CURRICULUM VITAE SILKE BRANDT CONTACT Silke Brandt, PhD English Department Nadelberg 6 CH-4051 Basel Switzerland silke.brandt@unibas.ch POSITIONS 2011-present Postdoctoral researcher English Department 2008-2010 Postdoctoral researcher Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology 2005-2008 PhD student Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Advisors: Heike Behrens, Elena Lieven, and Michael Tomasello 2003-2005 Research assistant 2000-2002 Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology EDUCATION Nov. 2008 Dr. phil. (PhD) with summa cum laude English Linguistics Thesis: The Acquisition of Complex Syntax in English and German: Evidence from various methods March 2005 Magister (Master s degree) American Studies, German Linguistics, and Journalism Thesis: The Acquisition of Relative Clauses in German and English: The very first steps 1
2002-2003 Graduate exchange student Linguistics University of California, Santa Barbara 1999-2005 Student of American Studies, German Studies, and Journalism 1998 Abitur (A-levels) Otto-Hahn Gymnasium Springe (Germany) OTHER 1998-1999 Au-Pair (Connecticut) FELLOWSHIPS 2008-2010 Max Planck Society Postdoctoral Fellowship 2005-2008 Max Planck Society Doctoral Fellowship 2002-2003 Exchange Student Stipend for University of California from German Academic Exchange Service RESEARCH INTERESTS Language acquisition in German and English Acquisition and processing of complex syntax Language processing, working memory, and cognitive control General learning mechanisms, generalization processes, input-output relations Language and Theory of Mind COLLABORATIONS Acquisition of Complex Syntax with Elena Lieven (University of Manchester and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) and Michael Tomasello (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) Acquisition and Processing of Relative Clauses in German and English with Evan Kidd (University of Manchester and La Trobe, Melbourne) and Sanjo Nitschke (University of Manchester) Word order errors in German- and English-speaking children s wh-questions with auxiliaries with Ben Ambridge and Caroline Rowland (University of Liverpool) 2
Development of productivity with complement-clause constructions in German with Arie Verhagen (Leiden University) Complement clauses and Theory of Mind development with David Buttelmann (University of Erfurt) JOURNAL ARTICLES Brandt, S., Buttelmann, D., Lieven, E., Tomasello, M. (submitted). Children comprehend reference to mental states differently for first-person and third-person subjects. Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (under revision). Development of cues across constructions: German children s use of word order, case, and form of NPs in their interpretation of simple and complex sentences. Lieven, E. & Brandt, S. (2011). The constructivist approach. Infancia y Aprendizaje 34(3). Brandt, S., Verhagen, A., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2011). German children s productivity with simple transitive and complement-clause constructions: Testing the effects of frequency and variability. Cognitive Linguistics 22(2). Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2010). Development of word order in German complement-clause constructions: Effects of input frequencies, lexical items, and discourse function. Language 86(3), 583-610. Brandt S., Kidd, E., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2009). The discourse bases of relativization: An investigation of young German and English-speaking children's comprehension of relative clauses. Cognitive Linguistics 20(3), 539-570. Brandt, S., Diessel, H., & Tomasello M. (2008). The acquisition of German relative clauses: A case study. Journal of Child Language 35 (2), 325-348. Kidd, E., Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Object relatives made easy: A crosslinguistic comparison of the constraints influencing young children s processing of relative clauses. Language and Cognitive Processes 22(6), 860-897. BOOK CHAPTERS Kidd, E., Bavin, E. L., & Brandt, S. (forthcoming). The role of the lexicon in the development of parsing preferences. In S. Bartsch & D. Bittner (Eds.), Lexical bootstrapping: On the central role of lexics and semantics in child language development. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Brandt, S. (2011). Einfache Transitive und Komplementsatz-Konstruktionen im Spracherwerb: Analysierbarkeit und Kategorienbildung. In A. Lasch & A. Ziem (Eds.), Konstruktionsgrammatik III: Aktuelle Fragen und Lösungsansätze. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Brandt, S. (2011). Learning from social interaction: The form and function of relative clauses in discourse and experimental studies with children. In E. Kidd (Ed.), The 3
acquisition of relative clauses: Processing, typology, and function. (Trends in Language Acquisition Vol. 8) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Brandt, S. & Kidd, E. (2011). Relative clause acquisition and representation: Evidence from spontaneous speech, sentence repetition, and comprehension. In D. Schönefeld (Ed.), Converging evidence. Methodological and theoretical issues for linguistic research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Brandt, S. (2011). Analyzability and generalization across verbs and constructions: The development of transitives and complement-clause constructions in German child language. In I. Arnon & E. Clark (Eds.), Experience, variation and generalization: Learning a first language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. REVIEWS & COMMENTARIES Tomasello, M. & Brandt, S. (2009). Flexibility in the semantics and syntax of children s early verb use. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 74(2), 113-126. Brandt, S. (2004). Gunther Kress & Theo van Leeuwen, Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. Language in Society 33(1). (book review) PEER REVIEWED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS 2011 Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: Processing cue frequencies across constructions. Paper presented at the congress of the International Association for the Study of Child Language, Montreal, Canada. Brandt, S., Buttelmann, D., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: First and Third Person Perspective in Complement Clauses and Theory of Mind. Paper to be presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA. Nitschke, S., Brandt, S., & Kidd, E.: Experience and Processing of Relative Clauses in German. Paper to be presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA. 2010 Brandt, S.: Children s interpretation of relative clauses with multiple cues. Paper to be presented at Competing Motivations, Leipzig, Germany. Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: Interpretation of relative clauses: What does case add? Paper presented at the Child Language Seminar, London, UK. Brandt, S.: German children s productivity with simple transitive and complement-clause constructions. Paper presented at Konstruktionsgrammatik: Neue Perspektiven zur Untersuchung des Deutschen und Englischen, Kiel, Germany. 4
2009 Brandt, S., Verhagen, A., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: Development of syntactic productivity across constructions and items. Paper presented at the 33rd Stanford Child Language Research Forum, Berkeley, CA. Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: Cues guiding German children's interpretation of relative clauses: A Competition-Model perspective. Poster presented at the SRCD Biennial Meeting, Denver, CO Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: German children's interpretation of simple and complex sentences with conflicting cues. Poster presented at the CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Davis, CA. 2008 Brandt, S., Kidd, E., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: The discourse bases of relativization: German and English-speaking children s performance on object relatives across different methods. Paper presented at the Internationale Konferenz der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Kognitive Linguistik, Leipzig, Germany. Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: Skewed distributions in the input and formulaic matrix clauses in early complement-clause constructions: A case study in German. Poster presented at the congress of the International Association for the Study of Child Language, Edinburgh, UK. 2007 Brandt, S.: Skewed input facilitates first steps into finite complementclause production: a case study in German. Poster presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA. Brandt, S., Kidd, E., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: Taking a closer look at object relatives: what do children need to acquire? Paper presented at Interdisciplinary Approaches to Relative Clauses, Cambridge, UK. Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: Acquiring several complementclause constructions in German. Paper presented at the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Krakow, Poland. 2006 Brandt, S.: Verb-dependent complement-clause constructions in preschoolers: A case study. Poster presented at the Child Language Seminar, Newcastle, UK. Kidd, E., Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: Object relatives made easy: A crosslinguistic comparison of the constraints influencing young children s processing of relative clauses. Poster presented at the Child Language Seminar, Newcastle, UK. Kidd, E., Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M.: Are object relatives really so hard? Children parse relative clauses with multiple constraints. Poster presented at the CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, NY. 2005 Brandt, S.: First steps in the acquisition of relative clauses in German and English. Paper presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA. 5
Brandt, S. & Diessel, H.: The development of relative clauses in German. Poster presented at the congress of the International Association for the Study of Child Language, Berlin, Germany. Brandt, S. & Diessel, H.: Relationship between the input and acquisition of German relative clauses. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Sprachwissenschaft, Cologne, Germany. 2004 Brandt, S. & Diessel, H.: The development of relative clauses in German. Poster presented at the Child Language Seminar, Bristol, UK. INVITED TALKS 2010 Form und Funktion von Relativsätzen im Spracherwerb Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) 2008 Methods in Language Acquisition. English Department, TEACHING 2012 Language Acquisition and Cognitive Development LOT Winterschool 2012 in Tilburg 2011 Categorization and Prototype Theory English in its Social Contexts Language and the Mind 2009 Methods in Psycholinguistics (seminar) First Language Acquisition Ideum, Teacher Training in German as a Foreign Language (lecture course) 2006-2007 Introduction to Developmental Psychology 1 and 2 (lecture courses, co-taught with the Max Planck social cognition group and Moritz Daum) 2006 First Language Acquisition Development of Communicative Skills (seminar, co-taught with Sabine Stoll) 2002-2003 German 2 and 3 6
University of California, Santa Barbara (seminar) SUPERVISION since 2009 PhD project on the acquisition of verbal morphology and perspective shifts in German (Sarah Girlich) 2009 Master s thesis on screening and therapy in delayed language acquisition (Karin Gmeinbauer) AD HOC REVIEWS Cognitive Linguistics, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Journal of Child Language, Pragmatics and Cognition 7