{"id":38,"date":"2016-12-12T13:37:03","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T12:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/maritwestergaard\/?page_id=38"},"modified":"2025-10-26T16:40:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T15:40:26","slug":"marit-westergaard-professor-100-uit-professor-ii-20-ntnu","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/maritwestergaard\/","title":{"rendered":"Marit Westergaard"},"content":{"rendered":"

I currently hold the position of Secretary General of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters<\/a> in Oslo. I also work in a vibrant linguistics community at UiT<\/a> The Arctic University of Norway, the Center for Language, Brain & Learning (C-LaBL)<\/a>, which is funded by the Trond Mohn Foundation<\/a> (2024-2029). Research in C-LaBL focuses on language acquisition and multilingualism.<\/p>\n

I am involved in several research projects and networks<\/a>. My research<\/a> interests include first, second\/third and bilingual language acquisition, heritage languages and language attrition, as well as comparative syntax, both modern and diachronic. The focus of my research in these areas is on the syntax of word order as well as nominal structure, especially grammatical gender, definiteness, and word order in possessive constructions (see\u00a0<\/span>presentations<\/a> and <\/span>publications<\/a>). I have also developed two theoretical models of language acquisition, the Micro-cue Model on L1 acquisition (e.g. Westergaard 2009, 2014) and the Linguistic Proximity Model of Ln acquisition (e.g. Westergaard et al 2017, Westergaard 2021).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here<\/a> is a link to a talk on micovariation in multilingual acquisition, presented as part of the Invited Lecture Series in Bilingualism and Multilingualism<\/a>, Institute for Advanced Studies<\/a>, Adam Mickiewicz University, March 3, 2022.<\/p>\n

C-LaBL \u00a0runs two labs, the AcqVA Lab<\/a> and the PoLaR Lab<\/a>. Most of our work is based on linguistic experiments with multilingual children and adults \u2013 e.g. production and comprehension experiments, eyetracking and EEG\/ERP.<\/p>\n

In cooperation with the international network\u00a0Bilingualism Matters<\/a>, we run the advice and information service Flere <\/a>spr\u00e5k til flere<\/a> for bilingual families and the general public, based on current research\u00a0in the field.<\/p>\n

Link to my ORCID profile here<\/a> and my profile on ResearchGate here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are some recent publications<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mitrofanova, Natalia, Evelina Leivada & Marit Westergaard<\/strong>. 2023.\u00a0<\/span>Crosslinguistic influence in L3 acquisition: Evidence from artificial language learning.\u00a0<\/span>Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism<\/em>. Available\u00a0<\/span>here<\/a>.\u00a0Postprint version here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jensen, Isabel N. & Marit Westergaard<\/strong>. 2022. Syntax matters: Exploring the effect of linguistic similarity in third language acquisition. Language Learning. <\/em>Print version published 2023, Vol. 73(2): 374-402. OPEN ACCESS<\/span>\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Klassen, Rachel, Nadine Kolb, Holger Hopp & Marit Westergaard<\/strong>. 2022. The interaction between syntactic and lexical gender congruency in L1 Spanish-L2 German speakers. Applied Psycholinguistics. <\/em>OPEN ACCESS<\/span> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kupisch, Tanja, Natalia Mitrofanova & Marit Westergaard<\/strong>. 2022. Sensitivity to cues for gender assignment in German: An experimental study of mono- and bilingual children. Experiments with real and nonce words. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics. <\/em>OPEN ACCESS<\/span> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Westergaard, Marit. <\/strong>2021. L3 acquisition and crosslinguistic influence as co-activation. Response to commentaries on the keynote \u201cMicrovariation in multilingual situations: The importance of property-by-property acquisition.\u201d Second Language Research.<\/em> OPEN ACCESS<\/span> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mitrofanova, Natalia, Yulia Rodina, Olga Urek & Marit Westergaard. <\/strong>2021. Sensitivity to microvariation in bilingual acquisition: morphophonological gender cues in Russian heritage language. Applied Psycholinguistics. <\/em>OPEN ACCESS<\/span> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Westergaard, Marit.<\/strong> 2021. Microvariation in Multilingual Situations: The Importance of Property-by-Property Acquisition. Keynote article in Second Language Research. <\/em>Available here<\/a>. Postprint available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Marie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I currently hold the position of Secretary General of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo. I also work in a vibrant linguistics community at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, the Center for Language, Brain & Learning … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":644,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-38","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/maritwestergaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/maritwestergaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/maritwestergaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/maritwestergaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/644"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/maritwestergaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/maritwestergaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1240,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/maritwestergaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38\/revisions\/1240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/maritwestergaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}