Per September 1st 2023, I am an Assistant Professor in Linguistics at Groningen University. I am affiliated both with the Department of Dutch Language and Culture and the Department of Linguistics. I obtained my PhD in the Linguistics Department at the University of Maryland, College Park and I was previously a post-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
*** News ***
– Please consider applying for the upcoming PhD position at the University of Groningen, supervised by Dr. Yevgen Matusevych, Dr. Arianna Bisazza and me: Modeling Modals
– January 2024: Angeliek van Hout and I gave a talk at the Linguistics in the Netherlands Day, titled “Universal quantifiers in math and language development of school-aged children“. Here, we apply theoretical linguistic knowledge on late acquired phenomena (quantifiers) to educational materials: Do they match the knowledge that children have?
I’m interested in the link between language and cognition. I hereby take an interdisciplinary approach and always look for ways to incorporate my research for computer scientists, or educators, for instance. From 2022-2023 I worked on societal impact more generally within the Gravity Consortium Language in Interaction.
My research focuses on modals: items like may and can, which are used to talk about possibilities and necessities that are not necessarily true at the moment (“There may be a monster under my bed!”). We use these items frequently and with variable uses – but how? And how do children acquire language that goes beyond the here and now?
Contact information
E-mail: a.m.f.van.dooren[at]rug.nl