Research

Research Interests

My primary interest is in the acquisition of a first language. I have worked on the acquisition of inflection, both morphological and syntactic, including agreement, tense, mood, and aspect. More recently, my interests have focused on the acquisition of reference – binding of referential expressions, pronouns and other anaphors.

My perspective on language acquisition is tempered.  Some believe that input determines language acquisition, and there is no innate component whatsoever. The opposite view is - that all of language is innate – is, quite obviously, equally extreme.  While I don't argue that all language is innate (nobody really does), I do think there is a substantial innate component to language that aids the child in the acquisition of language.  That does not preclude input as an important factor in acquisition, it simply means that input and innate principals work together in the acquisition of language.  This seems like a reasonable position to me.

I primarily work on two languages: Thai and Swahili. Swahili because it is one of my native languages, and it was the basis for my dissertation, as well as numerous publications. More recently, my work has centered around the acquisition of Thai. Thai is an interesting language for many reasons, not least of which is that Thai supposedly violates Principle C of the binding theory (Lasnik, 1989). Binding is thought to be part of Universal Grammar, and therefore present in all children at birth. Evidence for this comes from a variety of studies that show that children acquiring languages such as English, show evidence of Principle C at the earliest testable ages (see, for example, Crain, 1991).

But if adult Thai speakers violate Principle C, I wondered, what do Thai children do? Do they behave like the adults with whom they communicate, and violate Principle C (in which case perhaps Principle C is not part of UG)? Or do they behave like children acquiring English, and adhere to Principle C (in which case, Principle C is part of UG...and what's happening with Thai adults?!)?

This intriguing question was the basis for a recent National Science Foundation grant awarded to me. I am in the process of investigating this question, and as with most issues of this nature, the answer turns out to be far more complicated than you might expect. Stay tuned for results (but if you want to see the preliminary findings, see the handout for the GALA 2007 talk below).

Besides Thai and Bantu, I have experience and interests in the acquisition of various other languages, including:  Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Serbo-Croatian, and Pingilapese.  And of course, I am always looking for new languages to investigate.

Current Research Projects Acquisition of Binding in Thai This is a currently on-going project being ocnducted in collaboration with Dr. Napasri Timyam of Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand. We are investigating the acquisition of principles B and C in the acquisition of Thai.  This research is funded by the National Science Foundation, BCS#0821036, and supplementary grant BCS #0921543.	Click here for the handout to a talk we gave at GALA 2007 in Barcelona, September 2007.
Acquisition of Inflection (Swahili, Korean, Japanese, amongst others) A continuing interest of mine from my dissertation and the last five years of my research. The focus is varied, but I am primarily interested in the variation and similarity exhibited in the acquisition of inflection from language to language.
Children with Disorders
I am currently seeking collaboration for a project on children with Autism as well as children suffering from Specific Language Impairment.

Some Recent Publications
Deen, Kamil Ud (In press). The Morphosyntax Interface. In Bavin, E (ed). The Handbook of Child Language. Cambridge University Press.
Timyam, Napasri & Kamil Ud Deen (2008). The Structure of Nominals and Binding in Child Thai. In Chan, H. H Jacob & E. Kapia (eds) The Proceedings to the 32nd Boston University Conference on Language Development, SOmerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 481-491.
Deen, Kamil Ud (2006b). The Acquisition of Clitics in Swahili.  Poster presented at the Bantu-Romance Connection.  University of Leeds, May 26-27, 2006.	Click here to download (162K)
Deen, Kamil Ud & Nina Hyams (2006a).  The morphosyntax of mood in early grammar with special reference to Swahili. Vol 26(1), 67-102.	Click here for a pre-publication version of the paper. (240K)
Deen, Kamil Ud (2005b). The Acquisition of Swahili. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing. This monograph is a study in the acquisition of inflection in Swahili.  It is a more comprehensive version of my dissertation, both of which are based upon the same data set.  This monograph includes the analyses of subject agreement and tense that formed the basis of the dissertation, but it is more comprehensive in that I also treat the acquisition of other inflectional elements (i.e., object agreement and mood). This is therefore a full treatment of the acquisition of inflection in Swahili.  The only thing missing from this is the acquisition of negation, which unfortunately requires more data collection.	Click here to go to the John Benjamins site.
Deen, Kamil Ud (2006).  Object Agreement and Specificity in Early Swahili. Journal of Child Language, 33 (2), 223-246..	Click here to download. (123K)
Deen, Kamil Ud (2005a). Productive Agreement in Swahili:  Against a Piecemeal Approach. In Brugos, A, M.R. Clark-Cotton and S. Ha (eds), The Proceedings to the 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla, 156-167.	Click here for the handout to the talk (1266K).
Deen, Kamil Ud (2004e). The Necessity of an Articulated Functional Domain: Evidence from the Acquisition of Functional Morphology in Child Swahili.  Paper presented at the Lisbon Workshop on Alternative Views of the Functional Domain, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, July 8-9, 2004, Lisbon Portugal.	Click here for the handout to the talk (221K).
Deen, Kamil Ud (2004d).  The Status of Subject Agreement in Swahili.  Paper presented at the Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at Harvard University, April 3, 2004.	Click here to download the handout (182K).
Deen, Kamil Ud (2004c). Subject Agreement, Object Agreement and Specificity in Nairobi Swahili. IN van Kampen, Jacqueline & Sergio Baauw (Eds). Proceedings to the 2003 GALA conference.  Utrecht, Netherlands: LOT, pp. 139-150.	Click here to download (297K)
Deen, Kamil Ud (2004b). Object Agreement and specificity in Nairobi Swahili.  In A. Brugos, L. Micciula, and C.E. Smith (Eds). The Proceedings to the 28th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.  pp. 129-140.	Click here to download (280K)
Deen, Kamil Ud (2004a).  "The Acquisition of Inflectional Prefixes in Nairobi Swahili."  In the Annual Review of Language Acquisition, 3, Spring 2004, pp. 139-179.	Click here to download (514K).
Tran, Jennie & Kamil Ud Deen (2003).  Aspect Marking and Modality in Child Vietnamese. Paper in the BUCLD 28 Conference Proceedings Supplement. .	Available from BUCLD Proceedings Supplement (direct link to the PDF, 311K)
Ilic, Tatjana & Kamil Ud Deen (2003).  Object raising and Cliticization in Serbo-Croatian Child Language.  In van Kampen, A. & S. Baauw (eds). The proceedings to the GALA Conference. LOT: Utrecht, pp. 235-243.	Click here to download (80K)
Deen, Kamil Ud (2003b) "On the Omission of Agreement: the EPP and Null Constants." Paper presented at the Lisbon Workshop on Agreement, Lisbon, Portugal, July 2003.	Click here for the handout.
Deen, Kamil Ud (2003a) "Underspecified Verb Forms and Subject Omission in Nairobi Swahili". In Barbara Beachley, Amanda Brown & Frabces Conlin (Eds.), The proceedings to the 27th annual Bonston University Conference on Language Development.  Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, pp. 220-231.	Click here for the paper
Deen, Kamil Ud (2002b) "Agreement-less Declaratives in Nairobi Swahili". In the UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 10- Papers in African Linguistics 3. Kandybowicz, Jason (Ed). 1-46. A discussion of the omission of agreement in Nairobi Swahili.	Click here to download (868K)
Deen, Kamil Ud & Nina Hyams (2002a) "The Form and Interpretation of Finite and non-Finite verbs in Swahili." In Barbora Skarabela, Sarah Fish, and Anna H.-J. Do (Eds). The proceedings to the 26th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) . Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, pp. 130-141. Here we present results of an analysis of Mood and Tense in child Swahili.  A more substantial version of this is currently in submission.	Click here to download (87K)
Deen, Kamil Ud (2001) "The Acquisition of Swahili verbal Morphology." In the Proceedings to the Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition (GALA) conference in Palmela Portugal. Costa, João & Maria João Freitas (Eds). This is my first presentation of the results of study of the acquisition of Nairobi Swahili morphosyntax.	Click here to download (89K)
Dissertation I received my Ph.D. from UCLA, where I wrote my dissertation on the acquisition of Swahili as a first language. In it, I investigate the acquisition of subject agreement, tense and subjects. Read about the data collection in Kenya.	Click here to go to the dissertation page

times since May 1st, 2003


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