My research publications span a number of topics including:
If you would like a copy of something that is not available here, please email me.
Smith, W. D. R., Defina, R., &: Hitchcock, C. (2025). Indigenous Practices to Enhance Mental Health: Reflections of ancient culture in modern science. The Lancet, 12(9), 624–626.
Kidd, E., Hellwig, B., Garcia, R., Defina, R., Davidson, L., & Allen, S. E. M. (2025). A comparative study of child-directed language across five cultures based on data from the Acquisition Sketch Project. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 45(3), 391–415.
Wighton, W., Defina, R., & Kelly, B. F. (2025). Children’s verbal inflection development in Pitjantjatjara: An acquisition sketch. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 45(3), 370–390.
Sastre Gomez, V., Defina, R., Garrett, P., Zacks, J. M., & Dennis, S. (2025). Duration Is Not a Reliable Indicator for Anticipating Event Boundaries. Computational Brain & Behavior, 8, 553–567.
Greenacre, L., Defina, R., Akbar, S., & Garcia, J. E. (2024). Dedicated comparatives aid comparisons of magnitude: A study with Pitjantjatjara-English bilinguals. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 18, 1418797.
Defina, R., Hellwig, B., Allen, S. E. M., Davidson, L., Kelly, B. F., & Kidd, E. (2023). The Sketch Acquisition Manual (SAM) Part I: The sketch corpus. Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication 28, 5–38.
Defina, R., Hellwig, B., Allen, S. E. M., Davidson, L., Kelly, B. F., & Kidd, E. (2023). The Sketch Acquisition Manual (SAM) Part II: The acquisition sketch. Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication 28, 39–86.
Zlatev, J., Devylder, S., Defina, R., Moskaluk, K., & Andersen, L. B. (2023). Analyzing polysemiosis: Language, gesture, and depiction in two cultural practices with sand drawing. Semiotica.
Akbar, S., Greenacre, L., Defina, R., & Garay, L. (2022). Diverse research teams: A framework for research review. International Journal of Market Research, 65(2–3), 155–166.
Hellwig, B., Defina, R., Kidd, E., Allen, S. E. M., Davidson, L., & Kelly, B. F. (2021). Child language documentation: The sketch acquisition project. Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication 25 Doing corpus-based typology with spoken language data: State of the art. Geoffrey Haig, Stefan Schnell, & Frank Seifart (Eds.), 29–58.
Wilmoth, S., Defina, R., & Loakes, D. (2021). They Talk Muṯumuṯu: Variable elision of tense suffixes in contemporary Pitjantjatjara. Languages, 6(2), 69.
Defina, R. (2020). Acquisition of Pitjantjatjara clause chains. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 541.
Minutjukur, M., Tjitayi, K., Tjitayi, U., & Defina, R. (2019). Pitjantjatjara language change: Some observations and recommendations. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 82–91.
Defina, R. (2018). Tense, aspect, and mood in Avatime. Afrika und Übersee, 92, 65-97.
Defina, R. (2016). Do serial verb constructions describe single events? A study of co-speech gestures in Avatime. Language, 92(4), 890–910.
Defina, R. (2016). Serial verb constructions and their subtypes in Avatime. Studies in Language, 40(3), 648–680.
San Roque, L., Kendrick, K., Norcliffe, E., Brown, P., Defina, R., Dingemanse, M., Dirksmeyer, T., Enfield, N. J., Floyd, S., Hammond, J., Rossi, G., Tufvesson, S., van Putten, S., & Majid, A. (2016). Vision verbs dominate in conversation across cultures, but the ranking of non-visual verbs varies. Cognitive Linguistics , 26(3), 31–60.
Hellwig, B., Allen, S. E. M., Davidson, L., Defina, R., Kelly, B. F., & Kidd, E. (2023). Special Publication 28: The Acquisition Sketch Project. Language Documentation and Conservation
Goddard, C., & Defina, R. (2020). Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara to English Dictionary (2nd ed., rev.) IAD Press .
Defina, R., Dingemanse, M., & van Putten, S. (2024). Linguistic fieldwork as team science. In Predication in African Languages (pp. 20–42).
van Putten, S., & Defina, R. (2023). A grammatical sketch of Avatime (Kwa, Niger-Congo, Ghana). In The Cambridge Handbook of Role and Reference Grammar (pp. 889–913).
Sastre Gomez, V., Defina, R., Zacks, J. M., & Dennis, S. (2025). More Than Boundaries: Exploring the Characteristics and Attributes of Daily Life Events. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 47.
Gomez, V. S., Defina, R., Garrett, P. M., Zacks, J. M., & Dennis, S. (2024). Event distribution in daily life: A replication study. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 46.
Gomez, V. S., Defina, R., Garrett, P. M., Zacks, J. M., & Dennis, S. (2024). What binds non-contiguous events together?. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 46.
Gomez, V. S., Defina, R., Garrett, P. M., Zacks, J. M., & Dennis, S. (2023). The prevalence of multitasking presents challenges for theories of event segmentation. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 45.
Gomez, L. V. S., Defina, R., Garrett, P., Zacks, J. M., & Dennis, S. (2022). How long are real-life events?. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 44.
Defina, R., Torres, C., & Stoakes, H. (2020). Scaling processes of clause chains in Pitjantjatjara. Proceedings of Interspeech 2020.
Defina, R., &, Majid, A. (2012). Conceptual event units of putting and taking in two unrelated languages. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 34.
O’Shannessy, C., Davis, V., Foster, D., Bartlett, J., Nelson, A., Defina, R., Tjitayi, K., & Minutjukur M. (2023). Little kids word list: Macarthur Bates CDI for Indigenous languages in Central Australia – Eastern & Central Arrernte, Western Arrarnta, Luritja, Pitjantjatjara, Warlpiri and Aboriginal English.
Defina, R. (2016). Events in language and thought: The case of serial verb constructions in Avatime. Radboud University Nijmegen.
Defina, R. (2014). Review of Arbil: Free Tool for Creating, Editing, and Searching Metadata. Language Documentation & Conservation, 8, 307–314.
Defina, R. (2010). Aspect and modality in Avatime. Leiden University.
Defina, R. (collector) (2017-2020). Collection ‘Rebecca Defina’(closed access). Ara Irititja
Defina, R. (collector) (2010-2016). MPI Archive, Language and Cognition, Africa, Avatime. Collection ‘Defina’. The Language Archive
van Putten, S., Defina, R., Oboni, S. K., & Kodjovie, S. (collectors) (2008-2011). MPI Archive, Language and Cognition, Africa, Avatime. Collection ‘Shared’. The Language Archive
van Putten, S., &, Defina, R. (collectors) (2010). Collection ‘Description and Documentation of Avatime’. Endangered Languages Archive