People

Introduction

My main area of specialization and interest is Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA).  The importance of support in early childhood through interactions within multilingual context strongly affect the degree of proficiency in bilingual subjects.  Language Transfer is a process that occurs in language development that is identified in the Competition Model that appears to represent bilingual language processes.  The collection of naturalistic data of young children during their infancy while they process languages unconsciously provides important areas of language transfer in phonology and especially in syntax.  Furthermore, some special second language acquisition programs with an early Age of Acquisition (AoA) around 4- 7-years-old such as partial-immersion programs that enhance the contextual learning environment can substantially increase the native speaking abilities of those children in comparison to those who have a later AoA .

Another area of specialization is Second Language Acquisition (SLA) of students whose AoA is in their teens for their second language.  The language development of the second language for these children is significantly different from BFLA children.  This area is especially important when applied to teaching approaches and methods for teaching a second language to SLA students.  The AoA is more significant than the Length of Residence (LoR) for SLA students and adults.  Hence, most research, especially language studies that now incorporate study of brain activation areas that support various theories on language processing employ control and experimental groups based on AoA instead of LoR. The area of Neurolinguistics, the study of the brain in relation to language processing, is an area I have also pursued over the past fifteen years.  Finally, I have also worked with fossilization of languages through studies of endangered languages.  This is an important aspect of language that we must face as English or other languages become dominant to the point that we lose use of some truly special and unique cultural languages that continue to decline.  We should be aware of this tendency and somehow sustain these endangered languages.