Selected projects
Aux-VPE in Spanish heritage speakers: Consequences for ellipsis licensing
Talk with Victoria Mateu and Rodrigo Ranero at Going Romance 39 (2025)
This study addresses two questions at the intersection of theoretical syntax and heritage language research: (i) do heritage speakers (HSs) of Spanish diverge from baseline speakers in their evaluation of auxiliary-stranding verb phrase ellipsis (AuxVPE)?; (ii) If so, is their acceptance of AuxVPE associated with acceptance of encliticization—an independent grammatical property that has been hypothesized to be linked to AuxVPE licensing?
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.
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. (2024)
Comparing productive and receptive abilities of Spanish periphrastic and se-passives in second language learners
Talk with Victoria Mateu (2024) at the 100th Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Society of America
The Spanish periphrastic passive, but not the se-passive, has an analogous structure in English, but the se-passive is 8x more frequent than the periphrastic 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 show that both L2ers and native speakers produce a comparable number of passives in immediate and delayed priming. However, results from an AJT reveal non-target-like performance by L2ers on se-passives, suggesting that transfer and age of acquisition play a greater role than frequency in L2 acquisition.
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.