Natalia Rakhlin

Natalia Rakhlin

Associate Professor
Linguistics

natalia.rakhlin@wayne.edu

 5057 Woodward Ave., Room 10303.3

Curriculum vitae

Media

Department

English/Linguistics

Natalia Rakhlin

I got my Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Connecticut in 2007, where I studied child language acquisition. After graduation, I spent six years at Yale Child Study Center. There I transitioned to studying language and literacy development in children with developmental language disorders, primarily Specific Language Impairment and Developmental Dyslexia.

I joined WSU in 2015. My research goal is to contribute to our understanding of the nature and causes of developmental language disorder (as well as other disorders affecting language development) in children who speak diverse languages. This goal is achievable only in the context of a better understanding of language acquisition in typically developing children, studying which allows me to address some of the most fascinating questions about the human mind.

Research interest(s)/area of expertise

Child language acquisition, developmental language disorders

Research

  • Language disorder in Russian and Arabic: its manifestations, neurophysiological and genetic correlates
  • “Syntax at the age of two:” basic syntactic elements universally present in language of typically developing children at the inception of syntactic development
  • Language as a cognitive augmenter: acquisition of the layers of syntactic hierarchical structure as a representational tool for cognitive advancement in preschool children

Selected publications

  • Rakhlin, N. & Progovac, L. (2020). Hierarchical clause structure as a tool for cognitive advances in early childhood. Language Sciences, Elsevier
  • Rakhlin, N., Li, N., Aljughaiman, A., & Grigorenko, E. (2020). Narrative language markers of Arabic language development and impairment. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research. ASHA
  • Rakhlin, N., Landi, N., Lee, M., Magnuson, J., Naumova, O., *Ovchinnikova, O., Grigorenko, E. (2020). Cohesion of cortical language networks during word processing is predicted by a common polymorphism in the SETBP1 gene. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development. Advanced online publication. DOI:10.1002/cad.20331
  • Rakhlin, N. V., Aljughaiman, A., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2019). Assessing language development in Arabic: The Arabic language: Evaluation of Function (ALEF). Applied Neuropsychology: Child, 1-16
  • Kornilov, S., Rakhlin, N., Koposov, R., Lee, M., Yrigollen, C., Caglayan, A., Magnuson, J., Mane, S., Chang, J., Grigorenko, E. (2016). Genome-Wide Association and Exome Sequencing Study of Language Disorder in an Extended Pedigree. Pediatrics, 137(4): e20152469. PubMed PMID: 27016271
  • Rakhlin, N., Kornilov, S., Reich, J., & Grigorenko, E.L. (2015). Interpretation of anaphoric dependencies by Russian-speaking children with and without Developmental Language Disorder. Language Acquisition, 22(4), pp. 355-383. PubMed PMID: 26640354
  • Rakhlin, N., Hein, S., Doyle, N., Hart, L., Koposov, R., Macomber, D., Ruchkin, V., *Strelina, A., Tan, M., Grigorenko, E. (2015). Language development of internationally adopted children: adverse early experiences outweigh the age of acquisition effect. Journal of Communication Disorders, 57, pp. 66-80. PubMed PMID: 26385197
  • Rakhlin, N., Kornilov, S. A., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2014). Gender and Agreement Processing in Children With Developmental Language Disorder. Journal of Child Language, 41(2), 241-274. PubMed PMID: 23390959
  • Rakhlin, N., Cardoso-Martins, C., Kornilov, S. A., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2013). Spelling well despite language impairment: what makes it possible? Annals of Dyslexia. 63(3 4), pp. 253-273. PubMed PMID: 23860907

Courses taught by Natalia Rakhlin

Winter Term 2023

Fall Term 2022

Winter Term 2022