My research program focuses on the intersection of bilingualism, linguistic theory, and quantitative methods: I use experimental tasks to elucidate the properties of the language faculty as instantiated in bilingual speakers.
To achieve this aim, my work pursues two lines of inquiry centered on linguistic properties unique to bilingualism: first, that bilinguals’ language knowledge differs systematically from that of monolinguals of the same language and, second, that bilinguals can combine their two languages in a single utterance.
In the first area, I address debates about bilingual acquisition at the syntax/pragmatics interface and the nature of cross-linguistic influence. In the second area, I investigate the syntax of code-switching. In both areas, my work also contributes to understanding monolingual grammars and broader linguistic theories of information structure, the syntax of subjects, and syntactic islands.
I am also interested in heritage languages (especially Spanish in the United States), quantitative and experimental methods in linguistics, and language pedagogy in higher education. I am an affiliate member of DePaul’s Bilingual Language Development Lab.