Marlyse Baptista

Marlyse Baptista is the President's Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Linguistics. She is affiliated with the School of Arts & Sciences and MindCore initiative. Her research focuses on language contact, creolization processes, bilingualism, and experimental methods in creole studies. Baptista leads the Language Contact and Cognition Lab, previously known as the Cognition, Convergence and Language Emergence (CCLE) group at the University of Michigan.

Education includes a PhD in Linguistics (Harvard, 1997), MA degrees from Harvard and the Université de Bordeaux III, and extensive training in multilingual education. Her work bridges generative syntax with experimental approaches, including artificial language learning to study language convergence. Key themes include the cognitive underpinnings of creole formation, bidirectional influences in Cape Verdean Creole, and the role of congruence in language acquisition.

Research highlights include studies on Cape Verdean Creole's grammatical properties, genetic-linguistic admixture correlations, and pedagogical resources for creole language education. Recent projects explore experimental validation of creole genesis theories through multilingual acquisition studies.

• Scientific Awards: President's Distinguished Professorship (University of Pennsylvania)
• Labs/Teams: Language Contact and Cognition Lab, MindCore
• Grants/Projects: MULTI Project (creole language educational resources), NSF-funded studies on creole genesis mechanisms

Baptista's work emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches, integrating syntax theory, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics to address foundational questions in contact linguistics and creolistics.