LabCompass

Rex A. Sprouse

Arts and Humanities · Indiana University

OpenAlex
Established · publishing since 1987
Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic VariationLanguage Development and DisordersNatural Language Processing TechniquesMultilingual Education and PolicyPhonetics and Phonology Research

Publications

48

Citations

3,433

Est. group size

—

Recurring co-author estimate

Active years

40

Publishing since 1987

Research summary
AI-generated

Rex A. Sprouse studies how people acquire second and third languages, with particular attention to the grammatical rules (syntax) and sound systems (phonology) that learners come to know. His work draws on generative linguistics and Universal Grammar—the idea that humans share an innate framework for language—to explain how learners come to understand structures they were never explicitly taught. A recurring focus is the 'poverty of the stimulus' problem, which asks how learners acquire knowledge that goes beyond the input they receive.

Second and third language acquisitionGenerative grammar and Universal GrammarPoverty of the stimulus and learnabilitySyntax and word order in non-native learnersPhonological development and vowel harmony

Publication activity has been low and intermittent over the past decade, with several gap years and a small cluster of recent and forthcoming work in 2024 and 2026.

Generated by claude-opus-4-8 from public bibliographic data · Jul 9, 2026

In context
Among 305 established Arts and Humanities PIs within our index
Citations: 3,433cohort median 598
h-index: 17cohort median 11
Publications / year (recent): 0.8cohort median 1.4

Typically publishes in teams of ~2 · 91% small-team papers (≤3 authors) · across 4 venues

Publication cadence
Publications per year over the last 10 years — averaging 0.8/year recently
2017: 1 publication1718192020: 2 publications2202021: 1 publication2122232024: 2 publications224252026: 2 publications226
Collaborators per year
Distinct co-authors at Indiana University each year — a rough indication of whether the group around this researcher has been growing or contracting. An estimate from co-authorship, not a roster: collaborators are not necessarily lab members, and recent years can be under-counted while indexing catches up.
2017: 1 collaborator at the same institution2018: 0 collaborators at the same institution2019: 0 collaborators at the same institution2020: 0 collaborators at the same institution2021: 0 collaborators at the same institution2022: 0 collaborators at the same institution2023: 0 collaborators at the same institution2024: 1 collaborator at the same institution2025: 0 collaborators at the same institution1719212325
Recent publications
Publishes in
  • Second language Research×2
  • Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism×2
  • Language acquisition & language disorders×2
  • The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching×2
  • Cambridge University Press eBooks×1
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This profile was generated automatically from public scholarly data (OpenAlex). Group size and activity levels are estimates derived from co-authorship patterns.

Last updated Sep 1, 2026.

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