Cristina Schmitt

Dr. Schmitt’s research centers on first language acquisition of morphology, syntax and semantics. The research focus of her lab is on the effects of input variability in the acquisition of categorical properties of the grammar and the acquisition of syntax and semantics. Recent work involves comparative acquisition of properties of Latin American Spanish dialects and dialects of English and the semantics of functional elements. REU students will engage in corpus analyses of child speech and child directed speech in different dialects of English and Spanish, experimental design and data collection using a variety of behavioral methods with children and adults. Dr. Schmitt has extensive experience mentoring undergraduates, receiving in 2013 the Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentor of the Year Award and the Honors College Award for Distinguished Contributions to Honors Students at Michigan State University. She is also the advisor for the Undergraduate Linguistics Association at MSU, which has held for 10 consecutive years undergraduate linguistics conferences (internal and national). Mentored undergraduate students a year: 6-8. Published papers w/ undergraduates = 4 +3 under review. Conference presentations w/ undergraduates: 15.