About
Professor Roumyana Slabakova is the Chair of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Center for Linguistics, Language Education and Acquisition Research (CLLEAR) in Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of Southampton.
Roumyana was born in Varna, Bulgaria and studied at the English-medium high school there. She completed her undergraduate education in English Philology at the Sofia University "Kliment Ohridski," specializing in linguistics and educational psychology. She taught English for academic purposes at the same university before she embarked on her postgraduate studies. Her PhD degree was awarded by McGill University, Montreal, Canada, where she studied under the supervision of Professor Lydia White. Her dissertation investigated the second language acquisition of aspect by Bulgarian native speakers learning English. She taught and conducted research at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA before she joined the University of Southampton in 2013.
Research
Research interests
- My research is grounded in generative linguistic theory and explores the second language (L2) acquisition process. My theoretical focus is the acquisition of grammatical structure and its interaction with meaning. I use online and offline psycholinguistic methodologies to investigate the following theoretical issues:
- What is the linguistic nature of the bilingual and multilingual grammar?Are there some properties of language (e.g. words, sounds, sentence structure) that are easier to acquire than others (e.g. functional morphemes, grammatical meanings)? Are there are some properties, such as pragmatic universals, that will come for free in the grammar of the learner?Can lexical, phrasal and sentence meaning be acquired in the L2? How does the interface between form and meaning affect the L2 acquisition of meaning?What is the effect of the native language in the acquisition of a second language? What are the effects of the native and the second language in the acquisition of a third language?How does linguistic and processing complexity affect knowledge of meaning in the L2? How do children acquiring their native language and adult L2 learners compare in this respect?
Current research
Professor Slabakova is currently working on multilingual acquisition of definiteness and genericity. She is also actively elaborating on her Scalpel Model, which endeavours to explain third and additional language development.
Research projects
Active projects
Completed projects
Publications
Supervision
Current PhD Students
Teaching
I teach modules on second language acquisition theory, linguistic approaches to language acquisition and to English grammar. I am very happy to advise and supervise postgraduate students working in formal approaches to second and third language acquisition, heritage language acquisition, and first language attrition.
External roles and responsibilities
Biography
Prizes
- Albert Valdman Award (2018)
- The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (2019)
- Member of The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters (2020)