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(2):e70044.
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Verbs or Nouns? A cross-linguistic study examining the effect of morphological complexity and input on children's early lexical development. In: Annual Meetings of the Cognitive Science Society, Rotterdam, 24 Juli 2024 - 27 Juli 2024. UC Merced, 2354-2361.
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Acquisition of gender agreement depends on frequency distributions in specific contexts. In: Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Rotterdam, 24 Juli 2024 - 27 Juli 2024. UC Merced, 2496-2502.
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How Do Children Combine Pointing and Language in the Earliest Stages of Development? A Case Study of Russian and Chintang. In: The 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Toronto, Canada, 27 July 2022 - 30 July 2022. UC Merced, 3696-3702.
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Development of Morphological Flexibility in the Acquisition of Aspect: Input Patterns and Children's Production. 2022, University of Zurich, Philosophische Fakultät.
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Frequency vs. Salience in First Language Acquisition: The Acquisition of Aspect Marking in Chintang. In: Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, online, July 2021. California Digital Library, 840-846.
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How Do Children Become Flexible in Their Use of Grammatical Categories? The Aspect Hypothesis Revisited. In: 44th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, 7 November 2019 - 10 November 2019. Cascadilla Press, 363-375.
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Development of Verb Morphology: From Item-Specificity to Proficient Use. In: The 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Montreal, QC, 24 July 2019 - 27 July 2019. CogSci, 2325-2331.
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The acquisition of polysynthetic verb forms in Chintang. In: Fortescue, Michael D; Mithun, Marianne; Evans, Nicholas. The Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 495 - 514.
ZORA Publication List
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Publications
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Ten in der obecná čeština: Jugendjahre eines zukünftigen Artikels?. In: Velmezova, Ekaterina. Schweizerische Beiträge zum XV. Internationalen Slavistenkongress in Minsk, August 2013. Bern: Peter Lang, 143-164.
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Irony in the face(s) of politeness: Strategic use of verbal irony in Czech political TV debates. In: Thielemann, Nadine; Kosta, Peter. Approaches to Slavic Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 187-213.
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Ironie - Freund oder Feind?: Zur Auswirkung von Ironie auf das Höflichkeitsmanagement. In: Behensky, Susanne. m*OST 2010 : Oesterreichische StudierendenTagung für SlawistInnen. München: Verlag Otto Sagner, 24-31.
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Strategičeskoe upotreblenie ironii v social'nyx i političeskix televizionnyx tok-šou. In: Rozanova, N. Problemy rečevogo obščenija. Moscow: Nauka/FLINTA, 278-287.
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Missing verbs in colloquial Russian: Ambiguity or Vagueness?. In: Karl, K B; Krumbholz, G; Lazar, M. Beiträge der europäischen Slavistischen Linguistik (POLYSLAV). Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 137-145.
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Every Mama Needs a Baby: Ein neuer Zugang zur Semantik von Muterrollen im Russischen. In: Konferenzsammelband m*OST 2009. München: Verlag Otto Sagner, 8pp.
Under Review
Mazara, Jekaterina. 2015. Impoliteness in Russian televised political debates. In: Baczkowska, Anna (ed). Impoliteness in Interaction. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
