Language
Spanish-English bilingualism, cognition & humor
As an experimental sociolinguist, my aim is to advance our understanding of the social and cognitive factors that influence how bilinguals process and produce language. I study Spanish-English bilinguals in the U.S. and Spanish-Quechua bilinguals in the South American Andes. Methodologically, I draw from a combination of sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic tools, including fieldwork interviews, corpus analyses, online surveys, artificial language learning experiments and neurolinguistics studies. This page provides highlights from my academic and public-facing work. For a comprehensive review of my work, please see my CV.
My academic Work
Bilingual word processing
Does speaker identity influence
bilingual word processing? Data from my dissertation, an EEG experiment, reveal that speaker accent modulates bilingual lexical activation, as demonstrated by an N400 reduction effect when false cognates are spoken by certain accents but not others.
Foreign accent perception
Is Chicano English, a U.S. dialect of Spanish-influenced English, still perceived as a foreign accent? Data from an accent evaluation survey indicate Midwesterners now perceive it for what it is, a native dialect. What counts as “sounding American” appears to be expanding in scope!
Spanish verb variation
Contact with Quichua led to changes in frequency and functional distribution of the ir (‘to go’) + GERUND construction in Ecuadorian Spanish. Data from a corpus analysis and paraphrase task are used to explain the sociolinguistic variation of auxiliary verbs in this dialect.
Bilingual vowel spaces
Spanish has 5 vowels and Quichua only 3, which explains why some bilinguals have difficulty producing Spanish /e/-/i/ and /o/-/u/ vowel contrasts. But what about perception? These data suggest that contrast difficulty extends to back (but not front) vowel perception.
Adult language learning
My collaborators and I designed an artificial language learning experiment to test the Convergence Hypothesis by introducing English speakers to two artificial languages whose negation forms vary in their formal overlap with one another and English. Results coming soon!
Strategic codeswitching for humorous effect
Can audience design and identity construction theory account for the way U.S. Spanish-English bilinguals (comedians, meme-makers, and everyday language users) use and perceive codeswitching as humorous? Project underway - stay tuned!
My public-facing work
My TEDx talk
Ever wonder what makes a person funny or wished you had more of the supposed funny gene? As I share in my TEDx talk Where humor hides in language, all you have to do is look to language. Learn what linguistics can tell us about humor and how to find more funny in your life!
My Gizmodo interview
This article unpacks adult language learning for a general audience. Learn about circumstantial bilingualism, diverse linguistic input and other important factors in this Gizmodo article, featuring an interview with yours truly! Written by D. Kolitz.
My Nerd Nite talk
In this talk for non-linguists, I dispel common myths and reveal fascinating facts about the systems we use every day to communicate. Ever wondered how many languages there are, why language death is on the rise, or where grammar comes from? If so, this talk is for you!
Catch me on YouTube!
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