Skip to main content


photo unavailable

Barbara Catherine Lust

Professor

Graduate Fields

Research Focus

Dr. Lust's research concerns the child's acquisition of language, studied from a cross-linguistic perspective. Children acquiring more than 20 languages of the world are studied in the Cornell Language Acquisition Lab. Her research program, which is interdisciplinary, seeks both to identify the universals which characterize child language acquisition across all languages, and to explicate the nature of development of language during the time between birth and early childhood. In the Cornell Language Acquisition Lab, both experimental and naturalistic studies of young children's acquisition of early syntax and semantics are conducted. In addition to research on first language acquisition, research is also now being conducted on the development of multilingualism in young children and its cognitive consequences. Studies of adult second language acquisition are related.

Educational Background

  • Postdoc 1976 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Philosophy of LanguageĀ 
  • Ph.D. 1975 - City University of New York
    Developmental Psychology
  • M.A. 1971 - Fordham University
    English Literature
  • B.A. 1963 - Manhattanville College
    English Literature

Research Grants

  • TRANSFORMING THE PRIMARY RESEARCH PROCESS THROUGH CYBERTOOL DISSEMINATIO: AN IMPLEMENTATION OF A VIRTUAL CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Selected Publications

PubMed Listings
Lust, B. and Foley, C. (eds). 2004. Language Acquisition: The Essential Readings. Blackwell. Oxford, UK.

Lust, B. 2006. Child Language. Acquisition and Growth. Cambridge University Press. UK

For More Please select this link:
http://www.clal.cornell.edu/publications.php