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Currently, I am supervising two independent studies:
Luis Aguilar (1st year PhD) : Free Choice Items
A speaker’s use of the indefinite phrase cualquier NP is intended to communicate that some individual (or individuals) assumes indifference in relation with the specificity of the cualquier-NP-denoted entity. We account for this phenomenon by relying on the lexical integration of an indifference property into the semantics of the FCI cualquier. Moreover, the authors claim that the felicitous use of the cualquier NP phrase is predicated on a distinguishability criterion of the cualquier-NP-entities: the use of the phrase can only be felicitous if its denotation is a set of entities that are different one from another from the perspective of the FCI-users (the speaker and the hearer).
Heechan Lim (2nd year PhD) : Information Structure
This independent study examines information structure with particular attention to contrastive topicality in Spanish. The first part of the course will establish a foundation in the major distinctions among topic, focus, givenness, and contrast. It will then examine recent theoretical and empirical work on how these distinctions are represented and how they relate to syntactic and prosodic realization. The later part of the course will focus more specifically on Spanish, including work on focus marking, the left periphery, CLLD, anaphoricity and contrast, and dialectal variation.
Over the years, I have been fortunate to participate in the mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students. The following is a list of PhD graduates that I have mentored:
At UIC, as a dissertation director:
Rodrigo Delgado. Dissertation director. PhD 2020.
Thesis title: “Gender and phonology in the Determiner Phrase.”
Current employment: Assistant Professor, UIUC
Irati de Nicolás. Dissertation director. PhD 2020.
Thesis title: “Word Order within the Determiner Phrase.”
Current employment: Assistant Professor, Deusto University, Bilbao, Spain.
José Sequeros. Dissertation director. PhD 2020.
Thesis title: “Discourse-free Left Periphery.”
Current employment: Assistant Professor, University of Nebraska.
Ariane Sande. Dissertation director. PhD 2018
Thesis title: “C plus T as a necessary condition for pro-drop: Evidence from code-switching.”
Current employment: Lecturer, University of Munich, Germany.
Daniel Vergara. Dissertation director. PhD 2017
Thesis title: “Licensing of NPIs: evidence from Code-switching.”
Current employment: Associate Professor, Auburn University.
Jeanne Heil. Dissertation director. PhD 2015
Thesis title: “Infinitivals at the end state.”
Current employment: Associate Professor, University of Southern Maine.
Brad Hoot. Dissertation director. PhD 2012.
Thesis title: “Presentational Focus in Heritage and Monolingual Spanish.”
Current employment: Professor, DePaul University.
At UIC, as a dissertation committee member:
Timothy Anderson. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2022
Thesis title: “The relevance of type in semantic analyses of incremental theme predicates in English and Spanish.”
Current employment: Associate Professor, Kishawkee College.
Sara Stefanich. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2019.
Thesis title: “Phonological spell out of intra-word code-switches by English/Spanish bilinguals.”
Current employment: Lecturer, Northwestern University
Alicia Luque. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2019.
Thesis title: “A Neurocognitive Investigation of Inhibitory Control and First Language Flexibility as Individual Differences in Adult Second Language Learning.”
Current employment: Associate Professor, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain.
Bryan Koronkiewicz. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2014
Thesis title: “Pronoun categorization. Evidence from Spanish-English code-switching.”
Current employment: Associate Professor, University of Alabama Tuscaloosa.
Shane Ebert. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2014
Thesis title: “Wh-movement in code-switching.”
Current employment: Lecturer, UIC.
Mandy Faretta. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2014
Thesis title: “Individual differences in context. A neurolinguistic investigation of working memory and L2 development.”
Current employment: Associate Professor, Northern Illinois University.
Laura Bartlett. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2013.
Thesis title: “Adjectives that aren’t: An ERP-theoretical analysis of adjectives in Spanish.
Jill Jegerski. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2010.
Thesis title: “Ultimate Attainment: experimental research.”
Current employment: Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Clara Burgo. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2008.
Thesis title: “Tense and aspect grammaticalization in Bilbao Spanish”
Current employment: Associate Professor, Loyola University, Chicago.
Julia Oliver. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2007.
Thesis title: “The urbanization of High Vowels: A Sociolinguistic Study in the Highlands of Puerto Rico.”
Current employment: Associate Professor, Kentucky State University.
Claudia Fernández. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2005.
Thesis title: “The role of explicit information in instructed SLA: Evidence from a Pi Study.”
Current employment: Clinical Assistant Professor, UIC.
Dinorah Scott. Dissertation committee member. PhD 2003.
Thesis title: “Mood Variation in Spanish: A Neo-Gricean Pragmatic Explanation.”
Current employment: Associate Professor, Whitworth University, Washington.
Outside UIC:
Carlos Martínez García. Miembro del tribunal. PhD 2025
Thesis title: "Los objetos tácitos en español: Propuesta de análisis y consecuencias teóricas
Thesis directors: Cristina Sánchez López and María Victoria Escandell Vidal, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Peter Herbeck. External gutachter. PhD 2015.
Thesis title: “The subject position in Romance finite and non-finite clauses.”
Thesis director: Hermann Pöhl, University of Salzburg.
Tanya Leal. External committee member. PhD 2014.
Thesis title: “Pragmatic consequences of P-movement and Focus Fronting in L2 Spanish.”
Co-Directors: Roumyana Slavakova and Paula Kempchinski, University of Iowa.
Laia Arnaus Gil. External gutachter. PhD 2012
Thesis title: “La selección copulativa y auxiliar: Las lenguas romances (español - italiano - catalán - francés) y el alemán en contacto. Su adquisición en niños bilingües y trilingües.”
Thesis director: Natascha Müller. University of Wuppertal.
Inmaculada Taboada. Presidente del tribunal (Chair of the Board). PhD 2010
“The internal structure of non-quantified DP.”
Thesis director: Alazne Landa. University of the Basque Country.
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