English Department

Portrait

Simone Pfenninger studied English Literature and Linguistics, geography and history at the University of Zurich and the Free University of Berlin. She graduated in 2005. In 2011 she completed a national teacher training program (‘Lehrdiplom für Maturitätsschulen’) outside of the university environment.

In 2013, she was nominated for the “Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching” (university teaching award), which honors exceptional teaching of lecturers in the field of higher education, based on students’ evaluations and recommendations of an interdisciplinary faculty committee.

In 2007 she received her PhD degree from the University of Zurich; the title of her PhD thesis is “Grammaticalization Paths of English and High German Existential Constructions“ (supervised by Prof. A. Fischer, University of Zurich, and Prof. O. Fischer, University of Amsterdam). The aim of this study was to make a contribution to our understanding of the use of existential constructions in High German and English and to uncover how these constructions have fared with respect to grammaticalization, both from a synchronic and a diachronic point of view.

Her current research project (working title: The earlier the better? On the benefit question of Early L2 English learning in Switzerland) is concerned with the maturational constraints on multilingual learning in a formal, instructional setting by healthy students and at-risk learners. Of specific interest is the mastery (fluency, morpho-syntactic accuracy and complexity) of the oral and written speech production of  multilingual learners with varying ages of first exposure (AoE) and different length of instruction (LoI) from a psycholinguistic perspective. She typically makes use of contextualized offline procedures that make different processing demands and that elicit various structures and and test different abilities (e.g. phonological abilities and lexical access abilities).

General research interests:

• Second language acquisition and learning (cognitive aspects as well as socio-affective factors of language learning, such as language learning motivation, anxiety, learning strategies)
• Third and additional language acquisition, crosslinguistic influence and foreign language education
• Dyslexia
• Grammaticalization (from a synchronic/diachronic and cognitive perspective)
• Verbal constructions
• Contrastive (cognitive) linguistics of early Germanic languages (German/English)
• Youth language

Consultation hours

Wed 2-4 or by arrangement

I welcome anyone who wishes to discuss any linguistic topic that particularly interests them.

Courses taught

M.A.Seminars:

AS '13: "Empirical Psycholinguistic Research"

Lectures:

AS '13: "Multilingualism: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives"
AS '12: "Second Language Learning and Teaching"
Since AS '08: Co-teaching of the lecture "Introduction to Linguistics" (covering Pre-/Descriptivism, Morphology, Semantics, Pragmatics, Neurolinguistics, First Language Acquisition, Second Language Acquisition)

B.A. Seminars:

SS '13 B.A. Seminar "Methodology and Second Language Acquisition"
SS '12 B.A. Seminar "Second Language Learning and Teaching" (at the University of Berne)
SS '12 B.A. Seminar "Chunking - Acquisition and Use of Formulaic Language"
AS ‘11 B.A. Seminar "Syntax and/in the Brain"
SS ’11 B.A. Seminar “Language and Age: Exploring Youth Language”
AS ‘10 B.A. Seminar "Language and Memory"
SS ‘10 B.A. Seminar "Second Language Acquisition"
AS ‘09 B.A. Seminar "Psycholinguistics"

Introductory courses:

AS '13 Seminar "Introduction to Linguistics I"
SS '12 Seminar "Introduction to Linguistics II"
AS ‘11 Seminar "Introduction to Linguistics I"
SS ’11 Seminar "Introduction to Linguistics II"
SS ’11 Seminar "Introduction to Linguistics II"
AS ‘10 Seminar "Introduction to Linguistics I"
AS ‘10 Seminar "Introduction to Linguistics I"
SS ‘09 Seminar "Introduction to Linguistics II"
AS ‘08 Seminar "Introduction to Linguistics I"
SS ‘08 Seminar "Introduction to Linguistics II"
AS ‘07 Seminar "Introduction to Linguistics I"
SS ‘07 Proseminar "Introduction to Linguistics II"
AS ‘06 Proseminar "Introduction to Linguistics I"

Publications

Pfenninger, Simone E. et al. (eds.) In prep. Contact, Variation and Change in the History of English (Studies in Language Companion Series). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Pfenninger, Simone E et al. In prep. At the crossroads of language change, variation and contact. In: Simone Pfenninger et al. (eds.). Contact, Variation and Change in the History of English (Studies in Language Companion Series). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Hundt, Marianne, Mollin, Sandra, & Pfenninger, Simone E. (eds.). In prep. The Changing English Language: Psycholinguistic Perspectives. Cambridge: CUP.

Pfenninger, Simone E., et al. In prep. Foreign language training for dyslexic students: A longitudinal case study on the effectiveness of computer-mediated multisensory instruction.

Pfenninger, Simone E., & Studer-Joho, Nicole. In prep. The mind behind existentiality: English and German speakers’ use of existential constructions against the backdrop of cognitive grammaticalization theory.

Pfenninger, Simone E. In press. Þær wæs vs. thâr was: Old English and Old High German existential constructions with adverbs of place. Evidence from the history of English. In: Gabriela Diewald, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, and Ilse Wischer. (eds.). Comparative Studies in Early Germanic Languages: with a Focus on Verbal Categories (Studies in Language Companion Series). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Pfenninger, Simone E. 2013b. Quadrilingual advantages: Do-support in bilingual vs. multilingual learners. International Journal of Multilingualism, DOI:10.1080/14790718.2013.782032

Pfenninger, Simone E. 2013a. On acquisition, age and articles in multilingual Switzerland. UZRT 2012: Empirical Studies in English Applied Linguistics. Zagreb: FF Press, 22-35.

Pfenninger, Simone E. 2012b. Moving towards an earlier age of onset of L2 learning: A comparative analysis of motivation in Swiss classrooms. In: D. Britain and A. Kern-Stähler (eds.). English on the Move: Mobilities in Literature and Language. Swiss Papers in English Literature and Linguistics 27, 15-30.

Pfenninger, Simone E. 2012a. On the effectiveness of early implicit classroom learning – Evidence from morphology. ELT Research 26, 30-32.

Pfenninger, Simone E. 2011. Age effects on the acquisition of nominal and verbal inflections in an instructed setting. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching 1(3), 401-420.

Pfenninger, Simone E. 2009. Grammaticalization Paths of English and High German Existential Constructions. Bern: Peter Lang.