Dr. Sudha Arunachalam, Professor of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at NYU Steinhardt, received the prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2024 for her findings on language acquisition in early childhood. The prize is awarded annually to approximately twenty researchers from around the world whose work is internationally recognized and whose research accomplishments promise to have a significant impact within their discipline and beyond.
Photo from an interview with Dr. Arunachalam where she describes her research in Germany. Photo credit Thomas Roese/University of Potsdam.
The prize allowed Dr. Arunachalam to spend the second half of 2024 in Germany, conducting research and expanding her connections with German academics. As a visiting scholar at the University of Potsdam, she collaborated with Prof. Dr. Barbara Höhle at BabyLAB.
Dr. Arunachalam examines how children learn the meanings of verbs as they acquire their first language. While much research in this area focuses on English, this trip allowed her to explore how the differences in sentence structure across languages, such as German and Korean, affects children’s learning of verbs. This work is an important step toward understanding language acquisition and child development, which has implications for non-typically developing children as well.
Dr. Arunachalam was not the only NYU faculty member this year to be granted a 2024 Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award to conduct research in Germany. Dr. Lucas Champollion, Associate Professor of Linguistics, also received an award from the Foundation and is currently visiting the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München until August 2025.