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Interests |
Main fields: language variation and change, syntax
and lexicon (argument structure), sociolinguistics, corpus/text linguistics, psycholinguistics,
computational linguistics. Although it might look as if my interests are very disperse, the
nature of the variationist approach ideally requires the consideration of
different factors –even from different levels of representation– and their
interaction with our cognitive abilities. My research focuses on
the study of alternations and argument structure, from both a theoretical and
an applied point of view. As a way of illustration, I have carried out a
corpus study to analyze the variable position of frequency adverbials in
Spanish. I paid special attention to semantic differences, weight, syntactic
structure, and sociolinguistic, historical and stylistic factors. I am
especially interested in the use of the variationist approach, as it makes
possible to measure the interaction between different levels. In fact, this
approach is ideal for the interdisciplinary work I have been doing. I am also very
interested in the distinction between verb types, especially unaccusative and
unergative verbs. I have devised a test to differentiate between these two
types of intransitive verbs in Spanish. I am currently
developing an analysis of the locative alternation, relating this phenomenon
to the underlying properties of unaccusative constructions and the prepositions
inserted in them. In my thesis, I have also carried out several variationist experiments
to determine the correlation between different properties of alternating
verbs. Eventually, I will also examine the stylistic use of alternating
verbs, in different genres of written texts. |
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