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Kira Gor
Associate Professor of SLA
Director, Ph.D. in SLA Program

 

  
kira gor

2106E Jiménez Hall
School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742

Telephone: (301) 405-0185
Fax: (301) 314-9752

E-mail: kiragor AT umd DOT edu
 

For Curriculum Vitae, click HERE

 

Education

  • Ph.D. - Linguistics and Experimental Phonetics, Saint Petersburg State University
  • Ph.D - Russian and Second Language Acquisition, Bryn Mawr College

Areas of Research

  • Second language acquisition of phonology and morphology
  • Second language lexical access
  • Processing of inflectional morphology by native and non-native speakers
  • Linguistic correlates of second language proficiency
  • Heritage speakers
  • Russian phonetics

Selected Publications

    Books

  • Interlanguage Phonology and Second Language Orthography: Vowel Reduction in the Interlanguage of American Learners of Russian (Saint Petersburg University Press, 1998)

    Book chapters

  • Gor, K. (2000). Experimental Research of Vowel Reduction in Russian: Implications for Interlanguage Phonology and for Teaching Russian Pronunciation.  The Learning and Teaching of Slavic Languages and Cultures: Toward the 21st Century.  Ed. O. Kagan and B. Rifkin.  Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 193-214.
  • Gor, K., Chernigovskaya, T. (2001). Rules in processing of Russian verbal morphology. In: Zybatow, G., Junghanns, U., Mehlhorn, G., and Szucsich, L. (eds.). Current Issues in Formal Slavic Linguistics. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 528-535.
  • Gor, K., & Chernigovskaya, T. (2005). Formal Instruction and the Acquisition of Verbal Morphology. In: Housen, A., Pierrard, M. (eds.). Investigations in Instructed Second Language Acquisition, p. 131-164. Mouton De Gruyter.
  • Gor, K. (2007). Experimental Study of First and Second Language Morphological Processing. In: M. Gonzalez-Marquez, I. Mittelberg, S. Coulson, and M. J. Spivey (eds.). Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, 367-398. Ithaca: John Benjamins (pdf)
  • Gor, K., & Long, M. H. (2009). Input and second language processing. In: Ritchie, W. C., Bhatia, T. J. (eds.). Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, pp. 445-472. New York: Academic Press. (pdf)
  • Gor, K., & Vatz, K. (2009). Less Commonly Taught Languages: Issues in Learning and Teaching. In: M. H. Long & C. Doughty (Eds.), The Handbook of Language Teaching, pp. 234-249. Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Gor, K., Cook, S., V., Malyushenkova, V., & Vdovina, T. (2009). Verbs of Motion in Highly Proficient Learners and Heritage Speakers of Russian. Slavic and East European Journal, 53, 386-408. Special Issue on Verbs of Motion in Slavic, Guest editors V. Driagina-Hasko and R. Perelmutter (pdf)

    Journal articles

  • Gor, K. (2003). Symbolic Rules Versus Analogy in the Processing of Complex Verbal Morphology. Regards Croisés sur L’Analogie. Revue d'Intelligence Artificielle, 17(5-6), 823-840.
  • Gor, K., & Chernigovskaya, T. 2003. Mental Lexicon Structure in L1 and L2 Acquisition: Evidence from Russian. Glossos, issue 4. (http://www.seelrc.org/glossos/issues/4/)
  • Gor, K., & Chernigovskaya, T. (2004). Generation of Complex Verbal Morphology in First and Second Language Acquisition: Evidence from Russian. Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics Proceedings, University of Tromsø, Nordlyd 31: 6, Supplement. (http://www.ub.uit.no/munin/nordlyd/viewissue.php?id=6#Articles)
  • Gor, K., Cook, S., V., Malyushenkova, V., & Vdovina, T. (2009). Verbs of Motion in Highly Proficient Learners and Heritage Speakers of Russian. Slavic and East European Journal, 53, 386-408. Special Issue on Verbs of Motion in Slavic, Guest editors V. Driagina-Hasko and R. Perelmutter.
  • Gor, K., & Cook, S. (2010). Non-native processing of verbal morphology: In search of regularity. Language Learning, 60.1, 88-126. (pdf)
  • Gor, K. (2010). Beyond the obvious: Do second language learners process inflectional morphology? Language Learning, 60.1, 1-20. Introduction to the thematic issue. Guest editor K. Gor. (pdf)
  • Gor, K. & Vdovina, T. (2010). Frequency, regularity, and input in second language processing of Russian verbal inflection. Special issue of Slavic and East European Journal, 54.1, 7-31. Guest editors B. Rifkin and O. Kagan. (pdf)

    Textbooks

  • Davidson, D. E., Gor, K. S., & Lekic, M. D.  (1996).  Russian: Stage One: Live from Moscow! Textbook, vol. 1, 2.  Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company: Dubuque, Iowa.
  • Lekic, M. D., Davidson, D. E., & Gor, K. S. (2008). Russian: Stage One: Live from Russia! Textbook, vol. 1, 2.  Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company: Dubuque, Iowa.

Courses taught in the last five years

SLAA 610 Research and theories in second language acquisition
SLAA 742 Second language processing
SLAA 749F Second language acquisition and processing of phonology

RUSS 401 Advanced Russian composition
RUSS 402 Practicum in written Russian
RUSS 398C Selected topics in Russian language and literature: Contemporary language and culture for heritage learners

Funded research

  • Linguistic Correlates of Proficiency (co-investigator) funded by the Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL), 2005-2007. Funding: $280.000 per year for Russian.
  • Linguistic Correlates of Proficiency (Russian group leader) funded by the Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL), 2007-2009.Total funding: $685,960.
  • Linguistic Correlates of Proficiency at the Intermediate and Advanced Levels: Russian (Principal Investigator) funded by the Department of Education through the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies (CSEEES) at Duke University, 2010-2014. Total funding for four years: $120.000

Research statement

It is widely known that second language (L2) learners have smaller mental lexicons and are slower and less efficient in lexical retrieval than native speakers. The mechanisms underlying L2 lexical access are poorly understood. My current research seeks answers to the following questions: Do phonological associations play a greater role compared to semantic associations in L2 learners than in native speakers? Is slower access due to weak form-meaning associations and uncertainty about the lexical status of the auditory verbal stimuli? Do L2 learners prefer decomposition or whole-word storage of morphologically complex words? What is the role of input frequencies in shaping L2 lexical access?

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