publications

2025

1. Disentangling grammar and experience: On the role of environmental exposure to Spanish-English code-switching

   Hannah Treadway, Josh Higdon, and Jorge Valdés Kroff

   Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, Sep 2025

   Abs DOI

   Code-switching (CS) processing is subject to modulation by language-internal properties and extralinguistic factors, including the distributional patterns of bilingual language production specific to a given bilingual community. To tease apart the roles of grammar and experience in CS processing, a group of advanced L1 English, L2 Spanish learners (n=39) immersed in an environment with ubiquitous code-switching (U.S. east coast) participated in a reading-while-eye-tracking experimental task. Spanish-English CS asymmetries present in the production of bilingual compound verbs and determiner-noun switches that differ in their regional use and frequency were tested. Results reveal that L2 learners are sensitive to the distributional production frequencies of CS present in their interactive context during online processing. However, the onset of these effects is somewhat delayed, indicating that the impact of environmental production frequencies may surface during later stage processing for L2 learners. Results are discussed in the context of experience-based frameworks of sentence processing.

2. The Influence of Community-Specific Code-Switching Norms on Online Comprehension in Early Spanish-English Bilinguals

   Cassidy Marino, and Hannah Treadway

   UF Journal of Undergraduate Research, Nov 2025

   Abs DOI

   In research on Spanish-English bilingual code-switching (CS), bilingual compound verbs (BCVs) have been shown to occur at different frequencies in distinct bilingual communities. This paper proposes production frequencies play an important role in the online processing of Spanish-English CS. Sixteen early Spanish-English bilinguals participated in a reading-while-eye-tracking study where they read sentences containing BCVs that are attested in their bilingual community and those that are syntactically plausible, yet unattested in the same community. Participants were expected to show a processing cost for the light verb (LV) condition with the switch occurring at the lexical infinitive, as this switch is unattested in this participant group’s speech community. Participants were also expected to display this sensitivity during earlier stage processing when compared to age-matched learners of Spanish. The results showed a trend of longer reading time for the LV at lexical infinitive switch that became most robust in the spillover region. A z-scored analysis of an offline acceptability assessment of the presented stimuli revealed a strong dispreference for the unattested switch. These results indicate that prior exposure to language had an important impact in online and offline processing of Spanish-English CS. 

2022

1. Medieval Ballads in Miniature and Our New Gold: Collaborative Theatre Projects in the Digital Era

   Glenda Y Nieto-Cuebas, Hannah Treadway, Jasmine Lew, and 1 more author

   Comedia Performance, Nov 2022