Research interests
My research is shaped by both scholarly and personal engagement with multilingualism. I was raised as a heritage speaker of Campidanese Sardinian, an experience that motivates my interest in how minority and heritage languages are acquired, used, and maintained across generations. More broadly, my work examines how multilingual experience shapes linguistic processing and representation in diverse sociolinguistic contexts, bringing together perspectives from psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language contact to understand variability in bilingual and heritage language outcomes.
Ongoing & Completed Projects
Language dominance and bilingual experience
This project examines how language dominance can be defined and measured in bilingual speakers of typologically distinct languages. It addresses the challenge of developing robust dominance measures for populations whose languages differ substantially in their grammatical systems, and for whom dominance cannot be inferred from a single structural domain. By comparing multiple dimensions of language experience, this work contributes to broader discussions about how bilingual experience shapes linguistic representation and use.
You can find the paper here.
Language contact and evidentiality in heritage speakers
This project investigated the effects of sustained language contact on grammatical systems in heritage speaker populations. Focusing on bilingual acquisition in a majority-language environment, it examined how contact-related pressures may lead to restructuring or attrition in grammatical systems. This work addresses broader questions about grammatical stability and change in heritage language development.
You can find the full thesis here.
Phonology in heritage language contact settings
This project explores the interaction between bilingual experience and phonological systems in heritage languages. Using a regional or minority variety spoken alongside a dominant societal language as a case study, it examines whether patterns of language use and dominance influence gradient phonological processes, contributing to our understanding of phonological variation and change under contact.
Talks and Presentations
Evidentiality and Language Contact: A Case Study of Turkish Children in Berlin
Porru I. - December 2019. SYNC, New York University
Explicit and implicit measures of language dominance in Turkish-English bilinguals
Porru I., Stern M.C., Martohardjono G. - February 2020. BUSCTEL, BoÄŸaziçi Üniversitesi
Comparing dominance measures in bilingual speakers of typologically different languages
Porru, I. - April 2022. ConCALL-4, Indiana University
Does Italian dominance affect Sardinian phonology? A case study of Southern Campidanese
Porru, I. - September 2022. LABiC, Ca' Foscari University
Language Use Modulates Processing of Island Constraints in Heritage Language Speakers
Martohardjono, G., Johns, M., Castillo, D., Franciotti, P., Porru, I., Lowry, C. - May 2023. Heritage Languages at the Crossroads (HL@Cross), Ä°stanbul Medeniyet Üniversitesi
Poster / Project launch. An ocean apart
Porru, I., Martohardjono G., Bayram, F. - NWAV51, Queens College
“Wait.. who are we talking about?”: Different interpretations in bilingual populations
Porru, I. - Communicating Your Science Symposium, Advanced Science Research Center (CUNY)
Published work
Porru, I., Stern, M. C., & Martohardjono, G. (2021, April). Comparing dominance measures in speakers of typologically different languages: A case study of Turkish-English Bilinguals. In Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics (p. 211). [link]
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Martohardjono, G., Johns, M., Franciotti, P., Castillo, D., Porru, I., & Lowry, C. Use of the first-acquired language modulates pupil size in the processing of island constraint violations. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1180989. [link]