Expertise

Research Interests: Usage-based and interactional linguistics, second language acquisition, pragmatics, ethnography of communication, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics (language contact and variation), Estonian and Finnic linguistics, foreign language teaching and learning.

I am expanding my PhD research on conversation-for-learning as a hybrid speech event. I study how adult second language learners make meaning in spontaneous conversation practice activities, focusing on interlanguage grammar as emergent in the social context of interaction. My second current research area involves bilingual speakers in language contact situation.  I work with spoken language data from American learners of Estonian and the Estonian communities in the U.S.

Communities
Asian Studies, Russian
Degrees
PhD, Indiana University Bloomington, Linguistics, 2012
MPhil, University of Cambridge, English and Applied Linguistics, 1997
MA, University of Tartu, English Language and Linguistics, 1996