Diane Lillo-Martin has been named as a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut. Lillo-Martin is a professor of linguistics and former department head, and a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven.
Writing in the University of Connecticut Advance, Colin Poitras and Cindy Weiss said:
"The board announced the honors April 21 in recognition of the professors' 'exceptional distinction in scholarship, teaching, and service while at UConn.'"
"Lillo-Martin studies how children acquire their native language. Her latest research focuses on young children who are learning both spoken and sign language, so-called 'bimodal bilinguals.' "
"Some children have two deaf parents who sign, and those youngsters do not have difficulty acquiring spoken as well as sign language, she says. 'They are amazing in their ability to go back and forth with languages – they learn so much, so fast,' says Lillo-Martin, who came to UConn in 1986 and serves as editor-in-chief of the journal Language Acquisition. By using American Sign Language with signers and spoken language with speakers, the children learn to appropriately alternate between the two. Children and adults who know both languages also sometimes use them simultaneously; this is known as 'code blending.' "
"Lillo-Martin also has a new project studying language acquisition by deaf children with a cochlear implant, a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to those who are deaf or profoundly hard of hearing. Sign language can actually help children learn spoken language, she theorizes; deaf children can learn through sign language while they are being taught the spoken language."
Haskins Laboratories was founded in 1935 by the late Dr. Caryl P. Haskins. This independent research institution has been in New Haven, Connecticut since 1970 when it formalized affiliations with the University of Connecticut and Yale University. The Laboratories' primary research focus is on the science of the spoken and written word.
