Current courses

LING:6080:0001 Topics in Second Language Acquisition (Fall 2023)

LING:3001:OAAA Introduction to Linguistics (Spring 2024)

LING:3030:0001 Child Language–Linguistic Perspectives (Spring 2024)

LING:6040:0001 Linguistic Structures (Spring 2024)

Research interests

• syntax/pragmatics & semantics/pragmatics interfaces
• first and second language learning in children and adults
• experimental (psycho)linguistics and corpus studies
• metaphors and idioms in lexical learning

Research

Metaphors in Bilingual Acquisition: Empirical and Theoretical Approaches

(MBA project and research lab)

How do metaphors arise in language and how do they evolve over time? What metaphors are universal (common to all languages)? What cultural associations do metaphors develop in individual languages? How do children and adults acquire metaphor-based linguistic knowledge? I explore these questions within the framework of cognitive linguistics, using experimental methods.

Interested undergraduate students of linguistics can participate through the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) or an individual special project (1 s.h. minimum).

https://our.research.uiowa.edu/students/how-start

https://myui.uiowa.edu/my-ui/courses/details.page?ci=149408&id=993264

Current projects

• metaphors and idioms in second language learning
• null object semantics in Construction(s) Grammar
• determiner semantics and count/mass distinctions in second language learning
• impersonal constructions in American English: an experimental study

Recent conference presentations

Gavruseva, E. (2023).  Pragmatic vs. semantic bases of implicit objects in American English: A comparison of experimental and spoken-corpus studies. Paper presented at CTIELS (Contemporary Trends in English Language Studies), organized online by the Institute of Modern Languages, University of Zielona Góra, Zielona Góra, Poland, May 18-19.

Gavruseva, E. (2021) 4th Experimental Pragmatics in Italy Conference (XPRAG 2020(21)) The Pragmatics of Indefinite Determiners in English: An Experimental Study (online conference due to COVID restrictions, University of Turin, Italy, July.).

Selected publications

Gavruseva, E. (under review) Let’s drop the object: an experimental study of implicit object constructions in American English. In CogniTextes special issue “Constructions and Context(s)”), Leclerq, B., Desagulier, G. & D. Glynn (Eds.).

Gavruseva, E. & B. Haznedar (under contract). Child Second Language Acquisition: A State of the Art. To appear in the Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (Herschensohn, J. & M. Young-Scholten, Eds.). Cambridge University Press.

Gavruseva, E. (2019). Using Qualtrics software for researching foreign and second language learning. In Proceedings of the Annual International Conference “Society and Languages in the Third Millennium: Communication, Education, Translation.” RUDN (Publisher: Moscow People’s Friendship University).

Haznedar, B. & Gavruseva, E. [Eds.] (2008). Current trends in child second language acquisition: a generative perspective. John Benjamins: Amsterdam.

Gavruseva, E. (2008). Perfectivity semantics, telicity and event structure in child Russian. In Language Acquisition and Development Proceedings of GALA 2007 (Anna Gavarró & M. João Freitas, Eds.), 218-229. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Gavruseva, E. (2008). Syntactic frames and morphological cues in the acquisition of adjectives in child English and child Russian. In The Proceedings of the 33^rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (Eds. Jane Chandlee et al.), 187-198. Somerville, MA.

Gavruseva, E., & Meisterheim, M. (2003). On the syntax of predication in child L2 English. In J. Liceras et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6^th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (GASLA 2002), 115-121. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.