Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Originally from Tijuana, Mexico and Southern California, Karina obtained a B.A. in Linguistics and a Certificate of Advanced Language Study in Italian at Yale University. For her honors thesis, she examined the language of heritage speakers of Mexican Spanish in the US within the context of noted variation across dialects and a larger trajectory of diachronic change. Her research interests include linguistic variation and language change, heritage speakers, bilingualism, experimental approaches to lexico-semantics, meaning, and the connection between language and the mind.