Bio

  ABOUT REBECCA DUFIE BONNEY

I’m a third-year PhD student in Linguistics at Boston University, whose research interests intertwine bilingualism, language acquisition, and semantics. My research centers on two main areas. 

First, I explore how early vs. late bilingualism shapes language acquisition, especially within heritage speaker communities in the United States of America.  This interest has led me to investigate how Akan heritage speakers in the United States of America produce Akan vowel harmony patterns, as a way of understanding how early or late exposure to Akan, shift to a dominant language, and language contact influence the language acquisition of this phonological feature among this group. 

Second, I’m fascinated by how the smallest elements of language, such as (in)definiteness markers, carry meanings that go beyond the English the or a. In this quest, I’m re-examining definiteness marking in Akan, showing that its meanings extend beyond the strict Schwarzian strong-vs-weak distinction. In particular, I analyze definites as functioning like quasi-demonstratives and bare nouns as quasi-titles. In this field, I work in collaboration with Prof. Elizabeth Coppock and Dr. Augustina Owusu.

 Currently, I am working on my second project (Second Qualifying Paper). I am investigating whether Akan definite bare nouns are truly quasi-names or quasi-titles and whether true quasi-names require shared functional relations.

Outside of academia, I enjoy cooking, singing, and spending quality time with my family.

Contact info

rdbonney@bu.edu / rebeccadufieforson@gmail.com

Find Me Here

I am a member of the Structures of Under-researched Languages(SuLa), Linguistic Semantics Lab(LisLab) and The Phonetics, Acquisition & Multilingualism Lab (PAMLab)