Jennifer B. Austin

I am an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at Rutgers University, Newark. In 2001 I received my Ph.D. in Linguistics from Cornell University with a minor in Cognitive Science. I am a member of the graduate faculty in Psychology at Rutgers-Newark and in Spanish and Portuguese at Rutgers-New Brunswick.

Address

• Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures
• 413 Conklin Hall
• Rutgers University
• Newark, NJ 07102

Phone

973-353-1858

Fax

973-353-5733

Email

Research interests

I study language acquisition, bilingualism and language contact. My research interests include the effects of bilingualism on language development and speech processing in children and adults; the acquisition of ergativity; first language loss in bilingual children; and the role that bilingual speakers play in promoting language change.

Publications

Book

• Austin, J., Blume, M. and Sánchez, L. (Under contract). Bilingualism in the Spanish-speaking world: Linguistic and cognitive perspectives. Cambridge University Press.

Recent papers

• Austin, J. (Under review). Ergativity in child Basque. In E. Banvin and S. Stoll, (eds.), The Acquisition of Ergative Structures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Austin, J., Blume, M. and Sánchez, L. (Under review). Morphosyntactic attrition in the L1 of Spanish-English bilingual children. Hispania.
• Austin, J. (Under review). Markedness, input frequency and the acquisition of inflection: Evidence from Basque/Spanish bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism (special issue on Basque bilingualism).
• Austin, J. (In press). The case-agreement hierarchy in acquisition: Evidence from children learning Basque. Lingua (special issue on ergativity).
• Austin, J. (2010). Rich inflection and the production of root infinitives in child language. Morphology 20 (1), 41–69.
• Austin, J. (2009). Delay, interference and bilingual development: The acquisition of verbal morphology in children learning Basque and Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism 13 (4): 447–479.
• Austin, J. (2007). Grammatical interference and the acquisition of ergative case in bilingual children learning Basque and Spanish. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 10 (3): 315–331.
• Austin, J. (2006). Dative overmarking in Basque: Evidence of Spanish-Basque convergence. Euskalingua 9, 136–145.
• Foursha, C., Austin, J. and Van de Walle, G. (2006). Is language processing identical in monolinguals and early, balanced bilinguals? In D. Bamman, T. Magnitskaia and C. Zaller, (eds.), Proceedings Supplement of the 30th Boston University Conference on Language Development.