Recent Publications
Many papers can be downloaded from Geraldine Legendre’s faculty page, see Publications.
Barrière, I., S. Kresh, K. Aharodnik, G. Legendre, & T. Nazzi. 2019. The Comprehension of 3rd person singular –s by NYC English-speaking Preschoolers. In M. Rispoli & T. Ionin (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Language Acquisition and Language Disorders Series. 7-33.
Koulaguina, E., G. Legendre, I. Barrière, & T. Nazzi. 2019. Abstract syntax at 24 months: Evidence from subject-verb agreement with conjoined subjects. Language Learning and Development, 15:2, 157-176.
Legendre, G., Y. Gorashi, S. Krasnik, & E. Koulaguina. 2019. Finiteness and modality in Early Child French. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 26:3, 361-386.
Hsin, L. & G. Legendre. 2018. Strong integration in bilingual grammar, formalized. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 8:6, 1–41.
Gonzalez-Gomez, N, Hsin, L, Barrière, I, Nazzi, T, & Legendre, G. 2017. Agarra, agarran: Evidence of Early Comprehension of Subject-Verb Agreement in Spanish. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 160, 33-49.
Buerkin-Pontrelli, A., J. Culbertson, G. Legendre, & T. Nazzi. 2017. Competing Models of Liaison Acquisition: Evidence from corpus and experimental data. Language 93:1, 189-219. (Awarded the Best Paper in Language 2017 Award by the Linguistic Society of America.)
Atkinson, E. 2016. Active dependency completion in adults and children: Representations and adaptation. Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University.
Barrière, I., Goyet, L., Kresh, S., Legendre, G., & Nazzi, T. 2016. Uncovering Productive Morpho-syntax in French-learning Toddlers: A Multi-Dimensional Methodology Perspective. Journal of Child Language, 43:05, 1131-1157.
Culbertson, J., E. Koulagina, N. Gonzalez-Gomez, G. Legendre, & T. Nazzi. 2016. Developing knowledge of non-adjacent dependencies. Developmental Psychology, 52:12, 2174-83.
Gonzalez-Gomez, N., L. Hsin, J. Culbertson, I., Barrière, T. Nazzi, & G. Legendre. 2014. Revealing Early Comprehension of Subject-Verb Agreement in Spanish. BUCLD 38 Proceedings (Vol. 1). Cascadilla Press, 158-170.
Legendre, G., J. Culbertson, E. Zaroukian, L. Hsin, I. Barrière, & T. Nazzi. 2014. Is children’s comprehension of subject-verb agreement universally late? Comparative evidence from French, English, and Spanish. Lingua 144. 21-39.
Hsin, L., Legendre, G., & Omaki, A. 2013. Priming Cross-Linguistic Interference in Spanish-English Bilingual Children. BUCLD 37 Proceedings (Vol. 1), Cascadilla Press, 165-177.
Hsin, L. 2012. Accelerated acquisition in Spanish-English Bilinguals: the Structural Transfer Hypothesis. In WCCFL 29: Proceedings of the 29th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA.
Rissman, L., Legendre, G., & Landau, B. 2013. Abstract morphosyntax in two and three-year- old children: evidence from priming. Language Learning and Development, 9(3), 278-292.
Culbertson, J., Smolensky, P., & Legendre, G. 2012. Learning biases predict a word order universal. Cognition, 122:306–329.
Legendre, G. & P. Smolensky. 2012. On the asymmetrical difficulty of acquiring person reference with personal pronouns: From unidirectional to bidirectional OT. Journal of Logic, Language, and Information, 21:7-30.
Legendre, G., I. Barrière, L. Goyet, & T. Nazzi. 2011. On the acquisition of implicated presuppositions: Evidence from French personal pronouns. Selected Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2010). Cascadilla Press. 150-162.
Nazzi, T, Barrière, I, Goyet, L., Kresh, S. Culbertson, J., & Legendre, G. 2011. Tracking irregular morpho-phonological dependencies in natural language: Evidence from the acquisition of subject-verb agreement in French. Cognition, 120, 119-135.
Legendre, G., I. Barrière, L. Goyet, & T. Nazzi. 2010. Comprehension of infrequent subject-verb agreement forms: Evidence from French-learning children. Child Development. 81:6, 1859–1875.
Legendre, G., J. Culbertson, I. Barriere, T. Nazzi, & L. Goyet. 2010. Experimental and empirical evidence for the status and acquisition of subject clitics and agreement marking in adult and child Spoken French. In Torrens, V., Escobar, L., Gavarro, A., J. Gutierrez (Eds.) Movement and Clitics: Adult and Child Grammar. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 333-360.
Recent presentations
Nguyen, A., Howe, W., & Legendre, G. (2020). Testing syntactic simplicity: wh-in-situ vs. fronted wh-questions in L1 acquisition. Talk at Many Paths to Language Max Planck Institute Conference, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Nguyen, A., Howe, W., & Legendre, G. (2020). English-speaking children’s acquisition of wh-in-situ. Poster at Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America 6. Reykjavík, Iceland.
Nguyen, A., & Legendre, G. (2020). The acquisition of English wh-in-situ. Talk at the Linguistic Society of America 2021 Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA.
Lutken, C.J., Omaki, A., and Legendre, G. (2019) What do you think what’s the cause of children’s errors in biclausal questions? BUCLD 44. Boston, MA. Poster.
Lutken, C.J. and Legendre, G. (2019)Syntax or Something Else? What causes systematic errors in children’s production and comprehension of complex questions? Newcastle University, United Kingdom. Invited Talk.
Lutken, C.J. and Legendre, G. (2019) Errors as Evidence: What children’s syntactic errors can tell us about how they learn grammar. University of Konstanz, Germany. Invited Talk.
Lutken, C.J. and Legendre, G. (2019) An Introduction to Optimality Theory: Survival of the Fit Enough. University of Pisa, Italy. Invited Talk.
Lutken, C.J. and Legendre, G. (2019) An Optimality Theory analysis of Scope Marking at the syntax/semantics interface. MACSIM 8. New York, NY. Poster. 3
2019 Lutken, C.J. Legendre, G., and Omaki A. Syntax or something else: what is the source of systematic errors in children’s complex questions? SRCD 19. Baltimore, MD. Poster.
Lutken, C.J. Syntactic Creativity: What can we learn about language acquisition from children’s errors?. Stevenson University. April 2018. Invited talk.
Lutken, C.J. and Omaki, A. Children’s Medial Wh-questions: Asymmetry in comprehension and production. University of Delaware Linguistics and Cognitive Science Student Conference. Newark, DE. April 2018.
Lutken, C.J. and Omaki, A. Production-Comprehension Asymmetry in Children’s Medial Wh-Questions. BUCLD 43. Boston, MA. November 2017.
Lutken, C.J. and Omaki, A. Imbalance in English Speaking Children’s Production and Comprehension of Wh-Questions. July 2017. LSA Summer Institute. Lexington, KY. Poster.
Lutken, C. J. and Omaki, A. What do you think why American children produce Russian wh-questions?. March 2017. CUNY. Boston, MA. Poster.
Barriere, I, K. Aharodnik, S. Kresh, G. Legendre, T. Nazzi. Comprehension of English Subject-Verb Agreement by Spanish-English Bilingual Preschoolers. 14th International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Lyon (France), July 2017.
Koulaguina, E, G. Legendre, E. Sivakumar, I. Barrière, T, Nazzi. Comprehension of suffixal Subject-Verb number agreement in French-learning toddlers. 14th International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Lyon (France), July 2017. Poster.
Koulaguina, E., G. Legendre, I. Barrière, T, Nazzi. Sensitivity to Subject-Verb agreement in French-learning toddlers: the case of conjoined subjects. April 2017. SRCD, Austin, TX. Poster.
Barrière, I., Kresh, S., Aharodnik, K., Legendre, G., Nazzi, T. The Comprehension of 3rd Person Singular –s by NYC English-speaking Preschoolers. GALANA, University of Illinois, September 2016.
Legendre, G. The path to early comprehension of Subject-Verb agreement in French. Colloquium, Michigan State University, September 2016.
Legendre, G. French liaison and the early acquisition of subject-verb agreement. University of Edinburgh, June 2016.
Legendre, G. Early L1 knowledge of Subject-Verb agreement: Evidence from comprehension and early sensitivity to grammaticality. Seminar UMR 7023, Université Paris 8, May 2016; Laboratoire de Psycholinguistique, Université de Genève, May 2016.
Barrière, I., Kresh, S., Aharodnik, K., Legendre, G., Nazzi, T. The Comprehension of 3rd Person Subject-Verb Agreement by Low SES NYC English-speaking Preschoolers Acquiring Different Varieties of English: a Multidimensional Approach. Workshop on Formal Ways of Analyzing Variation 3, CUNY Graduate Center, New York. May 2016.
Legendre, G. The nature of early morpho-syntactic knowledge: Evidence from Subject-Verb agreement. Universidad de las Islas Baleares, Spain. April 2016.
Legendre, G. Early acquisition of morphosyntax (4 lectures). LPP, Université Descartes, Paris, France. March 2016.
Lecture 1: The theoretical debate (case study : liaison)
Lecture 2: Production (case study : Root Infinitives)
Lecture 3: Sensitivity to grammaticality (case study : SV agreement)
Lecture 4: Comprehension (case study : SV agreement)
Legendre, G. Verbal pro-clitic liaison in the early acquisition of subject-verb agreement. Workshop on Theoretical and Experimental Issues in Liaison and the Acquisition of French. Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-Marseille Université & CNRS, France. February 2016.
Legendre, G. Early L1 knowledge of Subject-Verb agreement: Evidence from comprehension and early sensitivity to grammaticality. Inaugural Lecture, Nyelvelméleti Kutatóközpont (Budapest Research Centre for Linguistic Theory), Eötvos Loránd University, Budapest. January 2016.
Legendre, G. What is early knowledge of language like? Evidence from comprehension and early sensitivity to grammaticality. Departmental Colloquium, Dept of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest. January 2016.
Legendre, G. Early L1 acquisition of subject-verb agreement: Evidence from comprehension and sensitivity to grammaticality. Departmental Colloquium, Dept of Linguistics, University of Washington. December 2015.
Legendre, G. A cross-linguistic perspective on early L1 comprehension of subject-verb agreement in number. Workshop on Gender and Number. Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany. October 2015.
Koulaguina, E, J. Culbertson, N. Gonzalez-Gomez, G. Legendre, I. Barrière & T. Nazzi. Early sensitivity of French-learning children to Subject-Verb number agreement. 12th Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition conference (GALA 12). University of Nantes. September 2015.
Koulaguina, E, J. Culbertson, N. Gonzalez-Gomez, G. Legendre & T. Nazzi. The acquisition of Subject-Verb number agreement with liaison:_From surface patterns to abstract knowledge. Journée GDR Université Paris-Descartes. June 2015.
Barrière, I., Kresh, S., Polanco, C., Rauber, S., Fay, V., Lanham, Robertson, J., Legendre, G. & Nazzi, T. Language-Specific Characteristics in low SES Mexican Spanish-English Bilingual Preschoolers’ Comprehension of Subject-Verb Agreement. 10th International Symposium of Bilingualism (ISB10), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. May 2015.
Hsin, L., and Legendre, G. Integrated bilingual grammatical architecture: Syntactic development in Optimality Theory. 10th International Symposium of Bilingualism (ISB10), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. May 2015.
Koulaguina, E., Culbertson, J., Gonzalez-Gomez, N., Legendre, G., Nazzi, T. Interpreting early preferences: Familiarity vs. novelty effects in the acquisition of Subject-Verb agreement. Society for Research on Child Development. Philadelphia. March 2015. [Poster].
Legendre, G. On the multiple factors responsible for late comprehension of subject-verb agreement: a cross-linguistic perspective Workshop on the Role of Prosody in Language Learning: Stress, Tone and Intonation, Centre for Language Sciences (CLaS), Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. December 2014.
Barrière, I., Alda M., Malykhina, J, Hsin L, Gonzalez-Gomez, N, Legendre, G., & Nazzi T. The effect of language characteristics, language dominance, and preference on the receptive skills of Spanish-English dual language learners. Poster. Head Start’s 12th National Research Conference on Early Childhood. Washington, D.C. July 2014.
González-Gómez, N., Hsin, L., Culbertson, J., Barrière, I., Nazzi, T., and Legendre, G. Revealing early comprehension of subject-verb agreement in Spanish. BUCLD 38, Boston. November 2013.
Buerkin-Salgado, A., J. Culbertson, G. Legendre, and T. Nazzi. Elicited Production of French Liaison at Age 3: Knowledge, Input Frequency Effect, or Both? SRCD, Seattle. April 2013.
Hsin, L., Legendre, G., and Omaki, A. Priming cross-linguistic interference in Spanish-English bilingual children. BUCLD 37. November 2012.
Hsin, L., Legendre, G., and Omaki, A. Priming cross-linguistic interference in bilingual children. Poster presented at AMLaP 2012. (Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing: Riva del Garda, Italy). September 2012.
Hsin, L., Legendre, G., and Omaki, A. Context and constructions: cross-linguistic influence in bilingual preschoolers. Poster presented at the International Workshop on Language Production. IWOLP 2012: NYU.
Culbertson, J. Legendre, G., Gonzalez Gomez, N., and T. Nazzi. Evolving sensitivity to French prefixal subject-verb agreement. ICIS XVII, Minneapolis, MN. April 2012.