Usha Lakshmanan's headshot

Usha Lakshmanan

Professor
usha@siu.edu
618-453-3574
Life Science II, 275C
Psychology

Office Hours: Monday: 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM; Wednesday: 2:00 to 3:30 PM and by appointment

Dr. Usha Lakshmanan earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1989. In August 1990, she joined SIU Carbondale as Assistant Professor of Linguistics, and received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 1996 and full Professor in 2002. She is currently Professor in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Program within the School of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences (SPBS), with a cross-appointment in Linguistics. Prior to joining the faculty at SIU-Carbondale, she was a Visiting Assistant professor in the Dept. of TESL & Applied Linguistics at UCLA. Other Visiting appointments she has held include Institute Faculty at the 2003 LSA Summer Institute at Michigan State University, and Visiting Professorships at the University of Michigan (Fall 2004), and MIT currently.

Her teaching and research expertise encompass the areas of psycholinguistics, first and second language acquisition, bilingualism, multilingualism, language and cognition, and the language of youth media. In her research, which focuses on the relationship between psycholinguistic theory and language acquisition, she has addressed several aspects of grammatical development and language processing from a cross-linguistic perspective. Her current research examines the comprehension and production of recursive structures in monolingual and bilingual children and adults, bilingual children’s narratives, cross-linguistic influence in bi/multilingual development, language development and maintenance in multilingual contexts, and second language acquisition by adult migrant workers.

Educational History

  • PhD in Linguistics, University of Michigan, 1989.

Interests

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Child language acquisition
  • Second language acquisition
  • Bilingualism
  • Multilingualism
  • Language and cognition
  • Language processing in large language models (LLMS) and humans

Courses

  • PSYC 444/LING 444: Second Language Acquisition
  • PSYC 577/LING 541: Second Language Acquisition
  • PSYC 445/LING 445: Psycholinguistics
  • PSYC 443/LING 443: Bilingualism
  • PSYC 578/LING 543: Bilingualism
  • PSYC 489: Seminar-Selected Topics (Child Language Development)

Graduate Advisees

  • Muhammad Ali Shahidy
  • Connor Watkinson
  • Pouyan Fadaei
  • Sandeep Kour

Representative Publications:

  • Lakshmanan, U. and I. Barrière (Eds., 2024-2025). Acquisition, Processing, and Maintenance of a New Language: Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Sequential Bi/Multilingualism. Special Topics Issue, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience-Speech and Language Section. (Also listed in Frontiers in Language Sciences). https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/58670/acquisition-processing-and-maintenance-of-a-new-language-crosslinguistic-perspectives-on-sequential-bimultilingualism/articles. 
  • Bleotu, A.C., Foucault, D., Roeper, T. and Lakshmanan, U. (2025).The Role of Universal Grammar and Crosslinguistic Influence in the Interpretation of Recursive Set-Subset Adjectives in Adult Romanian L1 English L2 Bilinguals. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 19:1537488. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2025.1537488 
  • Shahidy, M.A. and Lakshmanan, U. (2025). Does Grammatical Gender Influence Implicit Gender Attitudes? Evidence from Sequential Bi/Multilingual Speakers from Afghanistan. In Aditya Yedetore, Rebecca Dufie Bonney & Yuanyuan Zhang (Eds.)., Proceedings of the 49th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 614-627. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. 
  • Lakshmanan, U. (2024). Syntactic Maintenance of Tamil Relative Clauses in Multilinguals. In Amritavalli Ragavachari & Bhuvana Narasimhan (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Dravidian Languages. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197610411.013.30 
  • Lakshmanan, U., Foucault, D., and Roeper, T. (2024). Does branching directionality impact children’s understanding of recursive structures in their stronger language? Evidence from recursive adjectives and possessives. In Merle Weicker, Rabea Lemmer, Andrea Listanti and Angela Grimm (Eds.). Empirical and theoretical approaches to language acquisition: A generative perspective. (pp.226-253). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 
  • Lakshmanan, U. (2022). Tamil Children’s Comprehension of Recursive Locatives and Relativized Sentences. In Ying Gong and Felix Kpogo (Eds.). Proceedings of the 46th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 401-413. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. 
  • Balam, O., Lakshmanan, U. and Parafita-Couto, M.C. (2021). Gender Assignment Strategies among Simultaneous Spanish/English Bilingual Children from Miami, Florida. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14(2), 241-280.  
  • Tio, Yee Pin and Lakshmanan, U. (2021). Implicit Learning of Chinese Numeral Classifiers using the Stimulus Equivalence Paradigm. Special Issue on Cognitive Linguistics in Chinese Teaching and Learning, International Journal of Chinese Language Teaching, Vol. 2(2), 72-94. 
  • Graham, R. E. and Lakshmanan, U. (2018). Tunes & tones: Music, Language, and Inhibitory control. Journal of Cognition & Culture, 18, pp. 104-123. 
  • Lakshmanan, U., Balam, O. & Bhatia, T.K. (Eds.). (2016). Mixed Verbs and Linguistic Creativity in Bi/Multilingual Communities, Special Issue of Languages, 1, 1, 2016. 
    https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages/special_issues/mixed_verbs 
  • Lakshmanan, U. and Graham, R.E. (2016) On the generalizability of the Chunk and-Pass processing approach: Perspectives from language acquisition and music. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X15000850  
  • Ovsepyan, M. and Lakshmanan, U. (2015). False Belief reasoning and the acquisition of relativization and scrambling. In E. Grillo and Kyle Jepson (Eds.). Proceedings of the 39th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, Massachusetts, Cascadilla Press. 
  • Kim, K. L. and Lakshmanan, U. (2009). 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. and Kunnan, A. (Eds.). (2006). Language Assessment and Language Acquisition: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective, Special Issue, Language Assessment Quarterly, 3, 2, 2006. 
  • Selinker, L. and Lakshmanan, U. (Eds). (October 2001). Explanations and Scientific Method in Second Language Research. Special thematic Issue of the Journal Second Language Research. 17.4 (invited guest coeditor with Larry Selinker; the special issue in honor of Professor Paul van Buren).  
  • Lakshmanan, U. (2006). Assessing linguistic competence: Verbal inflection in child Tamil. Language Assessment Quarterly, Special Issue, 3 (2) , 171-205. 
  • Lakshmanan, U. & Selinker, L. (2001). Analyzing interlanguage: How do we know what learners know? Second Language Research, 17, 393-420. 
  • Lakshmanan, U. (2000). The acquisition of relative clauses by Tamil children. Journal of Child Language, 21 , 587-617. 
  • Lakshmanan, U. (1995). Child Second Language Acquisition of Syntax. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 17:3, pp. 301-329.  
  • Lakshmanan, U. (1993/1994). The Boy for the Cookie: Some Evidence for the Non-violation of the Case Filter in Child SLA. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 3, 2, pp. 55-91. 
  • Lakshmanan, U. (1994). Universal Grammar in Child L2 Acquisition.: Morphological Uniformity and Null Subjects. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 162.