Cory Lemke

My research investigates how variation and disruption in early language experience shape linguistic knowledge and social identity across the lifespan. I am particularly interested in populations whose linguistic development involves substantial changes in access to a first language, including both international adoptees and heritage speakers. I explore the following theoretical questions: 

1. the nature and durability of linguistic representations formed through early language experience
2. the extent to which linguistic knowledge persists following prolonged language disuse or loss of access
3. the conditions under which previously acquired linguistic knowledge can be reactivated through renewed language exposure
4. the linguistic selectivity of retention, loss, and reactivation across phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic, and prosodic domains
5. what disrupted linguistic trajectories can reveal about the roles of age, input, and experience in acquisition
6. how language ideologies contribute to the construction and maintenance of national and ethno-national identities
7. how states, institutions, and communities use language to define and regulate membership, citizenship, and belonging
8. how migration, diaspora, and transnational movement complicated relationships among language, nation, and identity