Education
2026 Ph.D. Linguistics, University of New Mexico
2022 M.A. Spanish (Hispanic Linguistics), University of New Mexico
2020 B.A. Spanish Language, Literature, and Culture, Minor in Linguistics, University of Colorado Denver
Research interests
Usage-based theory, child language acquisition, bilingualism, language variation, language change, corpus linguistics, Spanish in the U.S., phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, quantitative methods
Research profile
My research agenda is focused on understanding how the emergence, representation, and production of linguistic structures is shaped by language use - particularly how often and in what contexts words and phrases are used – among individuals who speak more than one language. I use child and adult language data collected from naturalistic and experimental settings and corpus linguistics and quantitative statistical methods to understand relationships between language use and language variation and (developmental) change, especially for phonological and morphosyntactic variables. I primarily collect language data from child and adult Spanish-English bilinguals in the western United States. I use these findings to assess exemplar models of lexical representation developed within the framework of Usage-Based Linguistics and increase our understanding of bilingual child language development. This type of research can be used to support and legitimize Spanish in the U.S. and inform pedagogical and clinical practices for bilingual children. Moreover, documenting and understanding probabilistic speech patterns among bilingual speakers can positively impact human-technology interactions (e.g., automatic speech recognition, transcribing services in clinical and legal settings). To learn more about my research and access my publications visit my ResearchGate page.
To prospective students for the Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics (HLL Track 3) and/or Romance Linguistics (RLL) at UC Berkeley -- Please review the UC Berkeley S&P Ph.D. application page and/or the UC Berkeley RLL application page for important dates and required application materials. Afterwards, I strongly suggest you contact me by email (sarahlease[at]berkeley[dot]edu) with your expression of interest in either Ph.D. program, as well as a brief statement of research interests, research experience, and relevant coursework and linguistics training.
