As a simultaneous bilingual (Spanish/Catalan) and lifelong language learner, I have always been fascinated by the study of language acquisition. My scholarly work has focused on the study of adult and child heritage speakers of Spanish living in the United States. I am particularly interested in how this group of bilinguals activate, access and retrieve lexical items and grammatical features from both their languages, and the effects that linguistic as well as extra-linguistic factors may play in these processes. In my dissertation, I examined Spanish heritage speakers' and second language learners’ acquisition of obligatory and variable mood selection in two early-acquired constructions. Results showed that participants' accuracy was dependent on the interplay between their level of proficiency in Spanish, age of onset of bilingualism, and frequency of Spanish use. Get a full version of the manuscript HERE.
Learn more about my different projects in the subsections included in this page!
SELECTED WORKS:
Peer-reviewed articles:
- Perez-Cortes, S. (2023). Obviating the mood, but mostly under control: Spanish heritage speakers’ acquisition of the binding constraints of desiderative complements. Language Acquisition. Online first, https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2023.2231993
- Choi, Y, Uthirasamya, N., Córdoba, D., Morrow, L. Perez-Cortes, S., Ramachandran, U., Pai, S., Lima, D., Shelton, P. & Jimenez, M. (2023). Feasibility and Acceptability of a Cross-Sector Health-Education Online Family Literacy Program in an Under-Resourced Community during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 44(2), 104–110. https://doi.org/10.1097/dbp.0000000000001155
- Perez-Cortes, S., Giancaspro, D. (2022). (In)frequently asked questions: On types of frequency and their role in heritage language variability. Frontiers in Psychology (Special issue “The next phase in HL studies: Methodological considerations and advancements”), available here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1002978/full
- Giancaspro, D., Perez-Cortes, S., Higdon, J. (2022). (Ir)regular mood swings: Lexical variability in heritage speakers’ oral production of subjunctive morphology. Language Learning 72(2), 456–496. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12489
- Perez-Cortes, S. (In press). Exploring complexity and divergence in heritage language grammars: The case of double mood selection in reported speech contexts. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1-25 [LINK HERE]
- Perez-Cortes, S. (2021). Re-examining the role of type of mood selection in Spanish HSs’ subjunctive production. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism (Online first) [LINK HERE]
- Perez-Cortes, S. (2020). Lexical frequency and morphological regularity as sources of heritage speaker variability in the acquisition of mood. Second Language Research (Online first), 1-23. [LINK HERE]
- Perez-Cortes, S, Putnam, M. & Sánchez, L. (2019). Differential Access: Asymmetries in accessing features and representations in Heritage Languages in production and comprehension. Languages, 4(4), 1-27. [LINK HERE]
- Syrett, K., Lingwall, A., Perez-Cortes, S., Austin, J. & Sánchez, L. (2017). Differences between Spanish monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children in their calculation of entailment-based scalar implicatures, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2(1), 1–19. [LINK HERE]
- Syrett, K., Austin, J., Sánchez, L., Germak, C., Lingwall, A., Perez-Cortes, S., Arias-Amaya, A., & Baker, H. (2017). The influence of conversational context and the developing lexicon on the calculation of scalar implicatures: Insights from Spanish-English bilingual children, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 6(6), 1-35.
- Perez-Cortes, S. (2012). The Interpretation of Present Progressive aspectual features by L2 Spanish Learners and Heritage Language Speakers, Arizona Working Papers in SLA Teaching, 19, 36-55. [LINK HERE]
- Austin J., Sánchez, L., Perez-Cortes, S. & Giancaspro, D. (2021). The development of person and number agreement in child heritage speakers of Spanish learning English as a second language. In Martohardjono, G. and S. Flynn (Eds.) Language in Development: A cross-linguistic perspective (103–129). MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11865.003.0009
- Putnam, M., Perez-Cortes, S. & Sánchez, L. (2019). Feature Reassembly Hypothesis in Language Attrition Contexts. In Schmid, M., & Kopke, B. (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Language Attrition(pp. 18-24). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Austin, J., Sánchez, L., Perez-Cortes, S. (2017). Null subjects in the early acquisition of English by child heritage speakers of Spanish. In Perpiñán, S., Heap, D., Moreno-Villamar, I. & Soto-Corominas, A. (Eds.) In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 11. Selected papers from the 44th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), London, Ontario (pp. 209-227). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co. [LINK HERE]
- Perez Cortes, S. (2011). The Acquisition of idiomatic expressions through a Cognitive Linguistics-based instruction: a pilot study, Actas del IX Congreso Internacional de Lingüística General, Universidad de Valladolid, 21-23 Junio, 2010. [LINK HERE]