tanialeal

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tanialeal@arizona.edu
Office
Modern Languages 523
Leal, Tania Lorena
Assistant Professor

I am a linguist who specializes in second language acquisition, particularly on the acquisition and processing (comprehension) of syntax and morphology. My research explores bilingualism broadly construed and is is purposefully interdisciplinary, incorporating elements from applied linguistics, generative linguistics, and psycholinguistics. I’m particularly interested in real-time language comprehension and in advancing the characterization of the underlying linguistic knowledge of second language learners and heritage speakers. I am also keenly interested in the current methodological and epistemological issues that have arisen in the field as a by-product of conducting research that integrates different approaches. My current research investigates how second language learners and heritage speakers acquire and process morpho-syntactic elements such as clitics. Some of this work has appeared in journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, Second Language Research, Lingua, Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics and the International Journal of Bilingualism. I am currently serving as Associate Editor for the journal Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism and contribute to the editorial boards of Second Language Research and Languages.

Currently Teaching

SPAN 360 – Introduction to the Linguistic Analysis of Spanish

This course serves as an introduction to the structure of the Spanish language. It's a course on how to understand Spanish grammar (and grammar or language structure as a whole) so you might critically reflect on the language to get a deep command of it on your own in the years to come. The course is organized around four basic perspectives on the study of the structure of Spanish: (1) the structure of the Spanish sound inventory, (2) the structure of Spanish words, (3) the structure of Spanish sentences, (4) the structure of the Spanish language in its societies.

This course serves as an introduction to the structure of the Spanish language. It's a course on how to understand Spanish grammar (and grammar or language structure as a whole) so you might critically reflect on the language to get a deep command of it on your own in the years to come. The course is organized around four basic perspectives on the study of the structure of Spanish: (1) the structure of the Spanish sound inventory, (2) the structure of Spanish words, (3) the structure of Spanish sentences, (4) the structure of the Spanish language in its societies.

SPAN 582A – Spanish Syntax I

This course involves an examination of the methods and argumentation used in syntactic analysis, both from a general point of view and from the perspective of generative grammar. Emphasis is placed on analyzing language data, on constructing and evaluating syntactic argumentation, and on understanding the Principles & Parameters approach to the study of sentence structure. Secondarily, this course is also an introduction to scientific theorizing: what it means to construct a scientific theory, how to test a scientific theory, how to choose among competing theories. Linguistic data will be drawn from Spanish.