Sonia Frota

Sonia Frota is a Full Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon. She serves as Scientific Coordinator of the Center of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon, Director of the Lisbon Baby Lab, and Executive Director of the Mind-Brain College. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Portuguese Linguistics and Associate Editor of Phonetica.

Her research focuses on early speech perception, language acquisition (typical and atypical), and prosody. She investigates how prosodic systems are acquired by infants, how prosody interfaces with phonology, morphology, syntax, and information structure, and how it may bootstrap language learning or serve as an early marker of language impairment. She is particularly interested in multisensory constraints on language acquisition in both typical and clinical populations, and her work is grounded in multidisciplinary collaborations with health, education, and parent institutions.

The available information does not include a list of recent publications, so article trends cannot be summarized.

• Maria Teresa Palha Award 2022
• ULisboa/CGD scientific award for Language Sciences 2021
• ULisboa/CGD scientific award for Language Sciences 2016
• Best Linguistics and Literature scientist in Portugal (AD Scientific Index 2024)

Sonia Frota has supervised numerous PhD, MA, and postdoctoral students across various institutions, including the University of Lisbon, University of Porto, and international universities. Her students have worked on topics such as prosody acquisition, infant-directed speech, autism markers, visual prosody, and intonation in Portuguese varieties. Many of her former students hold academic positions in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, the Netherlands, the UK, and China. While no specific grant names are listed, her students' work has been supported by funding bodies such as FCT (Portugal), CAPES (Brazil), and CGD/ULisboa.

She leads the Lisbon Baby Lab, a research facility focused on early language development, and is involved with the Center of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon (CLUL) and the Mind-Brain College. Her research projects include Horizon21 (early language development in Down Syndrome), EBELA (early markers of language development), and InAPoP (Interactive Atlas of the Prosody of Portuguese).