About

Alejandro Cuza is a professor affiliated with the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University, serving as a faculty member in the School of Languages, Literature, and Cultures (SLC), and holding roles in Spanish and Portuguese, Linguistics, and Latin American Studies. His research primarily focuses on Spanish linguistics, specifically morphosyntax and semantics, as well as second language acquisition, heritage language development, child bilingual development, and bilingualism. He is particularly interested in the psycholinguistic processes involved in the second language acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax and semantics, exploring factors such as language transfer, input conditions, and age of onset of bilingualism in the acquisition and loss of Spanish morphosyntactic patterns among bilingual children, adult L2 learners, and Spanish heritage speakers.

Research topics

• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Philosophy
• History
• Cognitive science

Selected publications

• La variación gramático‐léxica del español cubano

  2025-07-18

  otherOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  dialectos caribeos, el espaol cubano guarda caractersticas muy propias fruto del contacto con culturas indgenas precolombinas,

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• <i>Nadando es mi deporte favorito</i> : Infinitives and gerunds in the speech of Spanish/English bilingual children and adolescents

  Bilingualism Language and Cognition · 2025-11-24

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This study examines the elicited production of Spanish infinitives versus gerunds among Spanish/English bilingual children and adolescents in the United States. We focus on three contexts: infinitives in subject position, infinitives with the phrasal verb parar de (“to stop doing something”), and infinitives with the prepositional verb parar a (“to stop to do something”). Results showed that children and adolescents produced fewer infinitives than their Spanish-dominant parents in subject position and with parar de , often overextending the gerund. By contrast, all groups performed more accurately with parar a , where English and Spanish align structurally. Language dominance and Spanish experience significantly predicted more target-like infinitive use, while chronological age and English dominance were associated with increased gerund overextension. These findings support the Bilingual Alignment Hypothesis , showing that heritage Spanish morphosyntactic development is gradual and context-sensitive, with greater accuracy in areas of crosslinguistic convergence.

  PublisherDOI

• Genericity expression in child heritage Spanish

  Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics · 2025-04-29 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The current study investigates the oral production of plural noun phrases (NPs) in subject position in Spanish and English among forty child heritage speakers of Spanish who were raised in the United States. Their results were compared with twenty-four monolingual children of similar ages from Mexico. We elicited determiner use in generic and specific contexts in Spanish and English. Results showed a high level of determiner omission with generic referents in Spanish but much less variability with specific referents, suggesting crosslinguistic influence from English. Spanish proficiency played a role in the extent of determiner omission in Spanish generic contexts. Regarding the children’s English, the results showed a high proportion of determiner overextension with generic referents but little variability with specific contexts, suggesting bilingualism effects in sorting out the genericity problem in English. The results are discussed along the lines of the Bilingual Alignment Hypothesis and recent proposals on the effects of proficiency and experience in heritage language acquisition.

  PublisherDOI

• The Acquisition of Inalienable Possession in L2 and Heritage Spanish

  Heritage Language Journal · 2024-01-12 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract The present study examines the production and interpretation of inalienable possession in dative constructions with body-part nouns in Spanish by 25 English-speaking L2 learners and 25 heritage speakers of Spanish born and raised in the United States. Twenty Spanish-dominant speakers served as baseline group. The results showed significant divergencies with inalienable NP s among the L2 learners compared to the heritage speakers and Spanish-dominant speakers. The L2 learners produced few instances of clitic se and a definite determiner and favored the use of a possessive determiner with or without a clitic instead. The heritage speakers and baseline group behaved similarly in their use of a clitic and a definite determiner. We argue for age of onset of acquisition and crosslinguistic influence effects in the acquisition of inalienable possession in Spanish.

  PublisherDOI

• Phrasal verb production in child heritage speakers of English residing in Mexico: Chronological age, experience, and protracted development

  International Journal of Bilingualism · 2024-10-17 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Aims: We investigated the extent to which child heritage speakers of English in contact with Spanish in Mexico accurately produce phrasal verbs, and if not, whether their difficulties are modulated by chronological age, language dominance, and experience. Methods: We implemented an elicited production task to elicit the use of idiomatic and transparent phrasal verbs in school-age children using a cross-sectional design. We tested 26 English-heritage children and adolescents (7.5–17.3; M = 10.4) residing in Mexico. Their results were compared with those of 18 English monolingual children born and raised in the American Midwest (6.11–14.9, M = 10.2). Chronological age, dominance, and patterns of language experience were included as covariables. Data and Analysis: Data were analyzed using generalized linear mixed models with binomial distribution. Findings: The heritage children exhibited significant difficulties in accurately using phrasal verbs compared with monolingual children, particularly with idiomatic phrases, revealing an asymmetry between the two structure types. Difficulties were modulated by age and linguistic experience. Importantly, as children aged and experienced extended exposure to English, the observed challenges diminished, aligning with recent findings in heritage language development. We posit that these divergences are attributed to protracted development during childhood. Originality: This study expands on recent work with adult heritage speakers of English by tracking the development of phrasal verbs in school-age children quasi-longitudinally rather than observing the adult-like outcome. Furthermore, examining young and older school-age heritage speakers of English in contact with Spanish as the dominant language in Mexico contributes to existing research primarily centered on heritage speakers of minoritized languages in the United States.

  PublisherDOI

• On the production of bare nouns and case marking in Korean heritage speakers in contact with English

  Lingua · 2024-09-30

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Distribution of Manner and Frequency Adverbs in Child Heritage Speakers of Spanish

  Languages · 2023-12-19 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  We investigate the acquisition of adverb placement in Spanish among school-age child heritage speakers of Spanish born and raised in the US by Mexican parents. We examine frequency and manner adverbs with negative and positive polarity and the potential role of cross-linguistic influence, dominance, and experience in the path and rate of development. Fourteen child heritage speakers of Spanish born and raised in the US and twenty-five Spanish monolingual children from Mexico completed an elicited production task. Results showed that the heritage children produced significantly fewer verb-raising structures compared to the monolingual children, leading to a higher proportion of pre-verbal adverb use and adverb-final use. The heritage children treated manner and frequency adverbs with negative and positive polarity significantly differently. We also found a strong correlation between dominance and experience in the probability of producing specific adverbial positions. In other words, common adverbial positions in English were more likely to be produced with higher dominance and experience in English; likewise, Spanish adverbial positions were more likely to be used with higher dominance and experience in Spanish. We argue for differential outcomes in child heritage grammar due to differences in the path and rate of language development as well as the role of dominance and experience in child heritage language acquisition.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Phonetic and Morphosyntactic Dimensions of Grammatical Gender in Spanish Heritage Language Acquisition

  Heritage Language Journal · 2023-06-21 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Previous studies disagree as to whether heritage bilinguals demonstrate loss of knowledge of Spanish grammatical gender. As phonetic variability is known to affect the acquisition of certain grammatical markers, we examine whether bilinguals’ gender difficulties relate to bilingual contact-induced phonetic variability, namely, reduction in the inventory of word-final unstressed vowels. We analyzed narratives from children in the United States (n = 49, ages 4–12). All NP s (n = 1415) were analyzed for structure, noun class, and morphology. Word-final vowels were sub-selected for acoustic analyses. Morpho-syntactically, group results show high accuracy with gender (95%), but with wide individual variation (44%–100%). Speakers also show individual variability and substantive numbers of vowel misclassifications (6%–33%) with higher variability for /a/ and /o/. We found bilingual effects in both domains but no association between phonetics and gender accuracy. These findings have implications for the relationship between phonetics and grammar, and for the morphosyntax of Spanish gender.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Protracted development in child heritage Spanish: Evidence from inalienable possession

  Second language Research · 2023-11-30 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The present study examined the production of inalienable possession with body parts in Spanish among 20 school-age children of Mexican-born parents born and raised in the United States. The results were compared to those of 20 first-generation immigrant parents (main input providers), 27 Spanish-dominant children of similar age, and 12 Spanish monolingual parents living in Mexico. Group and individual results obtained via a question-and-answer task showed low proportion of clitic se plus the definite determiner (e.g. Ella se rompió el brazo ‘She broke her arm’) among the heritage children in their production of the inalienable construal. The heritage children significantly overextended the possessive determiner instead of the definite determiner in contrast to their parents, the Spanish-dominant children and monolingual parents. Results also showed a significant role for dominance and language experience in the degree of morphosyntactic variability among heritage children, supporting recent research. The higher the Spanish dominance and the more Spanish contact and use the heritage children had, the more they aligned closer to their parents and the Spanish-dominant children in the use of the definite determiner. There were no divergences with the use of the definite determiner in alienable contexts. We argue for protracted development in child heritage Spanish stemming from crosslinguistic influence effects, minority language dominance and linguistic experience.

  PublisherDOI

• Infinitive vs. Gerund Use and Interpretation in Heritage Spanish

  Languages · 2023-09-14 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The present study examines the production and interpretation of infinitives among 26 Spanish heritage speakers born and raised in the US and 25 Spanish-dominant speakers from Mexico and Colombia. We tested participants’ knowledge of infinitives as subjects of the clause and as objects of a preposition via an elicited production task and a contextualized preference task. The results of both tasks showed less infinitive use by the HSs and overextension of the gerund in contexts where it is not required. The results showed that the gerund overextension was modulated by the syntactic context. There was significantly more use of the gerund as the subject of the clause in both production and interpretation and less use as the object of a preposition. Furthermore, the results showed a significant role for proficiency and language experience in the extent of grammatical reconfiguration. The higher the level of Spanish proficiency and the more exposure and use of Spanish, the more likely the participants were to produce and choose infinitives. Results are discussed along the lines of the activation approach.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Julio César López Otero

  University of Houston

  7 shared

• Ana Teresa Pérez‐Leroux

  6 shared

• Lauren Miller

  Wake Forest University

  6 shared

• A. Myller

  6 shared

• Mihai Turinici

  Alexandru Ioan Cuza University

  6 shared

• Jian Jiao

  Beijing Language and Culture University

  5 shared

• Pedro Guijarro‐Fuentes

  Universitat de les Illes Balears

  5 shared

• Lori Czerwionka

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  4 shared