-Questions

Clauss, Michael. Modal Morphology in Child Tamil. Presented at LARC, November 2011.

The Prism of Grammar

In The Prism of Grammar, Tom Roeper brings the abstract principles behind modern grammar to life by exploring the astonishing intricacies of child language. The Prism of Grammar is for parents and teachers as well as students -- for everyone who wants to understand how children gain and use language -- and anyone interested in the social, philosophical, and ethical implications of how we see the growing mind emerge.

 

Raising a Bilingual Child

"Raising A Bilingual Child," by Barbara Zurer Pearson, a research associate and adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, combines the latest scientific findings and research on bilingualism with comments and observation from parents and the children they raised in bilingual households. It discusses common myths and beliefs about what happens to children when they learn more than one language as they grow up, and what many observers see as the intellectual and emotional benefits of bilingualism. Pearson also looks at how young children have a special ability to learn language, and how it is they can learn more than one language.

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This lab is part of the UMass Amherst Linguistics Department