Rate My Professor Arild Hestvik

Arild Hestvik is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware, a position he has held since 2007, progressing from associate professor without tenure (2007-2010) to tenured associate (2010) and full professor (2022). He earned his Ph.D. in Linguistics and Cognitive Science from the Department of Psychology at Brandeis University in 1990, with a dissertation titled 'LF-Movement of Pronouns and the Computation of Binding Domains,' advised by Jane Grimshaw. His undergraduate degree is a Candidatus magisterii in theoretical linguistics, computer science, and English from the University of Trondheim, Norway, in 1984. Before joining Delaware, Hestvik served as Professor in the Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway (1995-2006), Researcher at the Institut für maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung, University of Stuttgart (1990-1995), and held postdoctoral and research associate positions in Speech-Language-Hearing Science at the CUNY Graduate Center (2000-2006). He maintains a joint appointment in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Delaware since 2014 and was an adjunct scientist at Nemours Biomedical Research in Wilmington, DE (2010-2024).

Hestvik directs the Experimental Psycholinguistics Lab at the University of Delaware, where his research examines how the brain computes linguistic representations in real time, how it understands grammar, and how language processing mechanisms develop in children, including those with language impairments. His work utilizes behavioral measures such as reaction times and electrophysiological techniques including EEG and event-related brain potentials. Notable publications include the edited book 'Phonological Representations and Mismatch Negativity Asymmetries' (Frontiers Media SA, 2022), 'Auditory Processing Disorder Targets Phonetics, Not Phonology' (BUCLD 47 Proceedings, 2023), 'Developmental Language Disorder as Syntactic Prediction Impairment' (Frontiers in Human Communication, 2022), 'English Vowel Discrimination and Perceptual Assimilation by Japanese Listeners' (Language and Speech, 2023), and 'Neurobiological evidence for voicing underspecification in English' (Brain and Language, 2016). Hestvik has served on the University of Delaware Neuroscience Committee (2019-2022), contributed editorially to Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, and held fellowships such as ITT International Fellow (1984-1986) and visiting researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University (2023).