Research

My areas of research include Theoretical Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, Dialectology and Translation and Interpretation. In particular, I focus on the following issues (i.) data collection standards in linguistic theory; (ii.) dialectal variation in Spanish; and (iii.) word order variation and the limits natural language imposes on it. Other issues that I work on are subjecthood, ellipsis, the relationship between syntax and gesture and Educational Interpreting of Spoken Languages. For a list of my publications dealing with these topics, see below.

My book Focus-related Operations at the Right Edge in Spanish: Subjects and Ellipsis, was published by John Benjamins in 2016. A second book, Data Representativity and Granularity in Spanish Syntax, has been published by Routledge. My work has also appeared in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory and Lingua (both Q1 journals in the Scimago Journal Rank), The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics and the Routledge Handbook of Syntax. I am a twice recipient of the UofM Summer Research Stimulus Grant and a collaborator in the grant projects ‘Estructura informativa en su interfaz sintáctico-semántica: Comparación de lenguas románicas y germánicas (INFOSTARS),’ PI: Ángel Luis Jiménez Fernández (Universidad de Sevilla), PCG2018-093774-B100, and ‘Microparameters and Networks in Romance Variation (MiNeRVa),” PI’s: Ángel Gallego (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and Jaume Mateu (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), PID2021-123617NB-C41, funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Spain.

Academia profile page         Research Gate page         Google scholar page         Curriculum vitae

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5486-7329

Data collection in linguistic theory

I study the differences in data collection and analysis across subfields of linguistics (Psycholinguistics, Generative Grammar and Variationism) and how those differences inform syntactic analysis as well as debates on the representativity of the data used in each subfield. The ultimate goal of this interdisciplinary work is to promote the unification of the language sciences. The following publications focus on these issues:

The following 2021 talk at the Roger Martin Lectures (IALA) addresses these issues:

 

Dialectal variation in Spanish

Linguistic variation is a crucial feature of natural language, whether linked to geographical distance, differences in style or identity. The following publications focus on this issue:

Limits on word order variation

While word order variation are pervasive in natural language (e.g, to form questions as in ‘I see a car’ vs. ‘What do you see?’, not all logical combinations of word order are attested (e.g., out of the sentence ‘I see a car and a bike’, you cannot form the question ‘What do you see a car and?’). What are the restrictions on word order variation across languages? Why do those restrictions exist? The following publications focus on these issues:

Subjecthood

The behavior of syntactic subjects across languages has received quite some attention. Among other publication on this issue (see CV), my book Focus-related Operations at the Right Edge in Spanish: Subjects and Ellipsis, published by John Benjamins focuses on this issue as well as ellipsis. The book discusses the following issues:

  • corrective focus
  • labeling & the syntax of subjects (Chomsky 2013 and subsequent work) and the EPP in general
  • mechanisms to generate focused subjects at the right edge of the sentence
  • null expletives
  • non-restructuring subject control structures, causatives, perceptual ECM and small clause ECM constructions
  • ellipsis (Wh-Stripping, Gapping and Multiple Sluicing)
  • the relationship between phases and ellipsis
  • rightward movement
  • the Linear Correspondence Axion (Kayne 1994, 2013) as a defeasible constraint (López 2009)

You can find the book preview here.  

The book has been reviewed by Timothy Gupton (see here) and Maria Bañares Carrió (see here).

See also the book Data Representativity and Granularity in Spanish Syntax, (Routledge, 2024).

Ellipsis

Elliptical constructions, where part of the structure goes unpronounced as in the second clause in ‘I will go home and you will, too,’ has received particular attention when attempting to determine whether the unpronounced part has real syntax or structure. The following publications focus on this issue:

The relationship between gesture and syntax

Gesture in general and its relation to syntax in the Hispanic world is an understudied area. My research has focused on so-called lip-pointing (pointing with the lips), attested in various varieties of Latin American Spanish as well as in a number of indigenous languages from this area. My research provides the first detailed syntactic analysis of this phenomenon and outlines a research agenda for future work on this issue:

Educational Interpreting of Spoken Languages