Home Department: Spanish and Portuguese
SLAT Areas of Specialization: Cognitive Dimensions of L2 Learning, Linguistic Dimensions of L2 Learning
Dr. Leal is a linguist who specializes in second language acquisition, particularly on the acquisition and processing (comprehension) of syntax and morphology. Her research explores bilingualism broadly construed and is is purposefully interdisciplinary, incorporating elements from applied linguistics, generative linguistics, and psycholinguistics. She's particularly interested in real-time language comprehension and in advancing the characterization of the underlying linguistic knowledge of second language learners and heritage speakers. She is also keenly interested in the current methodological and epistemological issues that have arisen in the field as a by-product of conducting research that integrates different approaches. Her current research investigates how second language learners and heritage speakers acquire and process morpho-syntactic elements such as clitics. Some of this work has appeared in journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, Second Language Research, Lingua, Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics and the International Journal of Bilingualism. She is currently serving as Associate Editor for the journal Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism and contribute to the editorial boards of Second Language Research and Languages.