Objective: Verbal fluency evaluation in bilingual speakers should include dual-language assessment to obtain a comprehensive profile of word retrieval abilities. This study is the first to compare classic semantic, action, emotional, and phonemic fluency in terms of the magnitude of their performance gaps between the dominant and nondominant…

This dissertation investigates the development of cross-linguistic transfer in the use of strategies to repair preconsonantal word-external empty onsets (i.e., /C#V/) in Spanish heritage speakers. The main focus of this work is to analyze the use of /[glottal stop]/-epenthesis as a strategy to repair empty onsets, as its use is asymmetrical in the…

Verbal morphology has been identified as a particularly vulnerable domain for adult heritage speakers (HSs) of Spanish, especially when it involves the selection of subjunctive mood. A minimal amount is known, however, about the potential effects of the variability associated with these forms on the acquisition of related epiphenomena, such as the…

Study 1: The present work examined the connection between language and conceptual development, investigating whether false-belief reasoning (FBR) and source-monitoring ability (SMA) abilities within the theory of mind (ToM) framework constrained the comprehension of semantic and pragmatic knowledge (evidential scalar implicatures) encoded in the…

This article examines the performance of heritage speakers on a bimodal acceptability judgment task that targeted morphologically complex words. A major goal of the study was to compare participants' acceptance of conventional and creative words. Data were collected from 57 adult heritage speakers of Spanish who were subsequently divided into two…

This study examined Spanish-Welsh (in Patagonia) and Welsh-English (in North Wales) bilingual children's and adults' processing of sentences in which two noun phrases acted as arguments of a verb. The goal was to determine the relative importance of distinct cues to the identification of the subject in the bilinguals' processing of their two…

This article reports on a study investigating the relative influence of the first language and dominant language (L1) on second language (L2) and third language (L3) morpho-lexical processing. A lexical decision task compared the responses to English NV-er compounds (e.g. "taxi driver") and non-compounds provided by a group of native…

This study investigates dominant language transfer (from English) in adult Spanish second language (L2) learners and Spanish heritage speakers. We focus on contrasting properties of English and Spanish definite articles with respect to generic reference ("Elephants have ivory tusks" vs. "Los elefantes tienen colmillos de marfil") and inalienable…

This study compared the efficacy of measures of naming speed, verbal fluency and self-ratings for establishing language dominance in 25 bilingual English-Spanish adults with college degrees. Naming speed was measured by total naming times (in seconds) for five "Alzheimer's Quick Test" tasks (Wiig, Nielsen, Minthon & Warkentin, 2002)…