Suzanne Flynn (June 30, 1950- ) is an American linguist and Professor of Linguistics at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...

who has contributed to the fields of second and third language acquisition. She has also investigated language disorders.

Research

Suzanne Flynn received her PhD from Cornell University in 1983. Her work has spanned from syntax and second-language acquisition of

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

language processing Language processing refers to the way humans use words to communicate ideas and feelings, and how such communications are processed and understood. Language processing is considered to be a uniquely human ability that is not produced with the sa ...

in people with neurocognitive disorders, such as changes in language during the

prodromal In medicine, a prodrome is an early sign or symptom (or set of signs and symptoms) that often indicates the onset of a disease before more diagnostically specific signs and symptoms develop. It is derived from the Greek word ''prodromos'', meaning ...

course in the development of

Alzheimer’s disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events. As t ...

Early work

In 1987, Flynn published a book which explored

second-language acquisition Second-language acquisition (SLA), sometimes called second-language learning — otherwise referred to as L2 (language 2) acquisition, is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the scientific dis ...

(SLA) of anaphora and offered a parametric model for acquisition of this property. In line with the reorganization of the linguistic field at that point, the book considered characterization of

Universal Grammar Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible hum ...

(UG) as a set of subtheories, each with its set of central principles and parameters according to which a principle can vary between an unmarked ('-') and a marked ('+') parametric value. At the same time, Flynn was one of the key SLA specialists to start the GASLA ( Generative Approaches to Second-Language Acquisition) conference. In 1996, Flynn, along with S.D. Epstein and Gita Martohardjono published a seminal paper evaluating key debates in the SLA field at the time. One of the most important questions was to what extent, if any,

constrains second language acquisition? At the moment, three hypotheses of SLA were articulated. The first one was the “no access” hypothesis that claims that no aspect of UG is available to the L2 learner. The second is the “partial access” hypothesis that claims that only LI instantiated principles and LI instantiated parameter-values of UG are available to the learner. The third, called the “full access” hypothesis, asserts that UG in its entirety constrains L2 acquisition. Flynn and co-authors argued for the "full access" hypothesis which remains a valid theory today and guides much of modern research. From the early days of her work in SLA, Flynn has been a staunch proponent of principled approach to explaining processes which language acquisition involves. As such, she strongly advocates for strictly linguistic accounts of language acquisition within Chomskian tradition which are grounded in

Minimalist Program In linguistics, the minimalist program is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar since the early 1990s, starting with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky. Following Imre Lakatos's distinction, Chomsky presents minima ...

and stem from our understanding of syntactic theory.

Third language acquisition

In line with Flynn's earlier work on accessibility of the UG, she co-authored one of the very first models of

third language acquisition Third language acquisition refers to multilinguals learning additional languages. It contrasts with second language acquisition in the narrow sense, which is concerned with the acquisition of an additional language by (then) monolingual Monog ...

: The Cumulative-Enhancement Model (CEM). The model argued that language learning is cumulative and all previous languages (i.e., the native language and the second language) can facilitate language learning. The model, notably, does not claim that previous languages exert an exclusively facilitative effect. On the contrary, the model allows for more than occasional interferences from previous languages while claiming that the acquisition process ''per se'' cannot be characterized through a deficit model or alike. The model has also been pointed out to be easily extendable to fourth language acquisition and beyond, which is not a feature most of the current models for L3 acquisition share. The CEM model stands in opposition to the so-called "wholesale" models of L3 acquisition (e.g. Typological Primacy Model or L2 Status).

Honors and distinctions

Flynn is co-founding editor (with Samuel D. Epstein) of the peer-reviewed journal ''Syntax''. Flynn was elected to the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

(AAAS) in 2019.

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

described her as "a leading researcher on syntax acquisition of children and adults in bilingual, second, and third language contexts".

Selected bibliography

* Flynn, Suzanne. ''A parameter-setting model of L2 acquisition: Experimental studies in anaphora''. Vol. 5. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012. * Flynn, Suzanne, and Wayne O'Neil, eds. ''Linguistic theory in second language acquisition''. Vol. 8. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012. * Flynn, Suzanne, and Gita Martohardjono. "Mapping from the initial state to the final state: The separation of universal principles and language-specific properties." (1992). * Yow, W. Quin, Jessica SH Tan, and Suzanne Flynn. "Code-switching as a marker of linguistic competence in bilingual children." ''Bilingualism: Language and Cognition'' 21.5 (2018): 1075-1090. * Cabrelli-Amaro, Jennifer, Suzanne Flynn, and Jason Rothman. "Third language acquisition in adulthood." (2012). * Lust, Barbara, Yu-chin Chien, and Suzanne Flynn. "What children know: Methods for the study of first language acquisition." ''Studies in the acquisition of anaphora''. Springer, Dordrecht, 1987. 271-356. * Szarkowski, Amy, Suzanne Flynn, and Terrell Clark. "Dually diagnosed: A retrospective study of the process of diagnosing autism spectrum disorders in children who are deaf and hard of hearing." ''Seminars in Speech and Language''. Vol. 35. No. 04. Thieme Medical Publishers, 2014.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flynn, Suzanne 1950 births Living people Linguists from the United States Women linguists University of Massachusetts Boston alumni Cornell University alumni University of Puerto Rico alumni MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty