Maureen Scheidnes

  • Assistant Professor
  • B.A. Beloit College
  • M.A. UniversitéFrancois-Rabelais de Tours
  • Ph.D.Université Francois-Rabelais de Tours

Research Interests

I study the development of morphosyntax in first and second language acquisition.  I am particularly interested in the comparison between second language acquisition in typically developing children and first language acquisition in children with specific language impairment.

I am currently working on a SSHRC-funded project (Language Experience and Linguistic Complexity in Child Bilingual Development: A Cross-learner Comparison) which involves different types of bilingual children (immersion students, English-speaking children in francophone schools, bilingual children in France). This project focuses on the impact of language experience on the acquisition of certain phonological and syntactic structures in bilingual children. For example, I am interested in better understanding how factors such as age, and input quality and quantity affect the acquisition of clausal embedding.

I am currently recruiting a graduate student to work on the above project. Please contact me if you are interested.

Teaching Interests

I am joint appointed in the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures. I teach classes in linguistics as well as French language courses at both the beginner and advanced levels.

Selected Publications

Language experience on sentence repetition: How do children in immersion education compare to other bilinguals? In C. dos Santos & L. de Almeida (Eds.), Bilingualism and Specific Language Impairment: Selected proceedings of Bi-SLI 2015.

Morry, J., & Scheidnes, M. (accepted). The effect of linguistic experience on a non-word repetition task: Testing children with little exposure to their second language. In C. dos Santos & L. de Almeida (Eds.), Bilingualism and specific language impairment: Selected proceedings of Bi-SLI 2015. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Scheidnes, M., & Tuller, L. (2016). Assessing successive bilinguals in two languages: A longitudinal look at English-speaking children in France. Journal of Communication Disorders, 64, 45–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomdis.2016.10.001

Scheidnes, M. (2015). Gender marking strategies in L2 children and monolingual children with SLI. In C. Hamann & E. Ruigendijk (Eds.), Language acquisition and development: Proceedings of Gala 2013 (pp. 416–428). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Tuller, L., Abboud, L., Ferré, S., Fleckstein, A., Prévost, P., dos Santos, C., Scheidnes, M., Zebib, R. (2015). Specific language impairment and bilingualism: Assembling the pieces. In C. Hamann & E. Ruigendijk (Eds.), Language acquisition and development: Proceedings of Gala 2013 (pp. 533–567). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Scheidnes, M., & Tuller, L. (2014). L2 children embed normally, but children with SLI do not. In A. Fieis & M. J. Freitas (Eds.), New directions in the acquisition of romance languages: Selected proceedings of the Romance Turn V (pp. 261–284). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Scheidnes, M. (2012). Development of Child L2 French: What is Typical? (Doctoral Dissertation). Université François Rabelais - Tours.

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