Research interests

My research interests include psycholinguistics, multilingual processing, language contact, sociolinguistics, heritage and endangered languages, particularly Campidanese Sardinian.

I am a member at the Second Language Acquisition Lab. My research there focuses on how active use influences bilingual performances and on methods of measuring dominance, as well as the interplay between dominance and heritage languages.

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]

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]

Projects

Comparing dominance measures in bilingual speakers of typologically different languages

This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of dominance in typologically different languages, such as Turkish and English. Developing robust measures of dominance is especially important and challenging for this population, since most methods to measure dominance rely on syntax or grammatical structures.

You can find the paper here.

Evidentiality and language contact: A case study of Turkish children in Berlin

This MA dissertation looked at the changes that Turkish evidentiality is undergoing in bilingual children living in Berlin due to contact with German. Previous studies (Herkenrath 2016) have found that in Turkish/German bilingualism the evidential suffix has disappeared, therefore we hypothesize that the Turkish evidential mark may have undergone attrition.

You can find the full thesis here.

Does Italian dominance affect Sardinian phonology? A case study of Southern Campidanese

This study looks at whether a peculiar phonological process of Campidanese (intervocalic lenition at the word boundary) is affected by Italian. In particular, I looked at whether speakers’ dominance affects this process

Conference Talks

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, Boğaziçi 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), İstanbul 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)