Research
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I have previously served as a Grad Assistant and Lab Manager for Dr. Danny Erker in the Spanish in Boston Project, where I focused on transcribing and annotating sociolinguistic interviews related to various social and linguistic phenomena. Currently, I continue to contribute to the project through data creation, extraction, and cleaning, as well as running statistical analyses and creating visualizations.
I served as a Grad Assistant for Dr. Neil Myler's Mirror Principle Violations Project, where I surveyed existing descriptive materials on a wide range of languages to describe the interactions between causative and applicative morphemes.
Covariation & Salience in Linguistic Contact: A Sociophonetic Study of Liquid Variation in Spanish
Data collection and statistical analysis are complete. Currently, I am writing and editing the dissertation. Results have been presented at various international conferences, including NWAV 51, LSA 2024, and NWAV Miami.
Subject-Verb Order in Latin American Spanish
This is the topic of my second Qualifying Paper @ BU. The article on this topic can be found here.
Filled Pauses as a site of dialectal and language contact among Spanish-speaking Bostonians
This was the topic of my first Qualifying Paper @ BU, as well as a joint publication with Danny Erker.
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Publications
2024 Erker, Daniel G. & Vidal-Covas, Lee-Ann M. Variation, Contact, and Change in Boston Spanish: How social meaning shapes stylistic practice and bilingual optimization. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17(2), 223-249. https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2024-2010
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2023 Vidal-Covas, Lee-Ann M. ¿Va primero el verbo? OR ¿El sujeto va primero?: Subject-verb order in Latin American Spanish. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 8(1). 5542. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5542
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2022 Erker, D. & Vidal-Covas, Lee-Ann M. Qué decimos cuando no decimos nada: Claves del cambio lingüístico inducido por contacto en las pausas llenas del español conversacional. Estudios del Observatorio, 80, pp. 1- 31. https://cervantesobservatorio.fas.harvard.edu/es/informes
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2022 Erker, D. & Vidal-Covas, Lee-Ann M. What we say when we say nothing at all: Clues to contact-induced language change in Spanish conversational pause-fillers. Observatorio Studies, 80, pp. 1- 31. https://cervantesobservatorio.fas.harvard.edu/en/reports
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2021 Dionne, D. & Vidal-Covas, Lee-Ann M. (Eds). Proceedings of the 45th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
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2014 Orozco, R., Vidal-Covas, Lee-Ann M, & Méndez Vallejo, Catalina. Los efectos condicionantes del verbo en el uso variable de los pronombres personales de sujeto. In: Actas del XVII Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de la América Latina, João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil, July 14th-18th.
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2013 Vidal-Covas, Lee-Ann M. El uso variable de los pronombres sujetos en el castellano puertorriqueño hablado en Luisiana y Puerto Rico. LSU Master's Theses. 3876. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/3876
Past
2024 Vidal Covas, Lee-Ann M.
Salient Features, Strong Identities: Social Meaning and Stylistic Choices in Boston Spanish, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, December 3rd
2024 Vidal Covas, Lee-Ann M.
How Salience Influences Dialectal Persistence and Covariation: Insights from Boston's Spanish-Speaking Community, New Waves of Analyzing Linguistic Variation (NWAV 52), Miami, FL, November 7th - 9th
2024 Vidal Covas, Lee-Ann M.
Riding the Waves of Salience: Exploring Spanish Liquid Variation among Boston Spanish speaker, Linguistic Society of America (LSA), NYC, NY, January 4th - 7th
2023 Vidal Covas, Lee-Ann M.
Making a Splash: The Salience of Liquid Variation among Boston Spanish speakers, Linguistics Program - Northeastern University, Boston, MA, March 23rd
2020 Vidal Covas, Lee-Ann M. Guest Lecture: English/Spanish Contrastive Phonology & Filled Pauses. Intro to Sounds - Boston University, Boston, MA, October 15th.
2024 Vidal Covas, Lee-Ann M.
Investigating salience and ideologies in Greater Boston: A sociophonetic analysis of liquid variation, The International Symposium on Language Ideologies and Attitudes (IDEOLING), Palma de Mallorca, Spain, October 17th - 19th
2023 Vidal Covas, Lee-Ann M.
Making a Splash: The Salience of Liquid Variation among Boston Spanish speakers, New Waves of Analyzing Linguistic Variation (NWAV), NYC, NY, Oct 13th - 17th
2023 Vidal Covas, Lee-Ann M.
¿Va primero el verbo OR El sujeto va primero?: Subject-Verb order in Latin American Spanish, LSA 2023, Denver, CO, January 5th– 8th
2021 Vidal Covas, Lee-Ann M. Filled pauses as a site of language contact among Spanish-speaking Bostonians. LSA 2021, (Virtual) January 9th.