Cross-linguistic influence in Spanish-English bilingual speakers in the US and Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Minorca, Spain

Funders: U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF); University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Humanities Scholarship Enhancement Fund; University of Florida Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere Rothman Summer Fellowships in the Humanities

Dr de Prada Pérez collected data through sociolinguistic interviews in three sites: Minorca, Spain (N = 56), Gainesville, FL (N = 65), and Tucson, AZ (N = 27), sometimes complemented with Acceptability Judgment Tasks. These data have yielded 13 peer-reviewed publications (journal articles, book chapters and conference proceedings) examining the effect that English or Catalan had on the Spanish spoken by bilinguals in comparison with a control group. Some of the English-Spanish publications are coauthored with postgraduate (at time of submission) students (Nick Feroce and Diego Pascual y Cabo), as well as peers (Dr Inmaculada Gómez Soler). This research has examined a variety of structures: subject expression, quirky agreement in reverse-psychological or gustar-like verbs, subject position, etc., and has resulted in the proposal of the Vulnerability Hypothesis, which has inspired further research.