Guillermo Montero Melis

Biography

I am a postdoc at the Centre for Research on Bilingualism. I defended my PhD thesis, Thoughts in Motion: The Role of Long-Term L1 and Short-Term L2 Experience when Talking and Thinking of Caused Motion, in June 2017, under the supervision of Emanuel Bylund Spångberg (Stockholm University) and Florian Jaeger (University of Rochester). I obtained my PhD as part of the Special Doctoral Programme in Language and Linguistics at Stockholm University. Teaching Data analysis for master's students. Workshop in three sessions, Stockholm Univ., Spring 2016, Spring 2017 Second language acquisition. Undergraduate course at Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm Univ., Fall 2015 Statistics and statistical methods (co-instructor). Doctoral course at Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm Univ., Spring 2015 Second language research. Undergraduate course at Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm Univ., Fall 2013

Research Interest

Do we learn to think differently as we acquire a new language after childhood? Learning an L2 is not merely a linguistic task, but requires reconstructing meaning and shifting semantic boundaries of L1-based concepts. My research examines how speakers of different languages conceptualize events linguistically and non-linguistically. The hypothesis I test is whether linguistic experience (in the L1 or L2) affects how we represent events. I am also interested in how L2 speakers adapt to recent linguistic experience and what this reveals about their expectations: Do L2 users transfer their expectations from their L1 or do they base their expectations on L2-specific experience?