Selected projects
Ellipsis in Contact: VPE and Sluicing in Spanish Heritage Speakers
Talk at BUCLD 50 with Victoria Mateu and Rodrigo Ranero
This study investigates English-dominant Spanish heritage speakers’ (HSs) evaluation of verb phrase ellipsis (VPE) and sluicing. Spanish permits VPE only with modal remnants, while English allows both modal and auxiliary VPE. Sluicing, in contrast, is constrained by universal voice-matching requirements. We thus test whether HSs’ difficulties with silent elements (“the Silent Problem”) are observed across structures, or whether they are particularly notable when transfer from the dominant language is available. In a written/aural acceptability judgment task, HSs (n=40) and Spanish-dominant controls (n=33) rated expected grammatical (ModVPE and Voice Match Sluicing) and ungrammatical (AuxVPE and Voice Mismatch Sluicing) sentences. Both groups rejected voice-mismatched sluicing equally. However, HSs penalized AuxVPE less than the baseline group, suggesting English transfer. The results support the view that HSs exhibit reduced inhibition of the dominant language. We argue that constraints on silence that are universally observed are maintained more robustly in HSs’ grammars.
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Word order preferences with intransitive verbs in heritage and L2 Spanish
Proceedings of the 29th Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe, 2021.
While English only allows preverbal subjects in declarative contexts, it has been claimed that in Spanish, unaccusative verbs, but not unergatives, license postverbal subjects. Experimental studies support this syntactico-semantic distinction, albeit not categorically; additional factors play a role in word order preferences, e.g., information structure. I explore the roles of verb type and adjunct placement on word order preferences in a judgment task administered to heritage, L2, and native Spanish speakers. Results suggest all groups are sensitive to these effects: speakers show a preference for preverbal subjects with unergative verbs and a tendency to accept postverbal subjects with preverbal adverbs.
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Portfolio. La música en contexto. Listicle Project.
The acquisition of the periphrastic and se-passives in L2 Spanish: A priming and acceptability task investigation
Poster presented at BUCLD 48 (with Victoria Mateu)
This study investigates the effects of construction frequency in the L2 and transfer from the L1 in the acquisition of the periphrastic and se-passives in L2 Spanish. The two constructions differ in that the periphrastic passive, but not the se-passive, has an analogous structure in English, and the se-passive is at least eight times more frequent than the periphrastic passive in Spanish. We ask: How accessible are periphrastic and se-passives for L2ers in production? And do L2ers’ productions reflect target-like representations of these structures? Preliminary results from our priming task show that both L2ers and native speakers produce a comparable number of passives in both immediate and delayed priming. However, results from the AJT reveal non-target-like performance by L2ers on se-passives. This is the first study to test both passive constructions, offering insight into the particular abilities of L2ers, and highlighting the importance of using multiple methodologies.
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Scaffolding in Project-Based Learning: Podcast Project in Introductory Spanish for Heritage Speakers
Southwest Association of Language Learning Technology Mini-Conference: The Future of Language Teaching: Embracing Multiple Literacies.
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