University of Amsterdam

Jeannette Schaeffer (PI)

Jeannette Schaeffer is a member of the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (ACLC), and the Research Group Grammar & Cognition. From 2011-2014 Schaeffer led a project on “Grammar, Pragmatics and Cognition in children with ASD and children with SLI”, funded by the University of Amsterdam’s Research Priority Program Brain & Cognition (130K€). Schaeffer is also the chair of the Dept. of Literary Studies & Linguistics and the Director of the Research Master’s Program in Linguistics.

Schaeffer works on the acquisition and development of various (morpho)syntactic, pragmatic and extra-linguistic phenomena in different (a)typical populations in relation to linguistic theory. She has ample experience in cross-linguistic experimental designs, including many different languages and has published in top journals such as Language Acquisition, Applied Psycholinguistics, Lingua, Glossa, Brain & Language.

Schaeffer’s lab focuses on morphosyntactic and pragmatic abilities in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), within the same linguistic phenomena ((morpho)syntax-pragmatics interface phenomena, such as passives, pronouns, direct object scrambling) and in separate phenomena ((morpho)syntax: subject-verb agreement, relative clauses, noun inflection; pragmatics: scalar and conversational implicatures).