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Professors

Juana M. LICERAS is a professor in the Department of Modern Languages and the Deparment of Linguistics of the University of Ottawa (Canada). She is a member of several editorial boards as well as the director of the Language Acquisition Research Laboratory of the University of Ottawa. Her research interests and publications deal with the relationship between linguistic theory and language acquisition, comparative grammar, bilingualism, and language contact.
E-mail: jliceras@uottawa.ca
http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~jliceras/

Laura SABOURIN is an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics of the University of Ottawa (Canada). Her research field lies in the area of language processing and second language acquisition and it focus on the following issues: (1) the nature of both first and second language acquisition; (2) how language processing changes during the stages of language acquisition and (3) whether linguistic training can have effects on the neural organization of language in the brain. She is currently conducting research with monolingual, bilingual and second language learners in order to obtain a full picture of how language is organized in the brain.
E-mail: Laura.Sabourin@uOttawa.ca
http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~lsabour3/

Tania ZAMUNER is an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics of the University of Ottawa (Canada). . Her research focuses on developmental psycholinguistics, and investigates the mechanisms that underlie our ability to perceive and produce language.and language contact.
E-mail: tzamuner@uOttawa.ca
http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~tzamuner/

Collaborators

Diana CARTER joined the lab in 2004. She completed her BA in European Studies at the University of Guelph, where she spent a year abroad at the Universidad de La Rioja in Spain. She completed her MA in hispanic studies at the University of Western Ontario. Her MA thesis focused on variation and dialectology in Spain. At the University of Ottawa she completed her PhD dissertation on the syntax and semantics of the mass-count distinction in first and second languages. After spending a year as an Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Alabama, she relocated to the University of Wales in Bangor where she is currently conducting corpus-based research on Spanish-English and Welsh-English bilingualism.
E-mail: dmcarter00@yahoo.es
E-mail: diana.carter@bangor.ac.uk
http://www.dianamcarter.com/

http://www.bilingualism.bangor.ac.uk

Keiko KAKU-MacDonald is a visiting assistant professor of Japanese studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s department of German, Russian, Japanese and Chinese studies. Her research interests focus on the field of linguistics, especially second language acquisition and psycholinguistics. Her research combines theories on generative approaches of second language acquisition and probabilistic cognitive learning theory examined through psycholinguistic techniques to understand the mechanisms of second language learning. She also consults in the design of several BlackBerry apps which employ dynamic adaptive algorithms to teach languages.

E-mail: k_kakuma@uncg.edu

http://www.uncg.edu/igs/AsianCommittee.html

Students

Yoriko AIZU. Ph.D candidate.
Susana ALAIZ. Ph.D candidate.
Anahí ALBA DE LA FUENTE. Ph.D candidate. Anahí joined the lab in 2005 and has been the lab coordinator since 2006. She completed her MA in Spanish at the University of Ottawa, a BA in English and a BA in Spanish at the University of Valladolid (Spain). She is currently working on clitic clusters and the restrictions associated with them, both from a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. She has taught Spanish at the beginner and advanced levels (ESP 1991, ESP 1992 and ESP 3992) at the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures of the University of Ottawa.
Email: aalba080@uottawa.ca

Cristina MARTÍNEZ-SANZ. Ph.D candidate. Cristina joined the lab in 2003. She completed her undergraduate degree in Spanish Philology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1996-2001), and her MA in Spanish Linguistics at the University of Ottawa. She is currently working on parametric variation (null and overt subjects) in language contact and language change contexts. She has taught Spanish at all levels (ESP1991, 2991, 2992, and 3992) at the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures of the University of Ottawa. She now works at Florida International University in Miami, where she teaches Spanish and Linguistics and coordinates the Basic Spanish Language Program.
E-mail: cristina.martinez.sanz@gmail.com

Language Acquisition Research Lab