I am interested in the emergence of the linguistic system and, in particular, how external factors (e.g. features of discourse and socio-cognitive information like joint attention, semantic features like animacy, frequency) influence the structure of language at different stages of development. I have been exploring these issues in three specific linguistic phenomena: argument realization, possessive noun phrases, and, most recently, inflectional morphology.

With Emma Healey and Mits Ota I have also been involved in research on word-learning strategies in monolingual and bilingual children.

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I am currently involved in the following projects:

• The emergence and development of structural systematicity in language with Andrew Smith and Monica Tamariz (ESRC, PI: Simon Kirby).

• The role of animacy in alternating possessive constructions: A cross-linguistic study of priming possessives in Czech and English preschoolers with Ludovica Serratrice (British Academy, PI: Barbora Skarabela).

• Representation of grammatical knowledge in children: The case of possessive constructions in Czech with Filip Smolik (Czech Academy of Sciences, PI: Filip Smolik)

• I am an external collaborator on the SSHRC-funded project on the acquisition of Cree The role of heads in the L1 acquisition of a polysynthetic language (SSHRC, PI: Julie Brittain).

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I got my Bachelor's Degree in Czech and English Literature and Linguistics at Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic. I pursued my postgraduate education in the US, where I received both my Master's and a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Applied Linguistics from Boston University. I wrote my PhD thesis under the supervision of Shanley Allen on the role of joint attention in argument realization in child Inuktitut.

I joined the department of Linguistics and English Language (LEL) in September 2005 as a lecturer in language acquisition.

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Within LEL I am a member of the LEC and the Developmental Linguistics Research Group.

I am a member of the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL). I was editor of the Child Language Bulletin, a newsletter of the Association from July 2005 to December 2008. For correspondence regarding the Bulletin, please contact the current editor Angel Chan at ‘editor dot iascl dot cbulletin (at) gmail dot com’.  

Together with Mits Ota and Antonella Sorace I was a co-organiser of the IASCL Congress that took place in July 2008 in Edinburgh. I was also a co-organiser of the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) that took part in November 2002.

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Skarabela, Barbora and Ludovica Serratrice (2009). ‘The doctor’s mother’ or ‘the mother of the doctor’?: Syntactic priming of possessive noun phrases in English preschoolers. Online Supplement of the Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development.

Allen, Shanley E.M., Barbora Skarabela and Mary Hughes (2008). Using corpora to examine discourse effects in syntax. In: H. Behrens (Ed.), Corpora in Language Acquisition Research: Finding Structure in Data (Trends in Language Acquisition Research #6). (pp. 99-137). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Skarabela, Barbora (2007). Signs of early social cognition in children's syntax: The case of joint attention in argument realization in child Inuktitut. Lingua, 117(11), 1837-1857.

Skarabela, Barbora and Shanley E.M. Allen (2004). The context of non-affixal arguments in child Inuktitut. In: Brugos, A., Micciulla, L., & Smith, C.E. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 28th Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 532-542). Cascadilla Press: Somerville, MA.

Skarabela, Barbora, Mary Catherine O'Connor and Joan Maling (2004). Monolexémické posesory v češtině a jiných jazycích. (Translation from Czech: Monolexemic possessors in Czech and other languages.) In: Hladká, Z. & P. Karlík (Eds.). Sborník Čeština: Univerzálie a specifika (Czech: Universals and Specifics). Lidové noviny: Praha.

Skarabela, Barbora (2004). Review of Pathways to language: From fetus to adolescent by K. Karmiloff and A. Karmiloff-Smith. Journal of Linguistics, 39(1), 712-715.

Gregory Garretson, Mary Catherine O'Connor, Barbora Skarabela and Marj Hogan (2004). Coding practices used in the project Optimal Typology of Determiner Phrases. http://npcorpus.bu.edu/documentation/index.html.

Skarabela, Barbora, Sarah Fish and Anna H.-J. Do (Eds.) (2002). Proceedings of the 26th Boston University Conference on Language Development. Cascadilla Press: Somerville, MA.

Skarabela, Barbora and Shanley E.M. Allen (2002). Joint attention and argument realization in child Inuktitut. In: Skarabela, B., Fish, S., & Do, A.-H. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 26th Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 620-630). Cascadilla Press: Somerville, MA.

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