Elisabeth Baker
PhD Candidate
Spanish and Portuguese
Title of Dissertation : Overregularization of irregular Spanish verbal morphology: the cases of 2sg preterit and irregular past participles
Elisabeth Baker-Martínez is a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Her research interests include child language acquisition, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and language contact. Her dissertation, Spanish-English bilingual children’s overregularization of irregular verbal morphology: The cases of Spanish second-person preterit and irregular past participles, examines the ways in which Spanish monolingual and bilingual children acquire irregular Spanish verbal forms. Her research demonstrates that all children – monolingual and bilingual alike – are pattern-seekers, and this guides their language development. Through her research she aims to highlight that bilingual speakers are not less adept language learners, but rather, that their linguistic experiences are unique and thus naturally show variances in comparison to monolinguals’ acquisitional trajectories. Elisabeth reclaimed her heritage language of Spanish as an adult and works to advance heritage language maintenance through her research. 
