معرفی
Dr. Angeliek van Hout is a faculty member at the University of Groningen's Faculty of Arts, where she leads the Acquisition Lab within the Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG). Her academic profile centers on experimental research into first language acquisition in typically developing monolingual children, employing a crosslinguistic perspective to investigate fundamental aspects of language development.
Her research expertise spans multiple interconnected domains of linguistic development:
- Temporal reference (tense and aspect, telicity, event culmination)
- Nominal reference (definiteness, quantification)
- Syntactic structures (questions, passives, pronouns)
- Pragmatic reasoning (scalar implicatures, theory of mind)
Dr. van Hout's methodological approach integrates formal linguistic theory with empirical experimentation, examining how children acquire complex linguistic structures across different languages. Her recent work demonstrates particular focus on logical operators and their interpretation in child language, with extensive crosslinguistic comparisons examining how children process disjunction under negation in Dutch, French, Hungarian, and Italian. She investigates the cognitive mechanisms underlying these linguistic phenomena, bridging theoretical linguistics with cognitive science.
Her publication record shows consistent productivity with 89 research outputs including 25 articles, 23 conference contributions, and 20 book chapters. Notable recent publications include work on prosodic disambiguation in Dutch, free choice interpretation in French children, and crosslinguistic patterns in quantifier acquisition.
Dr. van Hout actively contributes to the academic community through:
- Supervision of PhD students (4 supervised works documented)
- Editorial work including the TABU Festschrift for Jack Hoeksema
- Organizing academic events such as "Novel Semantic Research in Theory, Processing and L1 Acquisition"
- Presenting research at international conferences including the Boston University Conference on Language Development
Her research has practical applications in understanding typical language development trajectories, which she communicates to broader audiences through public engagement activities. She has presented on language development in twins at multiple public events and participated in the NEMO Science Live initiative from 2016-2018, demonstrating commitment to knowledge transfer beyond academic circles.
As leader of the Acquisition Lab, Dr. van Hout directs research examining how children develop linguistic competence across various domains, with particular attention to the interface between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in early language development.
