Dalila Ayoun

Professor of French Linguistics and Second language Acquisition and Teaching

Department of French & Italian

I teach French language as well as theoretical and applied linguistics courses. My research interests lie in the second language acquisition of morphosyntax (tense-aspect-mood/modality, grammatical gender), theoretical and applied French linguistics from a generative/minimalist perspective and cognitive linguistic perspective. I also hold a courtesy appointment in the Linguistics department.

Background: B.A. in English (Université Côte d’Azur); Certificate in Translation/ Interpretation (French, English, Spanish) and M.A. in International Studies (University of Nebraska at Kearney); Ph.D in French linguistics specializing in second language acquisition at the University of Florida. I was Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky and Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa before joining the University of Arizona.

I am the Co-Ordinating Editor for the Journal of French Languages Studies and I preside the Association for French Language Studies.

I am spending my 2023-24 sabbatical year at the Université Côte d’Azur where I have been awarded one of two grants by the IDEX UCAJEDI Advanced Research Program 2023. I am working on a longitudinal study on the second language acquisition of English modality by French learners with Dr. Amanda Edmonds.  

I am co-organizing the AFLS 2024 annual conference in New Orleans with colleagues from Tulane University. The theme is: Laissez les bons temps rouler! Français et créoles entre héritage(s) et avenir(s). Submit an abstract by April 1, 2024.

I had the pleasure to serve as Noam Chomsky’s interpreter for his talk entitled ‘The gallilean challenge : Architecture and Evolution of language’ at the BNF in November 2016. Watch here

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