I am a postdoctoral researcher focusing on language acquisition and figuring out how humans, endowed with the same neurobiology, can learn the diversity of the languages of the world. I am currently a tenure-track research staff of the Language Development and Multilingualism research group (FB2) at the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin, Germany. I am also a visiting professor at the University of the Philippines Manila's Speech Pathology department.
My main interest is in children's acquisition of morphosyntax and phonology. I use corpus data analysis and psycholinguistic methods like eye-tracking to investigate how children process sentences on-line and how they acquire their ambient language.
I had previously worked in Manila, Philippines as a speech-language pathologist for children, before I took graduate studies in Clinical Linguistics at the Universities of Potsdam, Groningen, and Eastern Finland. I received my PhD in Cognitive Science under the joint programme, International Doctorate for Experimental Approaches to Language and Brain (IDEALAB), from the Universities of Potsdam, Groningen, Trento, Newcastle, and Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. My dissertation was on children's acquisition of thematic role assignment and word order in Tagalog. My first postdoc was at Prof. Evan Kidd's Learning through Processing group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. My second one was in Prof. Natalie Boll-Avetisyan's Developmental Psycholinguistics group at the University of Potsdam, Germany.
My main interest is in children's acquisition of morphosyntax and phonology. I use corpus data analysis and psycholinguistic methods like eye-tracking to investigate how children process sentences on-line and how they acquire their ambient language.
I had previously worked in Manila, Philippines as a speech-language pathologist for children, before I took graduate studies in Clinical Linguistics at the Universities of Potsdam, Groningen, and Eastern Finland. I received my PhD in Cognitive Science under the joint programme, International Doctorate for Experimental Approaches to Language and Brain (IDEALAB), from the Universities of Potsdam, Groningen, Trento, Newcastle, and Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. My dissertation was on children's acquisition of thematic role assignment and word order in Tagalog. My first postdoc was at Prof. Evan Kidd's Learning through Processing group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. My second one was in Prof. Natalie Boll-Avetisyan's Developmental Psycholinguistics group at the University of Potsdam, Germany.
Publications
Jed Sam Pizarro-Guevara, Rowena Garcia
Annual Review of Linguistics, vol. 10, Annual Reviews, 2024, pp. 145--167
Paulina Aravena-Bravo, Alejandrina Cristia, Rowena Garcia, Hiromasa Kotera, Ramona Kunene Nicolas, Ronel Laranjo, Bolanle Elizabeth Arokoyo, Silvia Benavides-Varela, Titia Benders, Natalie Boll-Avetisyan, Margaret Cychosz, Rodrigo Dal Ben, Yatma Diop, Catalina Durán-Urzúa, Naomi Havron, Marie Manalili, Bhuvana Narasimhan, Paul Okyere Omane, Caroline Rowland, Leticia Schiavon Kolberg, Andrew Sentoogo Ssemata, Suzy J. Styles, Belén Troncoso-Acosta, Fei Ting Woon
Journal of Cognition and Development, vol. 0, Routledge, 2023, pp. 1-19
Filipino children's acquisition of nominal and verbal markers in L1 and L2 Tagalog
Aireen Barrios, Rowena Garcia
Languages, vol. 8(3), 2023
Collecting language acquisition data from understudied urban communities: A reply to Cristia et al.
Rowena Garcia, Hannah Maria D. Albert, Ivan Paul Bondoc, Jocelyn Christina B. Marzan
Journal of Child Language, vol. 50, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 522–526
Finding your voice: Voice-specific effects in Tagalog reveal the limits of word order priming
Rowena Garcia, Jens Roeser, Evan Kidd
Cognition, vol. 236, 2023, p. 105424
Zheng Xin Yong, Ruochen Zhang, Jessica Forde, Skyler Wang, Arjun Subramonian, Holy Lovenia, Samuel Cahyawijaya, Genta Winata, Lintang Sutawika, Jan Christian Blaise Cruz, Yin Lin Tan, Long Phan, Long Phan, Rowena Garcia, Thamar Solorio, Alham Aji
Genta Winata, Sudipta Kar, Marina Zhukova, Thamar Solorio, Mona Diab, Sunayana Sitaram, Monojit Choudhury, Kalika Bali, Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Linguistic Code-Switching, Association for Computational Linguistics, Singapore, 2023 Dec, pp. 43--63
Rowena Garcia, Evan Kidd
Linguistics, vol. 60(6), 2022, pp. 1855-1906
Online data collection to address language sampling bias: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic
Rowena Garcia, Jens Roeser, Evan Kidd
Linguistics Vanguard, 2022
Where to from here? Increasing language coverage while building a more diverse discipline
Evan Kidd, Rowena Garcia
First Language, vol. 42, 2022, pp. 837-851
How diverse is child language acquisition research?
Evan Kidd, Rowena Garcia
First Language, vol. 42(6), 2022, pp. 703-735
Rowena Garcia, Gabriela Garrido Rodriguez, Evan Kidd
Cognition, vol. 216, 2021, p. 104859
Kathleen Kay Amora, Rowena Garcia, Natalia Gagarina
Natalia Gagarina, Josefin Lindgren, New language versions of MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives – Revised, 2020, pp. 221–233
The acquisition of the Tagalog symmetrical voice system: Evidence from structural priming
Rowena Garcia, Evan Kidd
Language Learning and Development, vol. 16, Routledge, 2020, pp. 399-425
Rowena Garcia, Jens Roeser, Barbara Höhle
Journal of Child Language, vol. 47, Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 533–555
Rowena Garcia, Jens Roeser, Barbara Höhle
Language Acquisition, vol. 26, Routledge, 2019, pp. 235-261
Word order preferences of Tagalog-speaking adults and children
Rowena Garcia, Jeruen E. Dery, Jens Roeser, Barbara Höhle
First Language, vol. 38, 2018, pp. 617-640
Projects
Tagalog morphosyntax and word order
Together with Prof. Evan Kidd at the Australian National University, I investigate the acquisition and processing of Tagalog morphosyntax and thematic role assignment. Older articles were for my PhD, supervised by Prof. Barbara Höhle.
Diversity in language acquisition research
In a project with Prof. Evan Kidd, we looked at the diversity of languages and researchers covered in our top acquisition journals. In a project with other researchers led by Leher Singh, we look at publication bias against non-US research.
Infants' acquisition of phonotactics
In Prof. Natalie Boll-Avetisyan's C07 project under the University of Potsdam's SFB 1287, we look at German- and Japanese-learning infants' acquisition of phonotactics.
Infants' discrimination of nasal sounds
In this study, funded by Uni Potsdam's UFSKW, we look at Tagalog-learning infants' discrimination of nasal contrasts and if this is affected by acoustic salience.
The project on Tagalog-speaking children's acquisition of negation words is a collaboration with Roman Feiman and Scott AnderBois from Brown University, and the Speech Pathology department of the University of the Philippines Manila.
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