Meet… Caitlin Meyer, Assistant Professor of Dutch Linguistics

Quick quiz for Dutch native speakers! Which sounds better to you: Hebben John of Erik de wedstrijd gewonnen? Or Heeft John of Erik de wedstrijd gewonnen? Does your head crash too? It does for the interviewer, I can assure you. These kinds of marvelous aspects of Dutch (and other languages) are music to Caitlin Meyer’s ears, Assistant Professor of Dutch Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam and member of the research group 3LM. Get to know her in this interview!

Caitlin Meyer. Foto: Bob Bronshoff

From communication to linguistics
Caitlin’s passion for linguistics started during the Introduction to Dutch Linguistics course, during her Bachelor’s in Language and Communication at the UvA. She structured her bachelor’s and master’s programs with as many linguistic courses as possible and also interned at the Meertens Institute. There, she listened to audio recordings of speakers of Brabant dialects and analyzed their use of the so-called ‘red’ and ‘green’ verb orders: do they more often say that dat Suzanne koek gebakken heeft or that Suzanne koek heeft gebakken? In one of her master theses, she investigated the topic mentioned in the introduction of this interview about agreement between subject and verb. After graduating, she worked for a while at The Hague University of Applied Sciences where she provided various types of writing and language education. But linguistics kept calling, so Caitlin applied for the Research Master in Linguistics and there she investigated how children acquire those red and green verb orders. After the master’s, she began her doctoral research in a project of the Dutch Foundation of Science (NOW) which was part of the Horizon Knowledge & Culture Program, also at the UvA. Is she a person who sticks to one place? She laughs. “Stable, I would say, but staying in Amsterdam was mostly coincidental,” says Caitlin, “and actually, my workplace has changed quite a bit over the years. Researchers make the university, and with the arrival of new colleagues, your environment changes too.”

Numbers and rules
During her doctoral research, Caitlin investigated how Dutch and English speaking children learn cardinal and ordinal numbers. The conclusions of her research seem self-evident: young children acquire cardinal numbers first and then ordinal numbers. The acquisition of the latter category proceeds very differently from that of cardinal numbers, and children acquire exceptions like ‘tweede’ and ‘derde’ in a later stadium. Seems like a self-evident conclusion, right? “When I tell my main conclusion, I do get that reaction sometimes,” says Caitlin. “But when you start thinking about why this pattern unfolds as it does, you quickly encounter a number of dilemmas.” For example, it is remarkable that children seem to acquire ordinal numbers according to a rule (cardinal number + ‘de’). But that process is different from how children acquire other word forming rules, in which children follow the so-called ‘U-curve’. Take the simple past for example: children initially use the correct strong form of the verb, for example ‘liep’ (‘walked’), then ‘loopte’ (‘walked’) and then ‘liep’ again. Here come the head-scratchers: In the ‘loopte’ phase, children understand perfectly well what ‘liep’ means, but children who say ‘driede’ (‘third’) and understand it, cannot point out the third one in any way. Even though that’s the form that occurs in the language input, and ‘driede’ does not. Caitlin shares a beautiful observation in this regard: “I tested a boy of about three years old, and when I asked him to point out ‘de derde eend’ (the third duck), he asked, ‘but how much is der?’ A wonderful example of how children can interpret the building blocks of language at a young age!”

3LM and current research
Caitlin’s doctoral research and the research she conducted during her bachelor’s and master’s degrees were quite theoretically oriented. It was therefore logical that she participated in the VARCAS group when the ACLC was reorganized, but after a few years, she decided it was also a good moment to join 3LM. “What I like about this group is that the research area is very broad and that all kinds of research are conducted. Methodologically, I also learn a lot here and in this way I gain a lot of inspiration for designs for my current research projects.” Her current work focuses more on experimental research into the intersections between language and cognition. For example, she is co-supervisor (with Judith Rispens and Alla Peeters-Podgaevskaja) in Heleen de Vries’ doctoral research on the relationship between language, numeracy, and statistical learning in children with and without language development disorders (TOS). She also supervises Rosa Zaaijer’s PhD project with Monique Flecken and Marieke Schouwstra on how language helps in learning certain actions, such as the different parts of a choreography. In addition to her work as a researcher and lecturer, Caitlin enjoys writing for a wider audience. “In a previous life, I wrote for regional newspapers, and I also wrote all kinds of texts privately, so I’ve always been fond of language. But I also don’t like to know things and keep them to myself, so one of my goals for the coming years is to do more to make scientific knowledge accessible to a wider audience, although I’m not sure yet how I want to do that. Last year, a piece appeared in the book Wat gebeurt er in het Nederlands? edited by, among others, Nicoline van der Sijs. So the beginning is there!”