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Researcher

Sarah Bernolet

  • Research Expertise:I investigate sentence production patterns (do you prefer "My grandma's jacket is yellow" or "The jacket of my grandma is yellow"?) in order to determine which memory representations, procedures and memory systems are involved in the production and comprehension of language. I'm interested in sentence production by experienced bi-/multilinguals, but also by speakers who have not fully mastered a language. How do we learn constructions in a new language? How do we handle sentence structures that are very similar across languages (the mouse is being chased by the cat - de muis wordt achternagezeten door de kat)? Do representations of our native language interfere with sentence production in a second language? And the other way around? The role of implicit and explicit memory processes is sentence production is a common thread trough all of these research questions. Recently, I started investigating language production at a higher level as well: the production of academic texts. I will try out different kinds of feedback to improve students' writing quality and focus on the differences and similarities between writing in a first/second/foreign language. I use sentence production experiments with ad withou syntactic priming, sentence comprehension studies, language learning studies using a miniature-language-paradigm, and writing research using keystrokelogging.
  • Keywords:PSYCHOLINGUISTICS, SYNTAX, BILINGUALISM, Language and literature (incl. information, documentation, library and archive sciences)
  • Disciplines:Learning and behaviour, Psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, Syntax
  • Research techniques:- sentence elicitation experiments with and without syntactic priming, in spoken and written modality, in dialogue and monologue settings, with students and atypical participant groups (bilinguals, elderly people, patients with memory deficit) - sentence recall experiments - language learning studies using a miniature-language-paradigm - writing studies involving keystrokelogging
  • Users of research expertise:- (Cognitive) linguists who want to collect experimental data on actual language/learner behavior - language teachers interested in the learning of second language syntax