Southern Illinois University Carbondale

	Usha Lakshmanan
Degree	Ph.D., University of Michigan
Position	Professor
Office	LSII 216
Phone	(618) 453-3574
Fax	(618) 453-3563
Email	usha@siu.edu
Biosketch	Usha Lakshmanan is Professor of Psychology at SIUC. Other positions she has held include: Institute Faculty at the 2003 Summer Institute of the Linguistic Society of America held at Michigan State University, Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (1989-1990) and Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Fall 2004). Her research interests include psycholinguistics, bilingualism, child first language acquisition (monolingual and bilingual), child second language acquisition, adult second language acquisition, as well as language and cognition. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Child Language, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Acquisition, and Second Language Research. She is the author of a book entitled Universal Grammar in Child Second Language Acquisition (John Benjamins 1994). She is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Second Language Research and she is co-editor (with Larry Selinker) of the 2001 special issue of Second Language Research entitled Explanations and Scientific Method in Second Language Research.
Research Interests	1st and 2nd Language Acquisition Psycholinguistics Syntactic Theory Bilingualism Language & Cognition
Selected Publications	Recent Journal Articles & Book Chapters: Kim, L. K., & Lakshmanan, U. (in press). The processing role of the article choice parameter: Evidence from L2 learners of English. In M. Garcia Mayo & R. Hawkins (Eds.), Second language acquisition of articles: Empirical findings and theoretical implications (pp. 87-113). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lakshmanan, U. (in press). Child second language acquisition. In W. Ritchie & T. K. Bhatia (Eds.), The new handbook of second language acquisition. Bingley, UK: Emerald. Park, K., & Lakshmanan, U. (2007). The L2 acquisition of the unaccusative-unergative distinction in English resultatives. In H. Caunt-Nulton, S. Kulatilake, & I. Woo (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 508-519). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Lakshmanan, U. (2006). Assessing linguistic competence: Verbal inflection in child Tamil. Language Assessment Quarterly, Special Issue, 3 (2) , 171-205 . Kunnan, A & U. Lakshmanan, U. (Eds.). (2006). Issues in Language Acquisition and Language Assessment: A Crosslinguistic perspective. Language Assessment Quarterly, Special Issue, 3, 2. Lakshmanan, U. (2005). Child L2 acquisition and the fossilizaiton puzzle. In Z. H. Han & T. Odlin (Eds.), Studies of fossilization in second language acquisition (pp. 100-133). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Lakshmanan, U. & Selinker, L. (October, 2001). Analyzing interlanguage: How do we know what learners know? In L. Selinker & U. Lakshmanan (Eds.). Explanations and Scientific Method in Second Language Research, Special thematic issue of the journal Second Language Research 17.4, 393-420. Selinker, L. & Lakshmanan, U. (October 2001). Introduction: How do we know what we know? Why do we believe what we believe? In L. Selinker & U. Lakshmanan (Eds.). Explanations and Scientific Method in Second Language Research, Special thematic issue of the journal Second Language Research 17.4, 323-325. Lakshmanan, U. (2000). The acquisition of relative clauses by Tamil children. Journal of Child Language , 21 , 587-617.
Teaching:	Undergraduate Psychology Courses: Psycholinguistics (Psyc 445/Ling 445) Bilingualism (Psyc 489/Ling 443) Child Language Development (Psyc 489/Ling 440) Second Language Acquisition (Ling 340) Graduate Courses: Bilingualism (Ling 543/Psyc 578) Second Language Acquisition (Ling 541/Psyc 577) Universal Grammar and Second Language Acquisition (Ling 542)