Mihaela Pirvulescu
Title/Position
Professor, Linguistics
Associate Chair, Language Studies
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E-mail:
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Phone:
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Room:MN4140
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Mailing Address:
3359 Mississauga Road
Maanjiwe nendamowinan, MN4140
Mississauga ON L5L 1C6
Canada
Dr. Pirvulescu's areas of expertise are in first language acquisition, multilingual acquisition and early second language acquisition. Her current SSHRC project, involving a team of national and international researchers, investigates the role of language interactions in multilingual language acquisition. She is interested in how a heritage language is acquired and maintained in an anglophone multilingual environment, as well as in how French as a third language is acquired, and what the interactions are with the previously learned languages.
Current Courses
- FRE272 (A Linguistic Introduction to the French Language)
- FRE325 (Talking like a child: language acquisition of French)
Education
- PhD, French Linguistics, University of Toronto
- MA, French Linguistics, University of Toronto
- BA, Romanian/French Philology and Literature, University of Bucharest (Romania)
Areas of Academic Interest
- Bilingualism and multilingualism
- Syntax
- Child language acquisition
Selected Publications
Books
- Pérez-Leroux, A., Pirvulescu, M., & Roberge, Y. (2018). Direct objects and language acquisition. CUP Press.
- Steele, J., & Pirvulescu, M. (Eds.). (2015). Arborescences, Numéro 5, Acquisition du français (pp. 1–138).
- Pirvulescu, M., Cuervo, M. C., Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Steele, J., & Strik, N. (Eds.). (2011). Selected Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2010).
Articles
- Bello, S., & Pirvulescu, M. (2022). L’acquisition des objets directs et indirects en français L1. Language, Interaction, and Acquisition, 13(1), 63–92.
- Pirvulescu, M., Hill, V., Nacif, N., Helms-Park, R., & Petrescu, M. (2022). The acquisition of adverbs in child L3 French in Canada. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5721
- Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Pirvulescu, M., Roberge, Y., & Strik, N. (2017). Clitics as input to the acquisition of verbal transitivity in French. Linguisticae Investigationes, 40(1).
- *Pirvulescu, M.(with Ana T. Pérez-Leroux, Yves Roberge and Nelleke Strik). (2015). Object clitics in a second language: evidence from early child second language learners of French. Linguistica Atlantica. (or did Dr. Pirvulescu mean this: https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/la/issue/view/1724)
- Pirvulescu, M., & Strik, N. (2014). The acquisition of object clitic features in French: A comprehension study. Lingua, 144, 58–71.
- Pirvulescu, M., Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Roberge, Y., Strik, N., & Thomas, D. (2014). Bilingual effects: Exploring object omission in pronominal languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(3), 495–510.
- Hill, V., & Pirvulescu, M. (2012). French object clitics, L1 and the left periphery. In S. Ferré, P. Prévost, L. Tuller, & R. Zebib (Eds.), Romance turn 4 (pp. 169–189). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.
- Pirvulescu, M., Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Roberge, Y., & Strik, N. (2012). Clitic Production across Tasks in Young French-speaking Children. In A. K. Biller, E. Y. Chung, & A. E. Kimball (Eds.), BUCLD 36 Proceedings (pp. 461–473). Cascadilla Press.
- Pirvulescu, M., & Hill, V. (2012). Object Clitic Omission in French-Speaking Children: Effects of the Elicitation Task. Language Acquisition, 19(1), 73–81.
- Pirvulescu, M. (2010). The acquisition of variable phenomena: The case of past participle agreement in Québec French. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics, 12(1), 193–202.
- Pirvulescu, M. (2009). Agreement Paradigms across Moods and Tenses: The Case of Romanian Subjunctive and Imperative. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 54(1), 137–156.
- Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Pirvulescu, M., & Roberge, Y. (2008). Null Objects in Child Language: Syntax and the Lexicon. Lingua, 118(3), 370–398.
- Pirvulescu, M., & Belzil, I. (2008). The Acquisition of Past Participle Agreement in Québec French L1. Language Acquisition, 15(2), 75–88.
Selected Grants, Fellowships and Awards
- SSHRC Insight Grant, Principal Investigator, 2017–2023, Multilingualism in the Canadian context: language interaction and development in trilingual children
- Jackman Institute Working group, Principal Investigator, 2016–2017, Canadian Multilingualism
- UTM Research and Scholarly Activity Fund, Principal Investigator, 2015, Trilingual language development and maintenance in the French immersion system
- SSHRC Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences in Canada, Principal Applicant, 2010, Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA, 4)
- SSHRC Insight Grant, Principal Investigator, 2009–2013, The acquisition of object clitics by children learning French as their first or second language
- SSHRC Insight Grant, Co-investigator, 2005–2008, Object omission and transitivity in child language