Mihaela Pirvulescu

Graduate appointment: Graduate French Program

Dr. Pirvulescu's areas of expertise are in first language acquisition, multilingual acquisition and early second language acquisition. Her current SSHRC project, involving a team of national and international researchers, investigates the role of language interactions in multilingual language acquisition. She is interested in how a heritage language is acquired and maintained in an anglophone multilingual environment, as well as in how French as a third language is acquired, and what the interactions are with the previously learned languages.

Current Courses

Summer 2024:

• FRE491 (Independent Study)

Fall/Winter 2024-25:

• JFL388/JLP388 (Bilingualism and Multiple Language Acquisition)

Graduate Course

• FRE1138 (Bilinguisme et acquisition du langage)

Education

• PhD, French Linguistics, University of Toronto
• MA, French Linguistics, University of Toronto
• BA, Romanian/French Philology and Literature, University of Bucharest (Romania)

Areas of Academic Interest

• Bilingualism and multilingualism
• Syntax
• Child language acquisition

Selected Publications

Books

• Pérez-Leroux, A., Pirvulescu, M., & Roberge, Y. (2018). Direct objects and language acquisition. CUP Press.
• Steele, J., & Pirvulescu, M. (Eds.). (2015). Arborescences, Numéro 5, Acquisition du français (pp. 1–138).
• Pirvulescu, M., Cuervo, M. C., Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Steele, J., & Strik, N. (Eds.). (2011). Selected Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2010).

Articles

• Bello, S., & Pirvulescu, M. (2022). L’acquisition des objets directs et indirects en français L1. Language, Interaction, and Acquisition, 13(1), 63–92.
• Pirvulescu, M., Hill, V., Nacif, N., Helms-Park, R., & Petrescu, M. (2022). The acquisition of adverbs in child L3 French in Canada. Glossa: A Journal of General  Linguistics, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5721 ​​​​​​
• Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Pirvulescu, M., Roberge, Y., & Strik, N. (2017). Clitics as input to the acquisition of verbal transitivity in French. Linguisticae Investigationes, 40(1).
• *Pirvulescu, M.(with Ana T. Pérez-Leroux, Yves Roberge and Nelleke Strik). (2015). Object clitics in a second language: evidence from early child second language learners of French. Linguistica Atlantica. (or did Dr. Pirvulescu mean this: https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/la/issue/view/1724)
• Pirvulescu, M., & Strik, N. (2014). The acquisition of object clitic features in French: A comprehension study. Lingua, 144, 58–71.
• Pirvulescu, M., Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Roberge, Y., Strik, N., & Thomas, D. (2014). Bilingual effects: Exploring object omission in pronominal languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(3), 495–510.
• Hill, V., & Pirvulescu, M. (2012). French object clitics, L1 and the left periphery. In S. Ferré, P. Prévost, L. Tuller, & R. Zebib (Eds.), Romance turn 4 (pp. 169–189). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.
• Pirvulescu, M., Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Roberge, Y., & Strik, N. (2012). Clitic Production across Tasks in Young French-speaking Children. In A. K. Biller, E. Y. Chung, & A. E. Kimball (Eds.), BUCLD 36 Proceedings (pp. 461–473). Cascadilla Press.
• Pirvulescu, M., & Hill, V. (2012). Object Clitic Omission in French-Speaking Children: Effects of the Elicitation Task. Language Acquisition, 19(1), 73–81.
• Pirvulescu, M. (2010). The acquisition of variable phenomena: The case of past participle agreement in Québec French. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics, 12(1), 193–202.
• Pirvulescu, M. (2009). Agreement Paradigms across Moods and Tenses: The Case of Romanian Subjunctive and Imperative. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 54(1), 137–156.
• Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Pirvulescu, M., & Roberge, Y. (2008). Null Objects in Child Language: Syntax and the Lexicon. Lingua, 118(3), 370–398.
• Pirvulescu, M., & Belzil, I. (2008). The Acquisition of Past Participle Agreement in Québec French L1. Language Acquisition, 15(2), 75–88.

Selected Grants, Fellowships and Awards

• SSHRC Insight Grant, Principal Investigator, 2017–2023, Multilingualism in the Canadian context: language interaction and development in trilingual children
• Jackman Institute Working group, Principal Investigator, 2016–2017, Canadian Multilingualism
• UTM Research and Scholarly Activity Fund, Principal Investigator, 2015, Trilingual language development and maintenance in the French immersion system
• SSHRC Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences in Canada, Principal Applicant, 2010, Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA, 4)
• SSHRC Insight Grant, Principal Investigator, 2009–2013, The acquisition of object clitics by children learning French as their first or second language
• SSHRC Insight Grant, Co-investigator, 2005–2008, Object omission and transitivity in child language