Utrecht University
Aoju Chen is Professor of English Linguistics: Language Development at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her research addresses fundamental research questions on English linguistics with a focus on prosody, including the role of prosody in communication, the acquisition of prosody before and after birth in a first language and in adulthood in a second language, and first- and second- language acquisition interact with learner’s development into a socially functional individual in a familiar or new culture. She leads the NWO-funded VICI project “A sound start: Prosodic development before birth and in the first three years of life" (2021-2026)”, where her team investigates how early prosodic competence is shaped by innate and input-based learning mechanisms. Professor Chen is also a Principal Investigator within the Dynamics of Youth research hub, studying the impact of speech entrainment in parent-child interactions on a child's psychological sense of belonging. Her previous NWO-funded VIDI project “Get the focus right” (2011–2016) investigated how children across different languages develop adult-like use of prosody to structure information. Her work also examined individual differences in this developmental process and resulted in the first cross-linguistic model of the acquisition of prosodic focus marking.
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