Current research

[Dissertation research] - In this project I focus on the emergence and extent of how accumulated experience with language affects how Spanish-speaking children produce word-initial Spanish /bdg/. Within this project, I am particularly interested in if these cumulative usage effects similarly impact /b/, /d/, and /g/ variation, how changes in contextual usage over childhood impacts segmental variation, and the role of bilingualism in potentiating and mediating these effects. The project offers many advances related to methodologies in operationalizing contextual language use as well.

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Relevant presentations & publications

1. Lease, S. Accepted. Contextual frequency effects in children’s phonetic variation: the case of Spanish word-initial /d/. Language Variation and Change.

2. Lease, S. 2023. Frequency effects in the lexicon: Spanish-speaking children’s realizations of /d/. Paper presented at The Annual meeting of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest. CU Denver. Oct. 5-7. 

This ongoing research is investigating the role that constructions play in speaking rate variation in non-indo-european child-directed speech. So far, the data come from naturalistic interactions between a child and his interlocutors, collected by Barbara Pfeiler (e.g., Pfeiler, 2007). In Yucatec Maya, some prompts signify a verbatim repeat of the language provided to the child by the interlocutor. For instance, in muñeka kech-ti' 'doll, say it to her just like that', the child is expected to verbatim produce muñeka. Other prompt constructions, like granada a'al-eh 'pomegranate, say it' do not elicit a verbatim response. Holding linguistic variables constant, the preliminary findings are that interlocutors speak slower when prompting a verbatim response, speaking rate does not change over the 5 year period of study, and the child's mother modulates her speech the most. After publishing these preliminary results, more languages should be added to the sample.

leases@unm.edu

In collaboration with Dr. Naomi Shin (UNM) and numerous research assistants at UNM, the project focuses on demonstrative use by Spanish-English bilinguals with differing levels of language dominance. Within this project, I am particularly invested in using demonstratives as a test case for linguistic convergence as a function of bilingualism and how bilinguals may propel language change. We have also been exploring individual variation using principled statistical tests.

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Relevant presentations & publications

1. Lease, S. & N. Shin. Under review. Linguistic convergence in U.S.-raised Spanish-English bilinguals’ nominal demonstrative use. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition

2. Shin, N. & S. Lease. Accepted. The impact of addressee location on Spanish-English bilinguals’ nominal demonstratives. Acta Linguistica Academica.  

Description coming soon!

a. Mechanisms that explain if and how bilinguals propel language change.​

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b. Computational models to explicate theoretical assumptions of cumulative usage effects as related to child language acquisition

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c. Building corpora for CDS