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

This study examines the acceptability of Spanish-English code-switching (CS) involving adverbs, focusing on pre- and post-verbal positions and differences in bilingual types. Both heritage and late second language bilinguals, despite different acquisition contexts, demonstrated similar structural constraints in adverb placement, with English adverbs favoring pre-verbal positions and Spanish adverbs being acceptable in both pre- and post-verbal positions. These findings suggest that bilingual competence in CS is consistent across diverse acquisition backgrounds, highlighting the importance of refining models of second language acquisition to account for language mixing. 

Paper presented at the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, Omaha, Nebraska. [PDF]

This study investigates whether late second language (L2) bilinguals can acquire code-switching (CS) structural constraints similar to those of early bilinguals, comparing L2 Spanish and L2 English speakers with heritage Spanish speakers. Participants rated the acceptability of subject-pronoun switches in code-switched sentences, with the preliminary results indicating significant influence of acquisition order on CS acceptability.