Jekaterina Mazara
Chair Assistant
Dr. Jekaterina Mazara
Curriculum vitae
seit 2025 Akademische Rätin auf Zeit, Lehrstuhl für Multilinguale Computerlinguistik, Universität Passau.
2020 - 2024 Postdoc and Lecturer at Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution, University of Zurich.
2016 - 2020 PhD in General Linguistics, University of Zurich; Dissertation title: Development of Morphological Flexibility in the Acquisition of Aspect: Input Patterns and Children’s Production.
2016 - 2020 Project coordination, data collection and data base management in the SNF funded project The morphosyntax of agreement in Tuatschin: acquisition and contact, (PIs, Michele Loporcaro and Sabine Stoll), Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich.
2015 - 2019 Researcher (pre-doc) in the ERC funded project ACQDIV: Acquisition processes in maximally diverse languages: Min(d)ing the ambient language (PI: Sabine Stoll), Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich.
2012 - 2015 Researcher in the SNF funded project Implicit interaction strategies in political discourse of Post-Socialist Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic (PI: Daniel Weiss), Slavic Department, University of Zurich.
2012 Visiting researcher, University of California Berkeley.
2010 - 2015 Research and teaching assistant, lecturer, Slavic Department, University of Zurich.
2009 - 2010 MA, double major: Slavic Linguistics and Literature and English literature, University of Zurich.
2006 - 2009 BA, double major: English Linguistics and Literature and Slavic Linguistics and Literature, University of Zurich.
Publications
2025. (revision) Jekaterina Mazara, Elena Lieven, and Sabine Stoll. Pointing and Language Are Used in Similar Ways but not at Similar Rates in Different Cultures. To appear in: Developmental Science.
2025. Sakine C ̧abuk-Ballı, Paul Widmer, Jekaterina Mazara, Aylin C. Küntay, Birgit Hellwig, Shanley Allen, Sabine Stoll. Negation in First Language Acquisition: Universal or Language-Specific? In: Cognitive Science.
2025. (under review) Jekaterina Mazara, Michele Loporcaro, and Sabine Stoll. Lexical and morphological acquisition of gender agreement: Data from Romansch Tuatschin. Under review in: Journal of Child Language. 2025. (under review) Sabine Stoll, Michele Loporcaro, Jekaterina Mazˇara, and Balthasar Bickel. Entropy reduc-
tion in language change and language acquisition. Under review in: Open Mind. preprint here.
2024. Jekaterina Mazara, Michele Loporcaro, and Sabine Stoll. Acquisition of gender agreement depends on frequency distributions in specific contexts. In: Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. California Digital Library UC Merced.
2024. Selma Hardegger, Jekaterina Mazara, Birgit Hellwig, Aylin Küntay, Barbara Pfeiler, and Sabine Stoll. Verbs or Nouns? A cross-linguistic study examining the effect of morphological complexity and input on children’s early lexical development. In: Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. California Digital Library UC Merced.
2022. Jekaterina Mazara, Elena Lieven, and Sabine Stoll. How Do Children Combine Pointing and Language in the Earliest Stages of Development? A Case Study of Russian and Chintang. In: Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. California Digital Library, UC Merced, 3696-3702.
2021. Jekaterina Mazara and Sabine Stoll. Frequency vs. Salience in First Language Acquisition: The Acquisi- tion of Aspect Marking in Chintang. In: Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. California Digital Library, UC Merced, 840-846.
2019. Jekaterina Mazara and Sabine Stoll. How Do Children Become Flexible in Their Use of Grammatical Categories? The Aspect Hypothesis Revisited. In: Proceedings of the 44th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Cascadilla Press, 363-375.
2019. Jekaterina Mazara and Sabine Stoll. Development of Verb Morphology: From Item-Specificity to Profi- cient Use. In: Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
2017. Sabine Stoll, Jekaterina Mazara, and Balthasar Bickel. The acquisition of polysynthetic verb forms in Chintang. In: Fortescue, M. D., Mithun, M., Evans, N. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 495 - 514.
2013. Ten in der Obecna Cestina: Jugendjahre eines zukünftigen Artikels?. In: Velmezova, E. (ed.). Schweiz- erische Beiträge zum XV. Internationalen Slavistenkongress in Minsk, August 2013. Bern: Peter Lang, 143-164.
2013. Irony in the face(s) of politeness: Strategic use of verbal irony in Czech political TV debates. In: Thielemann, N., Kosta, P. (eds.). Approaches to Slavic Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 187-213.
2012. Ironie - Freund oder Feind?: Zur Auswirkung von Ironie auf das Ho ̈flichkeitsmanagement. In: Behensky, S. (ed.). Konferenzsammelband m*OST 2010. Mu ̈nchen: Verlag Otto Sagner, 24-31.
2012. Strategicˇeskoe upotreblenie ironii v social’nyx i politicˇeskix televizionnyx tok-sˇou. In: Rozanova, N. (ed.). Problemy recˇevogo obsˇcˇenija. Moscow: Nauka/FLINTA, 278-287.
2011. Missing verbs in colloquial Russian: Ambiguity or Vagueness?. In: Karl, K B ; Krumbholz, G., Lazar, M. (eds.). Beitra ̈ge der europäischen Slavistischen Linguistik (POLYSLAV). Mu ̈nchen: Verlag Otto Sagner, 137-145.
2011. Every Mama Needs a Baby: Ein neuer Zugang zur Semantik von Muterrollen im Russischen. In: Heeg, D. (ed.), Konferenzsammelband m*OST 2009. München: Verlag Otto Sagner, 8pp.
2010. Swiss Cheese for Lazy Speakers: Verb Omissions in Russian and Czech. In: Grønn, A., Marijanovic, I. (eds.). Russian in Contrast. Oslo: University of Oslo, 231-242.
Focus areas
My main interests lie in the modelling of learning processes during early linguistic development and the input patterns of child-directed language. In particular, I am interested in how various typological differences modulate this process and which aspects of acquisition are more general and unaffected by typological differences.
I am also invested in exploring various methodological approaches to the questions of language acquisition and processing in longitudinal corpora, in particular corpora of lesser-studied languages.
I got my PhD from the University of Zurich in 2020, where I worked in the ACQDIV project (Acquisition processes in maximally diverse languages: Min(d)ing the ambient language, PI Sabine Stoll) and contributed to the development of a large longitudinal corpus of children learning Romansch Tuatschin (SNF project The morphosyntax of agreement in Tuatschin: acquisition and contact, (PIs, Michele Loporcaro and Sabine Stoll).
In Passau, I teach classes on language acquisition, corpus linguistics, language in media discourse, and pragmatics.
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