Dr. Natalia Meir
Fields of Interest
- Bilingualism and Language development in atypical populations (Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Hearing Impairment, Developmental Language Disorder/ Specific Language Impairment, Aphasia)
- Heritage Language development and maintenance across the lifespan
- Language contact and cross-linguistic influence
- On-line language processing: prediction and integration in language processing (ERPs and eye-tracking)
CV
EDUCATION:
2017 - Internship – City University of New York (CUNY), The Graduate Center and College of Staten Island. (Dr. Irina Sekerina) "Acquisition of Case morphology in bilingual Russian-Hebrew speaking children: an eye-tracking study".
2017 – 2018, Post-Doc., Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Haifa (supervisor Dr. Rama Novogrodsky) project title “Linguistic abilities of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), children with High Functioning Autism (ASD), and children with Hearing Impairment (HI): a comparative study.”
2016 - 2017, Post-Doc., Bar-Ilan University, GIF Grant (PI: Dr. Galit W. Sassoon): Dimensions and gradability in grammar and cognition: a behavioral and ERP study on language processing.
2012 – 2016, PhD. Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Bar-Ilan University. PhD Dissertation: Linguistic profiles of bilingual Russian-Hebrew speaking children: effects of bilingualism and SLI (advisor: Prof. Sharon Armon-Lotem)
2007 – 2011 MA (Summa Cum Laude), Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Bar-Ilan University. Thesis: Discourse Markers in Narrative of Bilingual Russian-Hebrew speaking pre-school children. (advisor: Prof. Joel Walters).
1994-1999 BA, English Department, Moscow State Pedagogical University (Russia).
GRANTS:
2023 Israel Science Foundation (ISF) Research Workshops Program: No. 2759/23 “Heritage Language Grammars: Mechanisms and Trajectories of Novel Grammatical Systems”
2022-2024 National Institute of Psychobiology in Israel (NIPI): “Exploring the Use of Dual-Language Assessment for Bilingual Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): Implications for Diagnosis and Treatment” Role: PI / Co-PI: Dr. Rama Novogrodsky, University of Haifa
2021-2024 Israel Science Foundation (ISF): No. 552/21 “Towards Understanding Heritage Language Development: The Case of Child and Adult Heritage Russian in Israel and the USA” Role: PI
2021 Israel Science Foundation (ISF): No. 760/21/ the New-Faculty Equipment Grants Program “Monolingual and Bilingual Language Processing: An eye-tracking lab” Role: PI.
2021-2022 German-Israel Foundation (GIF): No. I-260-104.4-2021 “Multilingual families` response to COVID-19: New Opportunities and Challenges” Role: PI
FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS:
2021-2022 – Bar-Ilan University`s Outstanding Lecturer
2018 The tri-annual Alon Fellowship for Outstanding Young Researchers
2017 The Israeli Academy of Science and Humanities: An internship award
2017 Institutional Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Haifa
2017 Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 26 (FASL26): conference travel award
2017 COST IS1406 “Enhancing children's oral language skills across Europe and beyond”: training school award
2015 Bar-Ilan Rector Prize for Excellence in Academic Studies
2014 Wolf Fund Scholarship for Academic Excellence
2012 Bar-Ilan University President's Scholarship to Outstanding PhD Students
TEACHING POSITIONS:
2018 – current – Senior Lecturer, Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Bar-Ilan University.
2015 - 2018 – External Lecturer, Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Bar-Ilan University.
2013 – 2018 - External Lecturer, Department of Communication Disorders (Language and Speech Pathology and Audiology), Hadassah College
2013 – Teaching Assistant, Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Bar-Ilan University.
Research Positions:
2014 – 2016 - Consultant - ISF 863/14– PI1 “Disentangling Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and socioeconomic influences on language acquisition and emergent literacy among preschool children with and without SLI from two bilingual disadvantaged populations"
2011-2014 – Research Coordinator - GIF 1113/2010 “How can a teacher tell if a bilingual child has language impairment: A study of the language of Russian-Hebrew and Russian-German migrant children in preschool and school years”.
2008-2010 – Research Assistant - BMBF funded project “Language Acquisition as a Window to Social Integration among Russian Language Minority Children in Germany and Israel.”
ADMINISTRATIVE POSITIONS:
2019 – current – Ethics Committee Member (Faculty of Humanities), Bar-Ilan University
2019 - current - Coordinator for Linguistics in Clinical Research Program
NETWORKS AND RESEARCH GROUPS:
2018-present – a member of the Multilingual and Multicultural Affairs Committee of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP)
2016-present – collaborating with Language Abilities in Children with Autism (LACA): PI Dr. Rama Novogrodsky
2016- 2017 – Working Group Member, Working Group 7, COST Action IS01306 “New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe - Opportunities and Challenges.” (http://www.nspk.org.uk/ )
2010-2013 – Action Secretary, COST Action IS0804 “Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment.” (http://www.bi-sli.org/ )
REFEREE/ REVIEWER / EDITOR:
Associate Editor for Applied Psycholinguistics (2019- present)
Guest Editor for Frontiers in Psychology: International Mother Language Day: Enhancing Home Language Development from a Young Age
Ad Hoc Reviewer for: Applied Psycholinguistics, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, International Journal of Bilingualism, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, First Language, Glossa, Language Acquisition, Journal of Child Language, Heritage Language Journal, Journal of Cognition, Journal of Pragmatics, Frontiers in Psychology, Journal of Communication Disorders, Language Learning, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, Autism & Developmental Language Impairments, Autism Research, Autism, Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, Second Language Research, International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, Heritage Language Journal, PlosONE, Science of Learning, Psychology of Language and Communication, Written Language and Literacy.
Conference Abstract Reviewer: Heritage Languages Around the World (HLAW) Conference; Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics (FASL), International Conference for Graduate Students on Diverse Approaches to Linguistics (IGDAL), The 5th Usage-Based Linguistics conference; Bilingualism Matters Research Symposium 2021
Manuscript Chapter Reviewer: The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, The Handbook of Early Language Education, LITMUS in Action: Cross-comparison studies across Europe
Textbook Proposal Reviewer: Cambridge University Press, Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group)
Grant Proposal Reviewer: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Binational Science Foundation (USA- Israel); Internal BIU grants
Research
- Language contact and cross-linguistic influence
- Monolingual and Bilingual Sentence Processing
- Heritage Language across the Lifespan
- Heritage Russian
- Language development in atypical populations (Autism Spectrum Disorder, Hearing Impairment, Specific Language Impairment)
Students
Alumni:
- Moria Ronen (PhD dissertation): Begadol ('in big', 'basically') in theory and practice. (joint supervision with Dr. Yael Greenberg and Dr. Galit Weidman Sassoon. (2022)
- Sagit Bar-On (MA thesis). Requests and apologies in two languages of bilingual speakers: comparison of Heritage English speakers and English- and Hebrew-dominant bilinguals. (2022)
- Marianna Beradze (MA thesis equivalent): Disfluency use as a window to pragmatic skills in bilingual children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorders. (2022)
- Adina Livni (MA thesis): Morphological processing in Heritage and L2 English in Israel:
The role of linguistic and cognitive factors. (2022) - Sid Gordon (MA thesis): English as a Heritage Language: The Effect of Input Characteristics and Contact with Hebrew. (2021)
- Marina Avramenko (MA thesis equivalent): Heritage Russian in Contact with Hebrew: A Study of Requests (2021)
- Clara Fridman (MA thesis): HL-Russian in contact with Hebrew and English: A comparative study of cross-linguistic influence in the domain of morpho-syntax. (2021)
- Iris Hindi (MA thesis equivalent): The relationship between Theory of Mind (ToM) and morpho-syntactic abilities: Evidence from Bilingual English-Hebrew speaking children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (Bi-ASD) and Typical Language Development (Bi-TLD). (2020)
Student Theses - in progress:
- Alina Bihovsky (PhD): Efficacy of treatment in L1 and L2 in Russian/Hebrew bilingual people with aphasia (joint supervision with Prof. Michal Ben-Shachar)
- Muna Abed El-Raziq (PhD): Language Profiles of Palestinian Arabic-speaking children with ASD: an investigation of the underlying mechanisms (joint supervision with Prof. Elinor Saiegh-Haddad)
- Tanja Verkhovtceva (PhD): Morpho-syntactic skills of Heritage Russian speakers residing in Israel: A study of comprehension and production.
- Sid Gordon (PhD): Accentedness in Heritage Language English Speakers in Israel
- Natasha Dvorina (MA thesis): Morphosyntactic comprehension and production and its link to working memory in bilingual Russian-Hebrew-speaking patients with aphasia ((joint supervision with Prof. Michal Ben-Shachar)
Proposals in Preparation:
- Iris Hindi (PhD): The interface of morpho-syntax and Pragmatics in Bilingual English-Hebrew speaking children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (Bi-ASD) and Typical Language Development (Bi-TLD).
- Clara Fridman (PhD): Lexical abilities of Heritage Language Speakers
- Dana Plaut (PhD): Processing of the accusative marker in Hebrew: Evidence from eye-tracking and ERPs
- Marina Avramenko (PhD): Requests in Child and Adult Heritage Russian: A study of Cross-linguistic and Cross-cultural Pragmatics
- Marianna Beradze (MA thesis equivalent): Pragmatic skills in bilingual children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Courses
37-184 - Introduction to Linguistics
37-517 - Research Methods in Linguistics
37-9000 - Autism: Language, Theory of Mind and Executive Function
37 - 9010 - Adult Bilingualism/Multilingualism
37-547 - Bilingual and monolingual sentence processing
37-9050 - Grammars of Heritage Languages
Publications
2023
Meir, N. (2023). Individual Differences in Bilingual Child Language Acquisition: A plunge into a Complex and Dynamic Network. Journal of Child Language. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000923000016
Gordon, S. & Meir, N. (2023). English as a Heritage Language: The Effects of Input Patterns and Contact with Hebrew. International Journal of Bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069231155
Fridman, C. & Meir, N. (2023). Lexical Production and Innovation in Child and Adult Russian Heritage Speakers Dominant in English and Hebrew. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728923000147
Schaeffer, J., Abd El Raziq, M., Castroviejo, E., Durrleman, S., Ferré, S., Grama, I., Hendriks, P., Kissine, M., Manenti, MM., Marinis, T., Meir, N., Novogrodsky, R., Perovic, A., Panzeri, F., Silleresi, S., Sukenik, N., Vincente, A., Zebib, R., Prévost, P., & Tuller, L. (2023). Language in autism: domains, profiles and co-occurring conditions. Neural Transmission. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-023-02592-y
Fridman, C. & Meir, N. (2023) A Portrait of Lexical Knowledge among Adult Hebrew Heritage Speakers Dominant in American English: Evidence from Naming and Narrative Tasks. Languages, 8(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010036
Antonijevic-Elliott, S. & Meir, N. (in press) Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on Morphosyntax in Child Language Disorders. (In Martin J. Ball, Nicole Muller, Liz Spencer, Eds.) The Handbook of Clinical Linguistics. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Walters, J., Yitzhaki, Y., Kopeliovich, S., Burstein-Feldman, Z., Altman, A., Armon-Lotem, S., & Meir, N. (in press). Israeli Sociolinguistics: From Hebrew Hegemony to Israeli Plurilingualism. In Martin J. Ball (Ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics Around the World (2nd Edition). London/New York: Routledge
2022
Bar On, S. & Meir, N. (2022) Requests and apologies in two languages among bilingual speakers: A comparison of heritage English speakers and English- and Hebrew-dominant bilinguals. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1017715
Armon-Lotem, S. & Meir, N., (2022). The differential impact of age of onset of bilingualism and current language exposure for bilingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 12(1), 33-38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.21055.arm
Bogdanova-Beglarian, N.; Zaides, K.; Verkhovtceva, T.; Beradze, M.; Meir, N. (2022). Self-Repair in Elicited Narrative Production in Speakers of Russian as the First (L1), Second (L2), and Heritage (HL) Language. Languages, 7, 229. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030229
2021
Meir, N. & Novogrodsky, R. (2021). Referential expressions in monolingual and bilingual children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A study of informativeness and definiteness. Journal of Child Language. https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S0305000921000702
Meir, N. & Polinsky, M. (2021). Restructuring in Heritage grammars: Adjectival and numerical phrases in Israeli Russian. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 11(2), 222 - 258 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.18069.mei
Meir, N. & Janssen, B. (2021). Child Heritage Language Development: An interplay between cross-linguistic influence and language-external factors. Frontiers in Psychology/ Language Sciences. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.651730
Meir, N., Avramenko*, M., & Verkhovtceva*, T. (2021). Israeli Russian: Case morphology in a bilingual context. Russian Journal of Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.22363/2687-0088-2021-25-4-886-907
Meir, N., Joffe, S., Shabtaev, R., Walters, J. & Armon-Lotem, S., (2021). Heritage Languages in Israel: The multilingual tapestry with Hebrew threads. In S. Montrul & M. Polinsky (Eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics (pp. 129-155). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Meir, N. (2021). Effects of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and bilingualism on verbal short-term memory. In S. Armon-Lotem & Grohmann, K. (Eds.) Language Impairment in Multilingual Settings (pp. 198–225). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing House. INVITED REPRINT (see Meir (2017)). https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.29
Janssen, B. & Meir, N. (2021). Production, Comprehension and Repetition of Accusative Case by Monolingual Russian and Bilingual Russian-Dutch and Russian-Hebrew Children. In Leigh, F., Katsika, K., Azpiroz, M.I., & Allen, S.A. (Eds.) Psycholinguistic Approaches to Production and Comprehension in Bilingual Adults and Children (pp. 237-267). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing House. INVITED REPRINT (see Janssen & Meir (2018)). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.117
Altman, C., Harel, E., Meir, N., Iluz-Cohen, P., Walters, J., & Armon-Lotem, S. (2021): Using a monolingual screening test for assessing bilingual children, Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 36(12), 1132-1152. DOI: 10.1080/02699206.2021.2000644
Otwinowska, A. Meir, N., Ringblom, N., Karpava, S., & La Morgia, F. (2021) Language and literacy transmission in heritage language: evidence from Russian-speaking families in Cyprus, Ireland, Israel and Sweden, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 42(4), 357-382. DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2019.1695807
2020
Meir, N. & Novogrodsky. R. (2020). Syntactic abilities and verbal memory in monolingual and bilingual children with High Functioning Autism (HFA). First Language, 40(4), 341-366. https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723719849981
Rodina, Y., Kupisch, T., Meir, N., Mitrofanova, N., Urek, O., & Westergaard, M. (2020). Internal and External Factors in Heritage Language Acquisition: Evidence from Heritage Russian in Israel, Germany, Norway, Latvia and the UK. Frontiers in Education. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.00020
Novogrodsky, R. & Meir. N. (2020). Age, Frequency and Iconicity in early sign language acquisition: Evidence from the Israeli Sign language Communicative Inventory (ISL-CDI). Applied Psycholinguistics, 41(4), 817-845. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716420000247
Antonijevic-Elliott, S., Lyons, R., O’ Malley, M.P., Meir, N., Haman, E., Banasik,N., Carroll, C., McMenamin, R., Rodden M., & Fitzmaurice, Y. (2020) Language assessment of monolingual and multilingual children using non-word and sentence repetition tasks, Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 34(4), 293-311. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699206.2019.1637458
Meir, N., Parshina, O., & Sekerina, I.A. (2020). The Interaction of Morphological Cues in Bilingual Sentence Processing: An Eye-Tracking Study. In Megan M. Brown and Alexandra Kohut Eds.), BUCLD 44: Proceedings of the 44th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville (pp. 376-389). MA: Cascadilla Press.
Novogrodsky. R. & Meir, N. (2020). Multilingual Children with Special Needs in Early Education. In Schwartz. M. (Ed). The Handbook of Early Language Education. Berlin: Springer.
Scharff Rethfeldt, W., McNeilly, L., Abutbul-Oz, H., Blumenthal, M., Garcia de Goulart, B., Hunt, E., Laasonen, M. R., Levey, S., Meir, N., Moonsamy, S., Mophosho, M., Salameh, E.-K., Smolander, S., Taiebine, M., Thordardottir, E. (2020). Common Questions by Parents and Caregivers of Bilingual/Multilingual Children and Informed, Evidence-based Answers. International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP).
2019
Meir, N. & Novogrodsky. R. (2019). Prerequisites of pronoun use in monolingual and bilingual children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and typical language development. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02289
Armon-Lotem, S., & Meir, N. (2019). The nature of exposure and input in early bilingualism. In A. De Houwer & L. Ortega (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of bilingualism (pp. 193–212). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
2018
Meir, N. (2018). Morpho-syntactic abilities of unbalanced bilingual children: A closer look at the Weaker Language. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01318
Janssen, B. & Meir, N. (2018). Production, Comprehension and Repetition of Accusative Case by Monolingual Russian and Bilingual Russian-Dutch and Russian-Hebrew Children. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 9(4-5), 736-765. http://doi.org/10.1075/lab.17021.jan
Novogrodsky, R.,* Meir, N.,* &Michael, R. (2018). Morpho-syntactic abilities of normal-hearing and hearing-impaired toddlers: evidence from a sentence repetition task. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 53(4), 811-824. https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12386 (*the authors declare an equal contribution)
2017
Meir, N. (2017). Effects of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and bilingualism on verbal short-term memory. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 7(3-4), 301–330. https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.15033.mei
Meir, N. & Armon-Lotem, S. (2017). Separate and combined effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and bilingualism on linguistic abilities and verbal short-term memory. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01442
Meir, N., Walters, J. & Armon-Lotem, S. (2017). Bi-directional cross-linguistic influence in bilingual Russian-Hebrew speaking children. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 7(5), pp. 514–553. https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/lab.15007.mei
Meir, N. & Armon-Lotem, S. (2017). Delay or deviance: old question – new evidence from bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In M. LaMendola & J. Scott (Eds), BUCLD 41: Proceedings of the 41st annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 495-508). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
2016
Meir, N., Walters, J., & Armon-Lotem, S. (2016). Disentangling bilingualism from SLI using Sentence Repetition Tasks: The impact of L1 and L2 properties. International Journal of Bilingualism, 20(4), pp. 421-452. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006915609240
Armon-Lotem, S. & Meir, N. (2016). Diagnostic accuracy of repetition tasks for the identification of specific language impairment (SLI) in bilingual children: Evidence from Russian and Hebrew. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 51(6), 715-731. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12242
2015
Meir, N. & Armon-Lotem, S. (2015). Disentangling bilingualism from SLI in Heritage Russian: The impact of L2 properties and length of exposure to the L2. In Cornelia Hamann and Esther Ruigendijk (Eds). Language Acquisition and Development: Proceedings of GALA 2013 (pp.299-314). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Janssen, B., Meir, N., Baker, A., & Armon-Lotem, S. (2015). On-line Comprehension of Russian Case Cues in Monolingual Russian and Bilingual Russian-Dutch and Russian-Hebrew Children. In E. Grillo, & K. Jepson (Eds), BUCLD 39: Proceedings of the 39th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 266-278). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Armon-Lotem, S., de Jong, J., & Meir, N. (Eds.). (2015). Methods for assessing multilingual children: disentangling bilingualism from Specific Language Impairment. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Last Updated Date : 18/03/2023
