Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Marilyn Vihman
Professor
Visit Marilyn Vihman's profile on the York Research Database to:
- See a full list of publications
- Browse activities and projects
- Explore connections, collaborators, related work and more
Profile
Biography
Marilyn Vihman’s primary interest is in phonological development. She took up a Chair in Language and Linguistics at York in 2007. She received her BA in Russian (Bryn Mawr College) and her PhD in Linguistics (University of California, Berkeley). Marilyn directed the Child Phonology Project at Stanford University from 1980-1989. She later taught in Speech Science and Communication Disorders in Louisiana before coming to the UK, where she was Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Wales, Bangor from 1996 to 2006.
In 1996 Marilyn published Phonological Development: The origins of language in the child, which provided surveys of research on both infant speech perception and early vocal and phonological development. After completing the book she carried out several studies funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, involving observational recordings of children learning British English and Welsh, acoustic analyses of English, Finnish, French, Japanese and Welsh babbling and early words, and experimental infant studies using both the perceptual Head Turn paradigm and Event Related Potentials. Her current research is primarily centred on the formation and later fading of phonological templates in the first years of life, with a cross-linguistic emphasis.
Marilyn is also known for her work on bilingual language development, based largely on observations and recordings of her own two children, who were raised using Estonian as the home language while attending schools in Northern California. She also conducted studies of children acquiring English and Welsh simultaneously in North Wales.
A thoroughly revised edition of the 1996 book appeared in 2014. This 2nd edition, which is restricted to the first two years of life, includes chapters on infant development (an overview of advances in social and cognitive as well as perceptual and vocal capacities), perception of rhythm, segmentation and distributional learning, word-form learning studies using a range of different experimental methods and bilingual perception and production.
Career
| 2007 - | Professor of Linguistics | University of York |
| 1996 - 2006 | Professor of Developmental Psychology | University of Wales, Bangor |
| 1993 - 1995 | Associate Professor, Special Education | Southeastern Louisiana University |
| 1980 - 1989 | Director, Child Phonology Program | Stanford University |
| 1971 | PhD in Linguistics | University of California, Berkeley |
| 1961 | BA Russian | Bryn Mawr College |
Departmental roles
- Chair of REF Working Group
, 617kb)
, 68kb)
Contact details
https://www.york.ac.uk/language/research/projects/babylab/