Research areas

Multilingualism, psycholinguistics, language development in children

Projects

Multilingual Literacy / Meartalige Geletterdheid

Biography

Evelyn Bosma (Rotterdam, 1989) studied linguistics and Latin American studies at Leiden University. In 2017, she defended her PhD thesis (Fryske Akademy/UvA) on the language and cognitive development of Frisian-Dutch bilingual children. She then worked as a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University and Utrecht University. Now she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Fryske Akademy, where she researches multilingual literacy with colleagues from Norway.

As a psycholinguist, she deals with the question of how bilingualism works in the brain. In doing so, she uses language proficiency tasks, reaction time experiments, eye-tracking and EEG. Among other things, she has written articles on cognates, code-switching and the cognitive effects of bilingualism.

Awards

In 2021, Evelyn Bosma was awarded the Keetje Hodshon Prijs and was runner-up for the Gratama Science Prize. In 2020, she won the Klokhuis Science Prize together with her former MA student Naomi Nota. As a result, Het Klokhuis made an episode on Bilingualism. In 2018, she was nominated for the AVT/Anéla Dissertation Prize and in 2017 she won the RUG/Campus Fryslân Science Prize and the Best Poster Award at the TABU day.

Popular science publications (most recent):

Bosma, E. (2022). Mama, doe die telefoon weg. HP/De Tijd, 11, 24-29.

Bosma, E. & Knooihuizen, R. (2022). Meer Fries lezen op school: kleine moeite, groot effect. Friesch Dagblad.

Bosma, E. (2022). Oekraïens in de klas. HP/De Tijd, 6, 70-75.

Bosma, E. & Zenger, L. (2022). Woorden verbinden al legosteentjes: Profiteren van meertaligheid in de klas. Onze Taal, 5, 18-19.

Academic publications:

Bosma, E., Ayçiçek, S., Mikawa, M., Muller, M., Visser, E., & Kootstra, G. J. (2022). Structural priming and cross-linguistic influence in L2 comprehension of Dutch relative clauses and PP-attachments: Differences between German and English learners of Dutch. International Journal of Bilingualism.

Gathercole, V. C. M., Stadthagen-González, H., Parafita Couto, M. C., De Mulder, H., Pérez- Tattam, R. S., Bosma, E., Borisova, B. Z., & Romaneli, M. G. (2022). Moveable Figures and Grounds: Making the case for the dual nature of motion events as events of motion AND change of state. In: R. Levie, A. Bar-On, O. Ashkenazi, E. Dattner, & G. Brandes (Eds.), Developing language and literacy: Studies in honor of Dorit Diskin Ravid (pp. 129-172). Springer, Cham.

Bosma, E., Bakker, A., Zenger, L., & Blom, E. (2022). Supporting the development of the bilingual lexicon through translanguaging: a realist review integrating psycholinguistics with educational sciences. European Journal of Psychology of Education.

Blom, E., Bosma E., & Heeringa, W. (2021). Regular and irregular inflection in different groups of bilingual children and the role of verbal short-term and verbal working memory. Languages, 6: 56.

Bosma, E., & Dijkstra, J. (2020). Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) adapted for use in West Frisian. ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 64.

Bosma, E., & Pablos, L. (2020). Switching direction modulates the engagement of cognitive control in bilingual reading comprehension: An ERP study. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 55, 100894.

Bosma, E., & Nota, N. (2020). Cognate facilitation in Frisian-Dutch bilingual children’s sentence reading: an eye-tracking study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 189.

Bosma, E., & Blom, E. (2020). Language activities in a minority–majority language context: book-reading at home is more important for Frisian than for Dutch. Journal of Child Language, 47(2), 289-308.

Blom, E., Boerma, T., Bosma, E., Cornips, L., Timmermeister, M., & Van den Heuij, K. (2020). Cross-language distance influences receptive vocabulary outcomes of bilingual children. First Language, 40(2), 151 –171.

Bosma, E., Blom, E., Hoekstra, E., & Versloot, A. (2019). A longitudinal study on the gradual cognate facilitation effect in bilingual children’s Frisian receptive vocabulary. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 22(4), 371-385.

Bosma, E., & Blom, E. (2019). A code-switching asymmetry in bilingual children: Code-switching from Dutch to Frisian requires more cognitive control than code-switching from Frisian to Dutch. International Journal of Bilingualism, 23(6), 1431-1447.

Bosma, E. (2017). Bilingualism and cognition: the acquisition of Frisian and Dutch. Dissertation.

Bosma E., Heeringa, W., Hoekstra E., Versloot A., & Blom E. (2017). Verbal working memory is related to the acquisition of cross-linguistic phonological regularities. Frontiers in Psychology 8(1487), 1-11.

Bosma, E., Hoekstra, E., Versloot, A., & Blom, E. (2017). The minimal and short-lived effects of minority language exposure on the executive functions of Frisian-Dutch bilingual children. Frontiers in Psychology 8(1453), 1-12.

Blom, E., Boerma, T., Bosma, E., Cornips, L., & Everaert, E. (2017). Cognitive advantages of bilingual children in different sociolinguistic contexts. Frontiers in Psychology, 8(552), 1-12.

Bosma, E., Blom, E., & Versloot, A. (2017). Language balance and cognitive advantages in Frisian-Dutch bilingual children. In F. Lauchlan & M.C. Parafita Couto (Eds.), Bilingualism and Minority Languages in Europe: Current trends and developments (pp. 141-159). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Blom, E., & Bosma, E. (2016). The sooner the better? The influence of age of onset, degree of exposure and transfer in Frisian-Dutch bilingual children. Journal of Child Language, 43(3), 581-607.

Caspers, J., Bosma, E., Kramm, F. & Reya, P. (2012). Deaccentuation in Dutch as a second language: Where does the accent go to? Linguistics in the Netherlands, 29, 27-40.