RESEARCH

As a researcher, I’m drawn to understanding the relationship between the mind and the human capacity for language. What is the nature of our knowledge about speech sounds? How do the auditory and motor systems inform the nature of the abstract grammatical component which govern phonological rules? How does each inform the other? Although I lean towards theoretical phonology, the approach is fundamentally informed by psycholinguistic approaches (“What can we learn about language from behavior?”) within a generativist framework. At the moment, I’m interested in using large speech models for novel insights into these issues.

A sampling of the specific topics that I’ve worked on:

• Accounting for similarity effects in consonant harmony
• Verbal morphophonology in Amharic
• Acquisition of subject agreement morphology in Tz’utujil Mayan
• Infant speech perception of stop contrasts
• The influence of English-Spanish code-switching on children’s language development

Publications

Caragine, Cassandra and Quevedo, Lydia. (2024). “Acquisition differences in Mayan languages: a prosodic account.” In Proceedings of the 48th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD).

De Villiers, P., Almaraz, V., Beltrán., S., Camacho, L., Quevedo, L., & Yan, R. (2023). “Effects of Low-Income Latina Mothers’ Language with Their Preschool Children on Later Literacy Development in English.” Proceedings of the 47th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. PDF.

Quevedo, Lydia (2021). “No questions about it : promising, asking, and negating answers to wh- questions.” Honors Project, Smith College, Northampton, MA.

Presentations

“Acquisition differences in Mayan languages: a prosodic account.” Poster. With Cassandra Caragine. Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) 48. 2023.

“Prosody and the acquisition of subject marking in Mayan.” Workshop talk. With Cassandra Caragine. Syntax Lab at the University of Maryland, College Park. 2023

“Effects of Low-Income Hispanic Mothers’ Language with their Preschool Children on later Literacy Development in English.” Poster. With Peter de Villiers, Lissandra Camacho, Dania Ruiz, and Sara Beltran. Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD). 2022.

“Preschool children misjudge the truth of negative complements.” Poster. With Jill de Villiers, Lily Berlstein, Shengqi Zhong, and Yanwan Zhu. International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL). 2021.

“No Questions About It: Asking, Promising, and Negating Answers to Wh- Questions.” Smith College Departmental Honors Presentation. 2021.