Conference Presentations

2026

[forthcoming] Revolutionary Archives: Death, Wealth, Language, and Memory Across the Americas. 2026 Latin American Studies Association (LASA): Republic and Revolution. Paris, May 26-30. (With Y. Ruiz, M. Escalona, and V. Estrada)

[forthcoming] Contact at the Syntax–Discourse Interface: Chinese Influence on Cuban Spanish. 2nd GLOW in Asia Workshop for Young Scholars. Nanzan University–Center for Linguistics, Nagoya (Japan), March 13-15.

2025

[forthcoming] Raíces asiáticas en el Caribe hispano: lengua, diáspora y refranes. 1st Latin American Studies Association (LASA)/Oceania-Asia: Encounters and Connections between Asia, Oceania, and Latin America. La Trobe University, Melbourne (Australia), November 26-30.

[forthcoming] Digital Humanities and the Myth of “Better” Spanish: Mapping Intra-Dialectal Attitudes in the Antilles. Latin American and Caribbean Digital Humanities (LACDH) Symposium. University of Puerto Rico–Río Piedras campus, San Juan (Puerto Rico) November 12-14. 

[forthcoming] Del aula a la clínica: Superando fronteras lingüísticas en la formación de profesionales de la salud. National Association of Medical Spanish/Asociación Nacional de Español Médico (NAMS-MOLA): Transcending Borders/Más allá de las fronteras. The University of Texas–San Antonio, November 6-7.

[forthcoming] La pragmática del humor en Soldado Micolta entre humor, jerarquías raciales y violencia simbólica. Primer Congreso Internacional del grupo de investigación Lenguaje, Cultura y Sociedad (LCS): Pragmática en el mundo hispanohablante. Universidad de Antioquia, Medeliín (Colombia), October 27-31.

Del fogón al habla: Variación lingüística y migración dominicana en Piñones. 55th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Linguistics–special focus on Caribbean Spanish (LSRL55-LEC). Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, Santo Domingo (The Dominican Republic), September 10-12.

From Latin to Romance languages: the syntactic and semantic evolution of ‘bien/bem + adjective’ in two Latin American varieties. The XXXI International Congress of Romance Linguistics and Philology. University of Salento–Lecce (Italy), June 30-July 5.

Afro-Caribbean Voices and Agencies in Encounters, Transitions, and Resistances. 3rd Norwegian Association for Latin American Studies (NALAS): Encuentros, transiciones y resistencias. The University of Bergen (Norway), June 19-20.

Voices in Contact: Discourse Markers as Pragmatic Tools in Puerto Rican Bilingualism. 15th International Symposium on Bilingualism: The Different Faces of Bilingualism. Kursaal Congress Centre, Donostia-San Sebastián (Spain), June 9-13.

A Hybrid and Blurred Border: Bilingualism and Biculturalism in the Resilient Puerto Rican Diaspora in the United States. 15th International Symposium on Bilingualism: The Different Faces of Bilingualism. Kursaal Congress Centre, Donostia-San Sebastián (Spain), June 9-13.

Spanish in Diasporic Societies: The Puerto Rican Experience in Central Florida. The International Association for the Study of Spanish in Society (SIS). Bristol (UK), June 5-6.

‘Null Subject or Non-Null Subject? That is the question’. Subject Pronoun Expression Language Contact in Puerto Rican Spanish. New Issues in Language Contact Studies (NILCS) 2025. University of L’Aquila (Italy), May 28-30.

Lost and Found: Subject Pronoun Expression in Puerto Rican Spanish Varieties in Contact. 29th Conference of Spanish in the United States and 14th Conference on Spanish in Contact with Other Languages (SIUS2025). The University of Texas at San Antonio (Texas), April 10-12.

2024

Contact and language change in the Afro-Hispanic varieties of the Americas: Evidence from Puerto Rico and Mexico. The 4th Angus McIntosh Centre (AMC) Symposium for Historical Linguistics: Contact and language change. University of Edinburgh (Scotland), December 2-4.

Redes sociales y cambio lingüístico en puertorriqueños texanos: una perspectiva morfológica del español.18th Encuentro Internacional de Lingüística del Noroeste (ELNOR). University of Hermosillo (Mexico), November 13-15.

La enseñanza del portugués para hispanohablantes en el contexto multicultural de Texas: Desafíos y técnicas para un aula inclusiva y equitativa. 18th Encuentro Internacional de Lingüística del Noroeste (ELNOR). University of Hermosillo (Mexico), November 13-15.

Los peyorativos en el español del Caribe Antillano: Un análisis sociolingüístico. 52nd New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV). Miami Beach (USA), November 7-9.

Exploring Spanglish: Geographic, Political, and Sociolinguistic Dynamics of Spanish-English Contact in Puerto Rico. The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Bilingualism Forum. Chicago (USA), October 24-25.

Spanish-Portuguese contact in the Caribbean: the case of intensifiers. The 77th Annual Conference of Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA), Las Vegas (USA), October 10-12.

Medical Spanish: issues of assessment and course materials. The 53rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest (LASSO). The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) (USA), September 26-28. (With R. Romero and L. Philip).

Dimensions of variation: Pseudo-Coordination in Salentino. 22nd Congress of Scandinavian Romanists. Turku University and Åbo Akademi (Finland), August 21-24.

Spanish-Portuguese contact in the Caribbean: the case of intensifiers. Associação de Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola (ACBLPE), Universidade de São Tomé e Príncipe (USTP) e Centro Cultural Português (CCP), July 01-03.

Null Subject Language or Non-Null Subject Language, that is the question: Subject Pronoun Expression in two varieties of Puerto Rican Spanish. 6th Variation and Language Processing Conference (VALP6), Universidade de Vigo (Spain), June 26-28.

Ciudadanías afrocaribeñas: cuerpo, lenguaje y política. Latin American Studies Association (LASA). Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá (Colombia), June 12-15.

Los desafíos de las lenguas criollas como estandartes de identidad y resistencia en el Gran Caribe. 2nd Encuentro Internacional de Investigadores en Estudios Afrolatinoamericanos (EIIEA). Universidad de Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), June 4-7.

Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Puerto Rican Spanish. 11th International Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (WSS11). The State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo (USA), April 18-20. (With M. Rivera, R. Jiménez-Baralt, and D. Powell).

Si [tú] quieres, [yo] te llamo: Subject Pronoun Expression in two varieties of Puerto Rican Spanish. Texas Linguistics Society (TLS) 2024. The University of Texas at Austin (USA), February 23.

‘Luodi Schenggen’: los chinos-cubanos y la persistencia de su legado lingüístico. Texas Linguistics Society (TLS) 2024. The University of Texas at Austin (USA), February 23. (With M. Escalona)

Bilingualism and language contact in Afro-Hispanic Puerto Rico. 4th International Conference on Bilingualism in The Hispanic and Lusophone World (BHL). Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Mexico), January 10-12. 

2023

From adverbs of manner to emphatic intensifiers: the syntactic and semantic evolution of ‘bien/bem + adjective’ in two Latin American Romance varieties. 7th Encuentro sobre dialectos del español (SpaDiSyn). Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), November 27-28.

Una frontera híbrida y borrosa: el bilingüismo y el biculturalismo de la resiliente diáspora boricua en los Estados Unidos. 6th Annual International Conference on Border Studies. University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley (USA) and Autonomous University of Matamoros (Mexico), November 8-10.

Aspects of Afro-Hispanic Speech in the Colombian Media: A Raciolinguistic Perspective. The 52ndAnnual Meeting of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest (LASSO). University of Denver (USA), October 5-7.

Fenómenos de contacto en el Ixil de Nebaj y Cotzal: préstamos ocasionales y cambios de código. 6th Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Centroamericana de Lingúística. University of Costa Rica-Turrialba (Costa Rica), August 23-25.

Aspects of Afro-Hispanic Speech in the Colombian Media: A Raciolinguistic Perspective. Latinx: the Sociopolitics of Language (LSA summer). University of Massachussets-Amherst (USA), July 1.

On the Intonation of Afro-Puerto Rican Spanish Declaratives: Implications for a Theory of Afro-Hispanic Creole Genesis. 9th International Conference on Experimental Phonetics.Facultade de Filoloxía e Tradución. Universidade de Vigo (Spain), June 21-23.

El español de Loíza y la identidad afropuertorriqueña: lengua, cimarronaje y negritud. 54th Annual Conference of the Association of Caribbean Historians (ACH). San Juan (Puerto Rico), June 11-15.

The pragmatic use of bilingual discourse markers in Puerto Rican Spanish oral interaction. Discourse Markers: Theories and Methods. Paris (France), May 24-26.

Variation of intensifiers in Romance varieties: a Caribbean-Latin American study. 1st International Conference adverbs/adverbials and their issues in semantic and functional ambiguity”. The University of Cyprus-Nicosia (Cyprus), May 18-19.

Spanish-English contact in Puerto Rico: geographic, political, and sociolinguistic variation toward oral interaction in Spanglish. Soziolinguistische Perspektiven: Kontakt-Variation-Wandel. Universität Bern (Switzerland), May 12-13.

Spanish-English Multilingualism in Puerto Rico: How important are Discourse Markers? 2023 Canadian Centre for Studies and Research on Bilingualism and Language Planning (CCERBAL) conference. University of Ottawa (Canada), May 4-6.

Analysis and Implications of Afro-Puerto Rican Spanish Declarative Intonation. 2023 Conference on Spanish in the US/ Spanish in Contact with other Languages. Southern Methodist University, Dallas (Texas), April 6-8. (With R. Rao and S. Sessarego).

El Code-Switching is hitting la Aldea: The role of Discourse Markers in Afro-Hispanic Puerto Rico. 2023 Conference on Spanish in the US/ Spanish in Contact with other Languages. Southern Methodist University, Dallas (Texas), April 6-8.

Racialized speech and media (mis)representation of Afro-Colombian Spanish. 11th Annual CALICHE Conference, Graduate Student Conference for Applied Linguistics and Intercultural Communication in Higher Education. Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures and the College of Arts and Sciences. Texas Tech University, Lubbock (Texas), March 31-April 1. (With S. Syamken)

El español de Loíza y la identidad afropuertorriqueña: tendiendo puentes entre lengua, cimarronaje y (anti)negritud’. 1st Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Puerto Rico. Universidad Carlos Albizu (Puerto Rico), March 17-18.

Diáspora, diversidad y política lingüística: el Espanglish como ícono de la híbrida y vibrante identidad puertorriqueña. 32nd Congreso Internacional de Literatura y Estudios Hispánicos. Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), March 9-11.

Aproximación al estudio del español chino hablado en Cuba entre migraciones y refranes. 15th Annual Graduate Portuguese and Hispanic Symposium (GRAPHSY). Georgetown University (DC), February 17. (With M. Escalona)

Racialized speech and media (mis)representation of Afro-Colombian Spanish. 25th Biennial Graduate Colloquium of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. The University of Texas, Austin (USA), February 10-11. (With S. Syamken)

2022

Aspects of Afro-Puerto Rican Intonation. The 3rd Angus McIntosh Centre (AMC) for Historical Linguistics symposium. The University of Edinburgh (Scotland), December 5-7.

‘Yo soy orgulloso con la aldea, yo soy un aldeano orgulloso, yo les digo vengan a mi aldea’: Subject Pronoun Expression in Afro-Puerto Rican Spanish. The Symposium on Spanish Subjects (SSS). Centre College (Kentucky), November 18.

La alternancia muy y bien en dialectos latinoamericanos. 6th Spanish Dialects Syntax meeting (SpaDiSyn) Universidad de Alcalá (Spain), October 24-25 (With M. González-Rivera).

Racialized speech and media representation in Afro-Colombian Spanish. 50th New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV). Stanford University (USA), October 13-15.

La voz de la diáspora boricua allá afuera: el Nuyorican Poets Café y el Spanglish en la híbrida identidad puertorriqueña. ALFALito, Proyecto 16. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (USA), September 30.

Diáspora, diversidad y política lingüística: el Spanglish como ícono de la vibrante identidad puertorriqueña. 10th Congreso Internacional de Investigaciones Sociales de América Latina (CEISAL). University of Helsinki (Finland), June 13-15.

Some Remarks on the Origin Of Chocó Spanish. Conference of the Historical Sociolinguistics Network (HiSoN). University of Murcia (Spain), June 1-3. (With R. Jiménez-Baralt)

The Diachronic Evolution of Intensifiers: Evidence from Spanish and Portuguese. Conference of the Historical Sociolinguistics Network (HiSoN). University of Murcia (Spain), June 1-3.

The pragmatic use of bilingual discourse markers in the oral interaction of Puerto Rican Spanish. 10thInternational Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics (EPICS X). Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla (Spain), May 23-25.

Current Issues in Puerto Rican Linguistics. Latin American Studies Association. San Francisco (USA), May 5-8. (With S. Sessarego, M. González, W. Valentín, A. Medina, and R. Jiménez-Baralt)

Adverbial Elatives in Caribbean Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese: A Case of Grammaticalization. 2ndHeterotopic Junction Graduate Conference on Language, Literature, and Culture (HJC-2). Hong Kong Baptist University (Hong Kong), April 30.

El Code-Switching is Hitting la Aldea: Evidence from Loíza, Puerto Rico2nd Heterotopic Junction Graduate Conference on Language, Literature, and Culture (HJC-2). Hong Kong Baptist University (Hong Kong), April 30. (With M. Escalona)

Racialized Speech and Media Misrepresentation: A Linguistic Look at Afro-Colombian Soldado Micolta. 3rd International Symposium on Language Attitudes toward Portuguese, Spanish and Related Languages (LAPSRL). Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi (USA), April 21-23.

‘Bien/Bem bonita’: Grammaticalization of Spanish and Portuguese intensifiers. 10th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics’ (WSS 10). Georgia Tech University, Atlanta (Georgia), April 7-9.

Afro-Hispanic Linguistics: Methodologies and Challenges. GURT 2022 Dialect Contact. Georgetown University (DC), March 10-13 (With L. Padilla, R. Romero, and H. Smith).

Asere, tienes a un chino por detrás: La presencia china en el refranero cubano. LASA/ASIA 2022. Rethinking Trans-Pacific Ties: Asia and Latina America. (virtual) February 15-19.

‘Bien/Bem bonita’ o ‘muy/muito bonita’? Flavors of intensity and emphasis in Spanish and Portuguese’. Texas Linguistics Society (TLS) 2022. The University of Texas at Austin (Texas), February 11-12.

The thin line between Creole and Romance Morphology: Evidence from an Afro-Hispanic vernacular. 2022 Winter Meeting–Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. Virtual, January 14-15.

2021

Casting light on Afro-Puerto Rican Spanish: Evidence of Its (Non) Creole Morphosyntax. South Central Modern Language Association (SCMLA) Annual Conference: The Politics of Protest. Houston (USA), October 7-9.

On the non-creole morphosyntax of Afro-Puerto Rican Spanish. Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (HLS). Wake Forest University (USA), October 7-9.

Afro-Hispanic Linguistics: Methodologies and challenges. 50th Linguistic Association of the Southwest. Virtual, September 23- 25. (With L. Padilla, A. Riccelli, R. Romero, and H. Smith).

Afro-Puerto Rican Spanish and the Spanish Creole Debate: A sociohistorical and linguistic account. 2021 Summer Meetin–Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. Paris (France), June 28-30.

‘So… like, tú sabes’: An approach to bilingual discourse markers in Puerto Rican Spanish oral interaction. Forging Linguistic Identities: Language in the Nation, the Region and the World. Towson University (USA), March 25-26.

El español afropuertorriqueño en el debate sobre los criollos del español. 24th Ohio State University Congress on Hispanic/Lusophone Linguistics (OSUCHiLL). Columbus (USA), March 12-13.

Bilingual Discourse Markers as a Symbol of Puerto Rican Identity. 24th Biennial Spanish and Portuguese Graduate Student Colloquium. The University of Texas–Austin (USA), February 25-26.

El origen del español afro-puertorriqueño: ¿un caso de descriollización? Retorno al Español del Caribe (REALEC). Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra. Santiago de los Caballeros (Dominican Republic), November 3-6.