Research
Helen Engemann is Junior Professor of Multilingualism in the Department of English. Her research interests centre around the processes of multilingual language acquisition across various ages and contexts. She investigates language acquisition from both a psycholinguistic and cognitive linguistic perspective. She is especially interested in language contact phenomena, the factors behind their occurrence and the implications for language change.
Since January, she has been vice speaker of the DFG research unit “Structuring the Input in Language Processing, Acquisition, and Change“ (SILPAC, FOR 5157, Gepris 437487447). Within this research unit, she is the principal investigator of the project „Priming in contact-setting bilinguals and monolinguals as a driver of language change”. Since 2022, she is a member of the DFG scientific network “Language Contact Phenomena in Multilingual First Language Acquisition” (LaCoLa).
Biographic Information
Helen Engemann studied Classics, French and General Linguistics at the Universities of Oxford (BA Hons & MA), Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris and Cambridge (MPhil). She completed her PhD from the University of Cambridge (2012) on the topic of bilingual first language acquisition in English-French speaking children. From 2012 to 2017 she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the CNRS Paris, the Free University of Bolzano and the Goethe University Frankfurt in the fields of psycholinguistics, language acquisition and multilingualism.
Teaching
Publications
- Michelotti, A., Baroncini, I. & Engemann, H. (2025). Linguistic variation in the interpretation and production of Italian motion event constructions in younger and older adults: evidence for language change? Language and Cognition, 17(Article e29), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2024.74
- Engemann, H. (2024). Structural complexity reduction in English-French bilingual children’s event encoding. Journal of Child Language, 51(6), 1243–1267. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000923000338
- Engemann, H. & Radetzky, S. (2024). Cognate facilitation in child third language learners in a multilingual setting. Languages : Open Access Journal, 9(Art. Nr. 310), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9100310
- Engemann, H. (2022). Entropy convergence in early bilinguals' syntactic packaging. Frontiers in Psychology, 13(Article 1010002), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1010002
- Engemann, H. (2022). How (not) to cross a boundary: crosslinguistic influence in simultaneous bilingual children's event construal. Bilingualism : Language and Cognition, 25(1), 42–54. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728921000298
- Engemann, H. (2016). Learning to think for speaking about space in child bilingualism. Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée, 21(2), 49–64.
- Engemann, H., Hendriks, H., Hickmann, M., Soroli, E. & Vincent, C. (2015). How language impacts memory of motion events in English and French. Cognitive Processing, 16(Supp.1), 209–213. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-015-0696-7
- Harr, A.-K. & Engemann, H. (2011). The impact of typological factors in monolingual and bilingual first language acquisition: Caused motion expressions in English and French. Language, Interaction and Acquisition : LIA, 2(1), 101–128. https://doi.org/10.1075/lia.2.1.05och
- Vincent, C., Soroli, E., Engemann, H., Hendriks, H. & Hickmann, M. (2018). Tobii or not Tobii? Assessing the validity of eye tracking data: Challenges and solutions. In D. Barratt, R. Bertram & M. Nyström (eds.), Abstracts of the Scandinavian Workshop on Applied Eye Tracking (SWAET 2018) (S. 7). Journal of Eye Movement Research, Bern Open Publishing: Bern.
- Engemann, H. (2023). How it all began: The acquisition of language(s) in childhood. In J. Roche & M. Jessen (eds.), Applied cognitive linguistics for language teachers (S. 224–269). Berlin: Lit.
- Engemann, H. (2018). Mehrsprachigkeit im (frühen) Kindesalter. In N. von Dewitz (eds.), Neuzuwanderung und Bildung : eine interdisziplinäre Perspektive auf Übergänge in das deutsche Bildungssystem (S. 105–122). Weinheim ; Basel: Beltz Juventa.
- Engemann, H. (2018). Wie alles begann: Der kindliche Sprach(en)erwerb. In M. Jessen (eds.), Kognitive Linguistik (S. 245–282). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.
- Hickmann, M., Engemann, H., Soroli, E., Hendriks, H. & Vincent, C. (2017). Expressing and categorizing motion in French and English: Verbal and non-verbal cognition across languages. In I. Ibarretxe-Antuñano (eds.), Motion and space across languages : theory and applications (S. 61–94). Amsterdam [u.a.]: Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.59.04hic
- Harr, A.-K. & Engemann, H. (2013). The impact of typological factors in monolingual and bilingual first language acquisition: Caused motion expressions in English and French. In D. Bassano (eds.), Grammaticalization and first language acquisition : crosslinguistic perspectives (S. 101–127). Amsterdam [u.a.]: Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.50.05och
- Engemann, H., Harr, A.-K. & Hickmann, M. (2012). Caused motion events across languages and learner types A comparison of bilingual first and adult second language acquisition. In L. Filipović (eds.), Space and time in languages and cultures : linguistic diversity (S. 263–288). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.36.15eng