Research
My research focuses on the code-switching varieties spoken in Northern Belize, where Spanish (language of the majority) is in intense contact with English (the official language) and Belizean Kriol (Belize's lingua franca). I have a particular interest in investigating the emergence of morphosyntactic innovation across generations and the evolution of bi/multilingual language practices in terms of frequency and complexity. I am also interested in examining the uniformity and variability in code-switching outcomes across different Spanish/English communities in the Spanish-speaking world. Lastly, I am in interesting in studying the implications that recent linguistic research has on our theorizing and development of multilingual pedagogies.
Recent publications
- Balam, O., Stadthagen-González, H., Rodríguez-González, E., & Parafita Couto, M.C. (2022). On the Grammaticality of Passivization in Bilingual Compound Verbs. International Journal of Bilingualism. doi:10.1177/13670069221097772
- Balam, O. (2021). Beyond Differences and Similarities in Code-switching and Translanguaging Research. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 35, 76-103.
- Balam, O., Parafita Couto, M. C., & Chen, M. (2021). Being in Bilingual Speech: An Analysis of Estar ‘be’ Constructions in Spanish/English Code-switching. Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech 3(2), 238-264.
- Balam, O., Lakshmanan, U., & Parafita Couto, M. C. (2021). Gender Assignment Strategies among Simultaneous Spanish/English Bilingual Children from Miami, Florida. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 14(2), 241-280.
- Balam, O., Parafita Couto, M. C., & Stadthagen-González, H. (2020). Bilingual Verbs in Three Spanish/English Code-switching communities. International Journal of Bilingualism. 24(5-6), 952-967.
