Dr. Marina Sherkina-lieber

Biography

I am fascinated by bilingualism in all its forms, but specialize on heritage and indigenous languages in Canada. I am interested in how the human mind deals with the grammars of two (or more) languages, especially when the learning conditions are not equal, and what can happen to the grammar of these languages. I study knowledge of minority languages – immigrant and aboriginal – in children and adults who learned them through family transmission. I also teach Russian as a heritage language.

Research Interest

Heritage languages: acquisition and use of minority/heritage languages, immigrant languages, indigenous languages, endangered languages, language revitalization, language attitudes, Russian in Canada, Inuktitut in Canada. Language acquisition and psycholinguistics: bilingualism, first and second language acquisition, bilingual language acquisition, incomplete and full language acquisition, language attrition, receptive bilingualism; sentence processing, lexical processing. Linguistic theory: morphology, syntax, semantics; noun incorporation, case, tense and aspect, polysynthesis, embedded questions, word order, topic and focus.