You are invited to this week’s special talk organized by the Department of Psychology.
Everyone is welcome to attend!
Title: Is simultaneous bilingualism really all that special? Similarities and differences in monolingual and bilingual acquisition during infancy
Speaker: Dr. Christopher Fennell , Full Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa (Canada)
Date: 14.05.2025, Wednesday
Time: 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Room: A 130 (FEASS Building)
Abstract:
There has been a veritable explosion of research on bilingual infants’ language development over the past two decades. Unsurprisingly, differences between bilingual and monolingual language development have garnered much attention. While there are some interesting developmental differences between the two groups, a growing amount of research demonstrates that monolinguals and bilinguals share common linguistic processes and language milestones. I will focus on three areas of infant language development, word segmentation, phonology and word learning, to highlight the similarities and dissimilarities between monolingual and bilingual development. Using recent data from my own lab and others, I will discuss how similar language processes can (and should) account for monolingual and bilingual language acquisition, even when outcomes differ. Further, I will show that even apparent behavioural differences between the two populations may, in fact, reveal underlying similarities in their language processing
Biography
Dr. Christopher Fennell is a Full Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa in Canada (PhD, University of British Columbia, Canada; Postdoctoral Studies, Northwestern University, USA). His research focusses on language acquisition in infants, particularly those learning two languages. His primary foci are phonetic/phonological and lexical development, and how speech perception and world learning interact. He is currently the Research Chair in Language Learning and Acquisition at the UOttawa Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute. He is the Director of the Language Developmental Lab at the University of Ottawa and the Co-Director of the UOttawa Living Lab at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. He is also Associate Vice-Provost, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.
We hope to see you there!