I am Professor of Psycholinguistics at the Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, at the University of Tartu, Estonia. I also founded the Centre for Multilingualism (co-led with Kerttu Rozenvalde), which is a member of the Bilingualism Matters network. My research interests center around cross-linguistic acquisition, morphosyntactic variation, bilingualism and  teenagers’ language.

I was born and raised bilingually in the USA, but I’ve been living in Europe since the mid-90s. I studied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, UK (MSc and PhD, 2004) and before that, Philosophy at Wesleyan University, in Connecticut. I held a Marie Curie Fellowship, working on language acquisition in Psychology at the University of Manchester in 2014-2016.

Here are a few links to media and talks (all in Estonian).

  • My inaugural lecture on being promoted to Professor at the University of Tartu (April 2025)
  • A video class on youth language for schools
  • Interview in the popular science magazine Novaator 
  • In a ceremonial talk in honour of Estonian ‘Mother Tongue Day’ at the University of Tartu, I talked about differences between monolingual and bilingual acquisition, the importance of recognising bilingual kids and using public rhetoric valuing bilingualism and home languages (March 12, 2020, just before the national lockdown due to COVID19).
  • In my job talk (venia legendi), for the position of Associate Professor, I discussed the  acquisition of case by children learning Estonian as a first language (May 2019).
  • A video of a talk to a theatre troupe, discussing Mowgli’s story – and what we know about real-life scenarios of children raised without linguistic input, and whether they can then learn language (May 2018). 

I’ve been fortunate to have lived in some wonderful places. When I’m not working, you might find me at the cinema, on a riverside run, dancing or travelling.

In case you were wondering about my name:

Virve means: a ripple, a momentary flicker. Or when the TV starts blinking. Also, coincidentally, the Finnish telecommunications network, short for Viranomaisradioverkko. And, unrelatedly, ‘rope’ in Latvian!