Activities

Scientific

  • Member of the Editorial Board of Written Language and Literacy, Journal of Child Language (1996-2005), The Mental Lexicon
  • Series editor of Trends in Language Acquisition Research (TILAR) together with A. De Houwer (1996 - 2008)
  • PhD's: Currently (co-)supervising:
    • Pietro Nurzia Artificial hearing: Neural networks and the acoustic identifiability of children with cochlear implants
    • Lotte Odijk A longitudinal approach to phonetic enhancement in infant directed speech: normally hearing infants and hearing-impaired infants with a cochlear implant
    Supervised:
    • De Pauw, G. (2002). An agent-based evolutionary computing approach to memory-based syntactic parsing of natural language. University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
    • Taelman, H. (2004). Syllable omissions and additions in Dutch child language: an inquiry into the function of rhythm and the link with innate grammar. University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
    • Kloots, H. (2005). Vowel reduction in Standard Dutch as spoken in Flanders and The Netherlands. University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
    • Schauwers, K. (2006). Early speech and language development in deaf children with a cochlear implant: a longitudinal investigation. University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
    • Verbist, A. (2010). The acquisition of personal pronouns in cochlear-implanted children. Universiteit Leiden, Leiden.
    • Hammer, A. (2010). The acquisition of verbal morphology in cochlear-implanted and specific language impaired children. Universiteit Leiden, Leiden.
    • Herzberg, O. (2010). Early morphosyntactic and lexical development in young hearing impaired Hebrew speaking children with cochlear implants compared to normally hearing peers. University of Antwerp & Tel Aviv University.
    • Molemans, I. (2011). Sounds like babbling. A longitudinal investigation of aspects of the prelexical speech repertoire in young children acquiring Dutch: normally hearing children and hearing-impaired children with a cochlear implant. University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
    • Van Severen, L. (2012). A large-scale longitudinal survey of consonant development in toddlers' spontaneous speech. University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
    • van den Berg, R. (2012). Syllables inside out. A longitudinal study of the development of syllable types in toddlers acquiring Dutch: a comparison between hearing impaired children with a cochlear implant and normally hearing children. University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
    • Oydis Hide (2014). Acoustic features of speech by young cochlear implant users: A comparison with normal-hearing and hearing-aided age mates. University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
    • Orit Ashkenazi (2015). Input-output relations in the early acquisition of the Hebrew verb: Resolving a learning problem. University of Antwerp & Tel Aviv University.
    • Liesbeth Vanormelingen (2016). Are you talking to me? Child-directed speech and language development: hearing children of different SES backgrounds and deaf children with a cochlear implant.
    • Jolien Faes (2017). Speech production and speech production accuracy in young children: hearing and hearing impaired children with a cochlear implant.
    • De Clerck, I. (2018). Prosodic development in canonical babble and first words of cochlear implanted and normally hearing infants: An acoustic and perceptual study.
    • Robert Grimm (2018): Computational mechanisms for bootstrapping in language development: Using existing knowledge to discover categories in speech
    • Giovanni Cassani (2019): The bootstrapping toolbox: which cues are more useful to learn lexical categories and why
    • Nathalie Boonen (2020): Identifiability and intelligibility of the speech of children with a cochlear implant: a comparison with normally hearing children and children with an acoustic hearing aid

Academic

  • Vice-chair of the Research Council ('Onderzoeksraad') of the University of Antwerp (2004-2012)
  • Chair of the Ethics Committee for Social Sciences and Humanities (EASHW) (2012 - 2021)
  • Member of the expert panel on Linguistics of the FWO (Flemish Fund for Scientific Research) (2010 - 2015)
  • Chair of the expert panel on Linguistics of the FWO (Flemish Fund for Scientific Research) (2014 - 2015)
  • Advisory member of the interdisciplinary expert panel of the FWO (Flemish Fund for Scientific Research) (2010)
  • Member of the Steering Committee, member of the Plenary Panel, and chair of the subpanel "Linguistics" of the VABB-SHW ("Flemish Academic Bibliographic Archive") (2009-2017)
  • Chair of the VABB-SHW ("Flemish Academic Bibliographic Archive") (2017-2024)
  • Member of the "Flemish Committee for Scientific Integrity" (Vlaamse Commissie voor Wetenschappelijke Integriteit, VCWI) (2013 - 2021)
  • Member of the Board of Directors of the Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie ('Institute for Dutch Lexicology') (2000-2008)
  • Member of the Subcommittee Research ('Werkgroep Onderzoek') of the VLIR ('Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad', Flemish Inter University Council) (2003-2008)
  • Member of the Academia Europaea, the Academy of Europe of Humanities, Letters and Sciences