My research interests revolve around the Spanish varieties of the Southern Cone of South America (Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile), principally in the area of phonetics and phonology, with an emphasis on prosody.
My research is both diachronic and synchronic as well as sociolinguistic. In other words, I study how Spanish was spoken in the past, how it is spoken today, and how past and current linguistic trends and influences (including language contact) can provide clues as to what the language may look like in the future. This helps to illuminate what drives language change in the region. In order to accurately describe each variety, my research focuses on a group of speakers that is diverse both geographically and socially.
As a U.S. Student Fulbrighter to Uruguay (Mar. – Dec. 2022) I conducted fieldwork for my dissertation and beyond. As a result I have created the Voces de Uruguay Linguistic Corpus, made up of 533 Adult Uruguayan Speakers from across the country, both urban and rural, of different ages, sexes, and education levels. Learn more about my linguistic corpus on it’s dedicated webpage vocesdeuruguay.com. I look forward to collaborating with both students and faculty on research projects using this corpus.
My secondary research interests include L2 Spanish phonetics and phonology and the role of context of learning on phonological gains.