Jekaterina Mažara
I am a postdoc in the ACQDIV lab. My main interests lie in modelling of learning processes and the exploration of quantitative methods for the study of language acquisition in longitudinal corpora. I got my PhD from the University of Zurich in 2020.
Some of my core research interests are:
- acquisition of tense and aspect morphology
- interplay of language and pointing gestures
- modelling of acquisition rates of various linguistic structures
- measuring the increase of flexibility in children's production
- visualization of acquisition processes
Concurrent with my PhD work, I also worked on the SNF funded project Documentation and acquisition of Romansh Tuatschin. One of the main goals of the project was the collection, transcription, and annotation of a longitudinal audio-visual corpus of 6 Tuatschin-speaking children between the ages of 2;0 and 4;0. My main contribution to the project was the collection and management of data as well as overseeing the segmentation and transcription processes.
Education
| Sep 15 - Feb 20 |
PhD in General Linguistics; University of Zurich advisors: Sabine Stoll (UZH), Jean-Pascal Pfister UZH/ETH Zürich/Uni Bern) committee: Balthasar Bickel (UZH), Elena Lieven (University of Manchester) Working Title of Dissertation: Mechanisms of aspect acquisition in typologically diverse languages |
| 2012 | Visiting Scholar at University of California Berkeley |
| Feb 09 - Aug 10 |
MA, University of Zurich double major in Slavic linguistics and English literature minor in General Linguistics |
| Sep 06 - Dec 08 |
BA, University of Zurich double-major in Slavic literature and linguistics and English literature and linguistics |
Positions
| Jan 2021 - present | Postdoc in the ACQDIV Lab |
| July 16 - July 2020 | Project coordinator and researcher in the project Documentation and acquisition of Romansh Tuatschin |
| Sep 15 - Sep 19 | Research assistant in ACQDIV project |
| Sep 10 - Jul 15 |
Graduate research and teaching assistant Lecturer Slavic Department, University of Zurich |
| Jun 12 - Jun 15 |
Researcher in the project "Pragmatics of interaction in political language in Post-Socialist Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic" (P.I. Prof. Dr. Daniel Weiss) |
| Sep 08 - Aug 10 | Student teaching assistant, Slavic Department, University of Zurich |
Supervised works
| BA theses: | Nick Hintermann (2015), Irina Largey (2021), Oliwia Oleszawska (2021), Joey Huang (2022) |
| MA theses: | Selma Hardegger (2023, co-supervised with Sabine Stoll), Danica Pajović (2016, in an unofficial capacity) |
Conference Organization
|
10 – 13 September 2017 |
Co-organized workshop on "First language acquisition in the languages of the world" at the 50th meeting of the SLE in Zurich (with Damián Blasi and Sabine Stoll) |
| 20 – 21 Oct 2013 | Organisation of the conference "Pragmatics of Implicit Communication in Eastern European Political Discourse", Zurich |
Peer-reviewed publications
(imported from ZORA)
ZORA Publication List
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Publications
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Negation in first language acquisition: Universal or language-specific? Cognitive Science, 49, e70044. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70044
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Acquisition of gender agreement depends on frequency distributions in specific contexts Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2496–2502. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/16b5s7hq
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How Do Children Combine Pointing and Language in the Earliest Stages of Development? A Case Study of Russian and Chintang Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 3696–3702. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/62r4g9j9
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Development of Morphological Flexibility in the Acquisition of Aspect: Input Patterns and Children’s Production. (Dissertation, University of Zurich) https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-219557
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Frequency vs. Salience in First Language Acquisition: The Acquisition of Aspect Marking in Chintang (No. 43). 840–846. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5px0n9ck
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How Do Children Become Flexible in Their Use of Grammatical Categories? The Aspect Hypothesis Revisited BUCLD: Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development, 363–375. https://www.lingref.com/bucld/44/BUCLD44-29.pdf
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Development of Verb Morphology: From Item-Specificity to Proficient Use 2325–2331. https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2019/papers/0404/0404.pdf
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The acquisition of polysynthetic verb forms in Chintang In M. D. Fortescue, M. Mithun, & N. Evans (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis (pp. 495–514). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199683208.013.28
ZORA Publication List
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Publications
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Irony in the face(s) of politeness: Strategic use of verbal irony in Czech political TV debates In N. Thielemann & P. Kosta (Eds.), Approaches to Slavic Interaction (No. 20; pp. 187–213). John Benjamins.
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Ten in der obecná čeština: Jugendjahre eines zukünftigen Artikels? In E. Velmezova (Ed.), Schweizerische Beiträge zum XV. Internationalen Slavistenkongress in Minsk, August 2013 (No. 83; pp. 143–164). Peter Lang.
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Ironie - Freund oder Feind?: Zur Auswirkung von Ironie auf das Höflichkeitsmanagement In S. Behensky (Ed.), m*OST 2010 : Oesterreichische StudierendenTagung für SlawistInnen (No. 486; pp. 24–31). Verlag Otto Sagner.
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Missing verbs in colloquial Russian: Ambiguity or Vagueness? In K. B. Karl, G. Krumbholz, & M. Lazar (Eds.), Beiträge der europäischen Slavistischen Linguistik (POLYSLAV) (No. 14; pp. 137–145). Verlag Otto Sagner.
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Every Mama Needs a Baby: Ein neuer Zugang zur Semantik von Muterrollen im Russischen In Konferenzsammelband m*OST 2009 (p. 8pp). Verlag Otto Sagner.
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Swiss Cheese for Lazy Speakers: Verb Omissions in Russian and Czech Russian in Contrast, 2, 231–242. https://www.journals.uio.no/index.php/osla/article/view/116
Under Review
Mazara, Jekaterina. 2015. Impoliteness in Russian televised political debates. In: Baczkowska, Anna (ed). Impoliteness in Interaction. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
