Welcoming Dr. Titia Benders

Dr. Titia Benders joined the Child Language Lab in July 2015, when she was appointed as a lecturer in the department of Linguistics.  Titia has been busy getting to know the Child Language Lab as well as teaching speech to the 3rd-year students in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. She is looking forward to getting started with some new research projects in 2016.

Previously at the University of Amsterdam and the Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands), Titia's main research interest was in the role of infant-directed speech during child language development. Most recently at the University of Newcastle, Titia worked on innovative ways of looking at the numbers we obtain in child language studies. She is looking forward to applying these techniques with her new colleagues at Macquarie University.

Titia's first project in the Child Language Lab will be entitled "Where's the 'ba' in "banana"? This project will describe why toddlers often say things like 'nana' instead of 'banana' and 'jamas' instead of 'pyjamas'. The theory that Titia will test is that the syllables 'ba' and 'py' are already lost in the input toddlers hear.

Titia will invite 16-26 month-old monolingual English toddlers and their parents to the Child Language Lab to participate in a word-learning experiment and an interactive play session. If you know of any children that will be 16-26 months in 2016, Titia would be delighted to hear from them, or I guess their parents!

Contact  ling.cll@mq.edu.au

Current Studies

• Processing Speech Input:  9-11 year-old English or Mandarin speakers
• Reading in the Brain:   10-11 year-old English native speakers
• Toddler Grammar: Recruiting within select local daycare centres
• Where's the 'ba' in 'banana'? 16-26 month-old English monolinguals
• Mandarin Tones in Context:  mothers who speak Mandarin to their 1-3 year-olds
• Nepali Infant-Directed Speech: mothers who speak Nepali with their infant

Positions Vacant

• Postdoctoral Research Fellow Seeking a Postdoc specialising in EEG/ERP
• Research and Laboratory Coordinator Could you be the next Coordinator for the CLL?

PhD submitted! Congratulations  Qandeel Hussain!

Congratulations to Child Language Lab member Qandeel Hussain, who recently submitted his PhD thesis entitled "Phonetic Characterization of a Complex Coronal System: Insights from Punjabi."

Qandeel was supervised by Distinguished Professor Katherine Demuth (Macquarie University), Dr. Mark Harvey (University of Newcastle), and Dr. Michael Proctor (Macquarie University). 

Following his submisison, Qandeel traveled to Japan to collaborate with Professor Shigeko Shinohara (Sophia University, Tokyo) and collect Japanese data.

Qandeel is now exploring international job opportunities related to his research interests. We wish him all the very best!

PhD submitted! Congratulations Sithembinkosi Dube!

Congratulations to Thembi, who  submitted her PhD thesis entitled "Neuro-physiological processing of subject-verb agreement processing in L1 & L2 speakers of English."

Thembi was supervised by Distinguished Professor Katherine Demuth, Dr Mridula Sharma, Carmen Kung, Dr Jon Brock (Macquarie University), and Dr Varghese Peter (MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University). 

Thembi is continuing on with the Child Language Lab, working on topics raised in her PhD research. These include the neuro-physiological processing of morphosyntactic elements in bilingual children and in speakers of languages with more complex morphosyntactic structures. 

To participate in Thembi's current research for 9-11 year-olds, email ling.cll@mq.edu.au

New Members

PhD candidate: Ping Tang

Ping joined us in late 2015, from Nanjing Normal University, China, where he completed his Masters degree in Linguistics.  Ping is already well underway planning his PhD project with the Child Language Lab!

For his PhD thesis, Ping will be exploring how typically developing children and children with hearing impairment acquire the Mandarin tone system.  He is especially interested in their acquisition of context-dependent tonal variations and rules, such as the use of neutral tone and what is known as tone sandhi.  Ping is also interested to see how these tone change phenomena are realized in child-directed speech, and the implication of this on children’s language development.

So if you're a native Mandarin speaker who speaks Mandarin Chinese to your toddler at home, make sure you've registered with us and you may receive an invitation to participate a little later in the year!

...

MRes student: Sujal Pokharel

Sujal joined us in January 2016, from Dubai, where he has been working as a clinical speech language pathologist.  Prior to that, Sujal worked as a lecturer after graduating from a Masters degree in Audiology and Speech and Language Pathology from Mangalore University, India in 2012.

Sujal joins the Child Language Lab as a 2nd year Masters of Research student.  For his MRes thesis, Sujal will investigate Nepali Infant Directed Speech (IDS). Studying the Indo-Aryan language Nepali allows Sujal to explore the nature of IDS in a language with 4-way voicing contrasts. He is interested in looking at the realization of voice onset time in IDS compared to adult directed speech.

Sujal will be contacting native Nepali speakers who speak Nepali to their infant at home, so make sure you've registered with us and you may receive an invitation to participate!

Conference Report

Australian Linguistic Society 2015

Contribution by Rebecca Holt

The 2015 Australian Linguistic Society (ALS) Conference, held in December at Western Sydney University, featured research on a wide array of linguistic phenomena. Speech perception and processing, indigenous Australian languages and language variation and change were particularly popular topics. Additionally, the first day of ALS coincided with conferences in several other disciplines, allowing ALS delegates to benefit from presentations in the fields of music psychology and computational linguistics.

The Child Language Lab was very well represented in the ALS program, with ten presentations and four posters in total. Topics included children’s acquisition of English phonology and morphology; speech perception and processing in children, bilinguals and learners of English; and acoustic studies in English, Katetye, Ndebele, Punjabi and Infant-Directed Speech.

 ALS provided an excellent opportunity to hear about a broad spectrum of current research in linguistics and allowed Child Language Lab researchers of all levels of experience to present to a wide audience of linguists from around Australia.

...Research Update

Using iPads to mobilise research

PhD student Ben Davies has been carrying out a series of eye-tracking studies with 2-3 year-olds to determine when and how they become aware of plural marking on the ends of nouns. This can take various forms – an /s/ on the end of words like cats, a /z/ on the ends of words like dogs, and an entire syllable /əz/ on the end of words like peaches.

Ben’s findings suggest that children may learn these different forms in exactly this order, and that both the perceptual salience of the /s/ and the low frequency of the /əz/ play a role in this process.

Given that these fricative sounds also pose a challenge for those with hearing loss, this raises questions about when children with hearing aids and cochlear implants might learn these pieces of grammar.

Ben is now following up on these questions, swapping eye-tracking technology for an innovative iPad app, designed by Ben and fellow PhD student Tamara Schembri, to make it easier for more children to take part in the research.  The iPad study is currently visiting local daycare centres and will then be rolled out with colleagues at The Shepherd Centre, as part of an Australian Hearing Hub collaboration.