Paper presented at the UIC Bilingualism Forum, Chicago, Illinois. [PDF]

This study explores how bilinguals handle inalienable possession in Spanish-English code-switching, focusing on the interaction of possessive and definite determiners with clitics. Results from an acceptability judgment task reveal that participants preferred possessive determiners with English verbs and clitic + possessive constructions with Spanish verbs, though predictions were only partially confirmed. The findings suggest that while the verb determines the presence of a clitic, the language of the determiner does not fully predict the features of possession, highlighting the complex relationship between clitics and determiners in bilingual grammars.

Paper presented virtually at the Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference (MIFLC), Greensboro, North Carolina. [PDF]

This study examines how bilinguals navigate inalienable possession in Spanish-English code-switching, given the syntactic differences between the two languages. Results from an acceptability judgment task and an elicited production task with heritage Spanish speakers show significant variation, with participants mixing possessive and definite determiners from both languages. Although a strong preference for preverbal clitics with Spanish verbs was observed, the Spanish possessive determiner was found to be just as acceptable as the definite in receptive tasks, suggesting English-to-Spanish influence affects code-switching patterns.