(in alphabetical order)
Ivana Cvekić Crosslinguistic influence in third language acquisition: Lexical and grammatical interactions between Serbian, German and English (completed 2020, supervisor: Prof. Dr. Holger Hopp)
The topic of my PhD research centers on morphosyntactic real-time processing of English as an L2 or L3. I study grammatical gender and tense/aspect. One of the aims of my research is to test L1 influence in cases where L1 and L2 grammar overlap, but also in instances where the feature of interest is absent in the L2, yet is realized in the L3. Additionally, I am interested in understanding how crosslinguistic influence extends to and interacts in bilingual L3 learners. The languages I study are Serbo-Croatian, German and English.
Duygu Şafak
How do L2 learners use verbs in sentence processing? Integration and prediction in L2 sentence comprehension (completed 2022, supervisor: Prof. Dr. Holger Hopp)
In my PhD project, I look at the question of whether second language (L2) learners employ the same sentence processing strategies as native speakers do and to what extent the native language (L1) plays a role in L2 processing. I specifically investigate whether and how adult L2 learners of English with L1 German and L1 Turkish backgrounds use lexically specific verb information to predict upcoming structure during real-time sentence comprehension. To this end, I am conducting eye-tracking experiments during reading and in the visual world paradigm.
Marie Schnieders
Lexical Stepping Stones and Stumbling Blocks in Early Foreign Language Learning – Lexical
Effects on Morphosyntactic Acquisition of Primary School Students (Betreuer: Prof. Dr. Holger
Hopp)
In my PhD project, I look into elementary school students’ first steps of English Foreign
Language learning. In particular, I focus on the facilitating and impeding effects of cognate words
for grammatical learning using sentence completion tasks. My PhD work further aims at
investigating the relationship between prior-instruction segmentation abilities and lexical and
grammatical learning outcomes towards the end of primary school instruction.