Soonja Choi is a linguist originally from South Korea, specializing in

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...

, semantics, and the linguistics of Korean.

Biography

Choi initially studied

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

language and literature, receiving her BA at Sacred Heart Women's College in Seoul in 1972 and her MA at

Seoul National University Seoul National University (SNU; ) is a national public research university located in Seoul, South Korea. Founded in 1946, Seoul National University is largely considered the most prestigious university in South Korea; it is one of the three "S ...

in 1976. After this she went to study in France, and received a master’s degree in applied linguistics from Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV) in 1980. Her PhD in linguistics was awarded in 1986 by

SUNY Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

. After her doctoral studies, Choi spent some time as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto in Canada, before being appointed assistant professor at San Diego State University in 1987. She remained at SDSU until her retirement, being promoted to associate professor in 1991 and full professor in 1997. In 2008 she founded the Korean Studies Program at SDSU, and she remains its director. Choi has retained links with Europe throughout her career. From 1988 to 1996 she was active as a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in

Nijmegen Nijmegen (;; Spanish and it, Nimega. Nijmeegs: ''Nimwèège'' ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and tenth largest of the Netherlands as a whole, located on the Waal river close to the German border. It is about 6 ...

, The Netherlands, where she collaborated with

Melissa Bowerman Melissa Bowerman (April 3, 1942 – October 31, 2011) was a leading researcher in the area of language acquisition. From 1982-2007, she was a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Education and career In 1971 ...

. Since 2012 she has also been Research Professor at the Comparative Psycholinguistics Group of the University of Vienna, Austria. In 2019 she was elected as a member of the Academia Europaea.

Research

Much of Choi’s research has been concerned with the first language acquisition of verbal semantics, especially motion events and spatial categories, and the relationship between language and cognition more broadly. A recurring theme, especially in work with

, has been the extent to which these domains provide evidence for or against the hypothesis of

linguistic relativity The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view, worldview or cognition, and ...

. Her work has drawn on both naturalistic and experimental evidence, in particular building on comparative work on languages such as Korean, Dutch, English, French and German.

Selected publications

* Gopnik, Alison, and Soonja Choi. 1990. Do linguistic differences lead to cognitive differences? A cross-linguistic study of semantic and cognitive development. ''First Language'' 10, 199-215. * Choi, Soonja, and Melissa Bowerman. 1991. Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. ''Cognition'' 41, 83-121. * Choi, Soonja, and Alison Gopnik. 1995. Early acquisition of verbs in Korean: a cross-linguistic study. ''Journal of Child Language'' 22, 497-529. * Gopnik, Alison, and Soonja Choi. 1995. Names, relational words, and cognitive development in English and Korean speakers: nouns are not always learned before verbs. In Michael Tomasello and William E. Merriman (eds.), ''Beyond Names for Things: Young Children's Acquisition of Verbs'', 63-80. New York: Erlbaum. * Choi, Soonja, Laraine McDonough, Melissa Bowerman, and Jean M. Mandler. 1999. Early sensitivity to language-specific spatial categories in English and Korean. ''Cognitive Development'' 14, 241-268. * Bowerman, Melissa, and Soonja Choi. 2001. Shaping meanings for language: universal and language-specific in the acquisition of spatial semantic categories. In Melissa Bowerman and Stephen Levinson (eds.), ''Language acquisition and conceptual development'', 475-511. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Bowerman, Melissa, and Soonja Choi. 2003. Space under construction: Language-specific spatial categorization in first language acquisition. In Dedre Gentner and

Susan Goldin-Meadow Susan Goldin-Meadow is the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Comparative Human Development, the college, and the Committee on Education at the University of Chicago. She is the principal investigator ...

(eds.), ''Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought'', 387-427. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. * McDonough, Laraine, Soonja Choi, and Jean M. Mandler. 2003. Understanding spatial relations: Flexible infants, lexical adults. ''Cognitive Psychology'' 46, 229-259.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Choi, Soonja Living people Developmental psycholinguists Women linguists Syntacticians Koreanists University at Buffalo alumni Seoul National University alumni Paris-Sorbonne University alumni Year of birth missing (living people)