This study considers language dominance as a composite of proficiency, use, and input, and examines how these constructs in Spanish influence heritage speakers production of Spanish alveolar taps.

Recommended citation: Kim, JY. Repiso-Puigdelliura G. Deconstructing Heritage Language Dominance: Effects of Proficiency, Use, and Input on Heritage Speakers’ Production of the Spanish Alveolar Tap. Phonetica. 77(1), pp. 55-80. DOI: 10.1159/000501188 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31362301/

Keeping a Critical Eye on Majority Language Influence: The Case of Uptalk in Heritage Spanish.

Published in Languages, 2021

The goal of this study is to highlight the importance of taking into account variations in monolingual grammars before discussing majority language influence as a possible source of heritage speakers’ divergent grammars. In this study, we examine the production of uptalk in Spanish by heritage speakers of Mexican Spanish in Southern California. Uptalk (i.e., rising intonation contour at the end of a non-question utterance) is frequently associated with California English.

Recommended citation: Kim JY, Repiso-Puigdelliura, G. (2021). Keeping a Critical Eye on Majority Language Influence: The Case of Uptalk in Heritage Spanish. Languages, 6 (1), 13.https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6010013 https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/6/1/13

The Missing Link in Spanish Heritage Trill Production

Published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2021

While heritage language phonology has attracted a great deal of attention, little is known about the development of heritage phonological grammars. This study examines the production of the Spanish trill /r/ by school-aged (9-10 years) and adult heritage speakers. Results showed that the adult heritage speakers produced the trill in a more target-like manner than the child heritage speakers, although half of them diverged from non-heritage native baselines reported in other studies. Further analysis of the distribution of trill variants suggests that heritage Spanish trill development occurs in the order of single lingual constriction → frication → multiple lingual constrictions. However, instead of abandoning variants of early stages, some adult heritage speakers kept them in their trill inventories, demonstrating increased variability. Our findings indicate that 9- to 10-year-old heritage speakers are still in the process of developing heritage phonological grammars and even during adulthood their grammars may not reach stability.

Recommended citation: Repiso-Puigdelliura, G. Kim, JY. (2021). The Missing Link in Spanish Heritage Trill Production Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 4(3), 454-466. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bilingualism-language-and-cognition/article/missing-link-in-spanish-heritage-trill-production/2EEF354237A02A623B914F1AA11CD595

Empty Onset Repairs in the Semi-Spontaneous Speech of Spanish Child and Adult Heritage Speakers.

Published in International Journal of Bilingualism, 2021

In this study I investigate whether child and adult Spanish heritage speakers (HS) use English-like strategies to repair word-external empty onsets preceded by consonants (e.g., el.#o.so ‘the (male) bear’). That is, I examine whether HS produce glottal phonation at /C#V/ junctures. I also examine whether stress predicts the use of glottal phonation to repair word-external empty onsets.

Recommended citation: Repiso-Puigdelliura G. Empty onset repairs in the semi-spontaneous speech of Spanish child and adult heritage speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism. May 2021. doi:10.1177/13670069211016547 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/13670069211016547?ai=1gvoi&mi=3ricys&af=R

Heritage Speakers’ Production of the Spanish Voiced Palatal Obstruent: A Closer Look at Orthography and Universal Phonetic Principles

Published in Heritage Language Journal, 2021

The Spanish voiced palatal obstruent /ʝ/ is orthographically represented as ⟨y⟩ or ⟨ll⟩. The most closely related sound in English is /j/, which is often written with ⟨y⟩, but produced with weaker constriction compared to the Spanish /ʝ/. Our goal is to examine influence from English (i.e., the majority language) in heritage speakers’ production of the Spanish /ʝ/ by testing the effect of orthography (i.e., whether stronger influence is found in ⟨y⟩ than in ⟨ll⟩). Heritage speech data were collected using a read-aloud task in which the stimuli varied in orthography, preceding vowel height, and stress condition. Results showed that heritage speakers predominantly produced the Spanish /ʝ/ as an English-like approximant [j], which was preferred even more when /ʝ/ was written with ⟨y⟩. However, the orthography effect surfaced only when the phonetic contexts did not favor strong constriction, suggesting that orthography-induced majority language influence is conditioned by universal phonetic principles.

Recommended citation: Repiso-Puigdelliura, G., Benvenuti, I., & Kim, J. Y. (2021). Heritage Speakers’ Production of the Spanish Voiced Palatal Obstruent/ʝ/: A Closer Look at Orthography and Universal Phonetic Principles. Heritage Language Journal, 18(1), 1-30. https://brill.com/view/journals/hlj/18/1/article-p1_5.xml

Repairing Word-External Onsetless Syllables during Late Childhood.

Published in Proceedings of the 45th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 2021

Recommended citation: Repiso-Puigdelliura G. (2021). Repairing Word-External Onsetless Syllables during Late Childhood. In D. Dionne and Lee-Ann Vidal Covas (Eds.) Proceedings of the 45th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Sommerville, MA:Cascadilla Press pp. 639-651 http://www.lingref.com/bucld/45/BUCLD45-48.pdf

Glottalizing at Word Junctures: Exploring Bidirectional Transfer in Child and Adult Spanish Heritage Speakers.

Published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2023

While research in heritage language phonology has found that transfer from the majority language can lead to divergent attainment in adult heritage language grammars, the extent to which language transfer develops during a heritage speaker’s lifespan is understudied. To explore such cross-linguistic transfer, I examine the rate of glottalization between consonant-to-vowel sequences at word junctures produced by child and adult Spanish heritage speakers (i.e., HSs) in both languages. My results show that, in Spanish, child HSs produce greater rates of vowel-initial glottal phonation than their age-matched monolingually-raised Spanish counterparts, suggesting that the Spanish child HSs’ grammars are more permeable to transfer than those of the adult HSs. In English, child and adult HSs show similarly low rates of glottal phonation when compared to their age-matched monolingually-raised English speakers’ counterparts. The findings for English can be explained by either an account of transfer at the individual level or the community level.

Recommended citation: Repiso-Puigdelliura, G. (2023). Glottalizing at word junctures: Exploring bidirectional transfer in child and adult Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1-13. doi:10.1017/S1366728923000160 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bilingualism-language-and-cognition/article/glottalizing-at-word-junctures-exploring-bidirectional-transfer-in-child-and-adult-spanish-heritage-speakers/A0EFAEBC7B352F8479AD79DCDA0F6622

talks

Tutorial 1 on Relevant Topic in Your Field

Published: March 01, 2013

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Talk 2 on Relevant Topic in Your Field

Published: February 01, 2014

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The effects of language transfer during Spanish heritage language development

Published: August 10, 2021

teaching

Catalan in the United States

Publications, University of California, Los Angeles, Spanish and Portuguese Department, 2020

Over my years as a lecturer at UCLA, I have collaborated in several projects to better understand the demographic characteristics of my students. The results of these projects have resulted in the following publications:

Spanish, Portuguese and the Nature of Language

Undergraduate course, University of California, Los Angeles, Spanish and Portuguese Department, 2020

You can find the syllabus for this course here What is the internal structure of language? Can we classify the sounds of the world’s languages? Do all languages obey the same syntactic principles? What are some beliefs that speakers share during a conversation? In this course we will answer questions related to the nature of language and the main theories in linguistics. In the course we will define the properties of Human Language, identify its differences with animal communication and engage with the concept of mental grammar and linguistic knowledge. You will be introduced to the basic tools to analyze language and we will explore linguistic phenomena in morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, phonetics, and phonology. This is a 6-week hybrid course that has a synchronous and an asynchronous component. You will be introduced to the content with video lectures and we will meet once a week in a synchronous session to discuss the content and practice in collaborative assignments. This course is designed for undergraduate students with no previous knowledge in linguistics.

3PG3 Intro Programming Linguistics

Undergraduate course, McMaster University Linguistics & Languages, 2022

The objective of this course is to become familiar with the fundamentals of programming and apply them to linguistic research. Students will be trained in conceptual and practical aspects of programming using R to tackle practical issues that arise in linguistic research. By the end of the course, students will be able to identify a programmable problem, determine the necessary steps to achieve a solution, apply common programming techniques, and evaluate the results of the output.

2PS3 Psycholinguistics

Undergraduate course, McMaster University Linguistics & Languages, 2022

In this course, students will describe cognitive processes involved in speech perception, word recognition and sentence comprehension, examine (describe and evaluate) experimental methods from behavioural psychology for investigating language comprehension, interpret experimental data to investigate language comprehension, implement research methods in psycholinguistics by designing a research experiment on speech perception, speech production, word learning or sentence parsing

4D03 Computers&Linguistic Analysis

Undergraduate and graduate course, McMaster University Linguistics & Languages, 2022

The objective of this course is to become familiar with the fundamentals of corpus linguistics and analysis of corpora using the R language. Students will be trained in conceptual and practical aspects of corpus analysis using R and the package quanteda. By the end of the course, students will be able to compile and annotate textual corpora, use a variety of corpus tools to perform searches and return lexical frequency lists, concordances, etc., visualize linguistic patterns in corpora, and carry out a small-scale-corpus-based research project.