Contact Information
707 S. Mathews Ave. | MC-176
Urbana, IL 61801
Office Hours
Research Interests
Bilingualism, Psycholinguistics, Spanish as a Heritage Language, L2 Acquisition, Code-Switching.
Research Description
I investigate how bilinguals, particularly heritage speakers of Spanish, process Spanish morphosyntax in reading, focusing on structures such as gender agreement and passive voice sentences. Using eye-tracking and statistical modeling, my research examines how age of onset, schooling, and literacy shape morphosyntactic knowledge and real-time sentence processing.
Education
PhD in Spanish Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In Progress.
MA in Spanish Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 2022.
BA in TESOL, Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador, Venezuela. 2016.
Courses Taught
SPAN 101 Elementary Spanish I
SPAN 122 Intensive Elementary Spanish
SPAN 130 Intermediate Spanish
SPAN 142 Spanish in the Professions
SPAN 228 Spanish Composition - Section A For Heritage Speakers
SPAN 307 Bilingualism
SPAN 308 Spanish in the U.S.
External Links
Recent Publications
Melendez, D., Jegerski, J., & Montrul, S. A. (2025). The Role of Determiners in the Processing of Gender Agreement Morphology by Heritage Speakers of Spanish. Languages, 10(9), 202. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages10090202