Dr Robyn Orfitelli
School of English
Lecturer in Linguistics
+44 114 222 0224
Full contact details
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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I joined the School of English as a lecturer in the fall of 2014. Prior to that, I did my undergraduate work at Harvard º£½ÇÉçÇø (BA in Linguistics and Biochemistry, 2006), and my graduate work at UCLA (PhD in Linguistics, 2012), with Professor Nina Hyams as my advisor.
Following my PhD, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the º£½ÇÉçÇø of Iowa from 2013-2014.
- Research interests
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My research is focused on the intersection between first language acquisition and generative syntactic theory. I use a variety of corpus and behavioral measures to experimentally analyze children’s acquisition of complex syntactic phenomena.
Recently, I have been interested in understanding the acquisition of a range of A-movement phenomena related to voice, including subject-to-subject raising, passives, and middles. I am working to link patterns in acquisition to systematic cross-linguistic differences in the representation of these structures.
Other current or recent topics of interest include the Null-Subject stage in first and second language acquisition, word-level prosody in Samoan, and the syntax-prosody interface in language development.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- . Phonology, 31(2), 271-327.
- . Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 3(3), 335-340.
- . Linguistic Inquiry, 43(4), 563-590.
Chapters
- The Acquisition of Syntax In Fernández EM & Smith Cairns H (Ed.), The Handbook of Psycholinguistics John Wiley & Sons
- When performance masquerades as comprehension: Grammaticality judgments in experiments with non-native speakers In Kopotev M, Mustajoki A & Lyashevskaya O (Ed.), Quantitative Approaches to the Russian Language Routledge
- Do null subjects really transfer?, Proceedings of the 12th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2013) Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Conference proceedings papers
- 'Experiencing' a Slight Delay: Intervening Arguments and the Acquisition of Subject-to-Subject Raising. PROCEEDINGS OF THE 36TH ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, VOLS 1 AND 2 (pp 374-386)
- An experimental study of children's comprehension of null subjects: Implications for grammatical/performance accounts. PROCEEDINGS OF THE 32ND ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, VOLS 1 AND 2 (pp 335-346)
Theses / Dissertations
- Argument intervention in the acquisition of A-movement.
- . Phonology, 31(2), 271-327.
- Research group
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I welcome PhD students in any of the areas of my research.
- Teaching activities
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I convene the following undergraduate modules:
- ELL 113 - Structure of English
- ELL 221 - Syntax
- ELL 226 - First Language Acquisition
Links