My current passion is analyzing the lexicon from a cognitive perspective. I want to understand how different semantic domains are conceptualized in Spanish in contrast with other languages; this is the aim of the Spanish FrameNet project, within which I am the principal investigator. It seems I am fated to do work that relates to natural language processing; since the beginning of my professional career, I have constantly found myself entangled in such endeavors. Or in other words, no matter what I'm working on, I have always been chained to a computer.

I don't know whether to call using information technology to disseminate information about Spanish linguistics a passion of mine or whether it might be more accurate to say it is an obsession, given how much of my time in the past fifteen years has been dedicated to that cause. My dream is to wake up one morning and find that someone out there, somewhere on this planet, has begun to email me regular updates about what’s going on in Spanish linguistics throughout the world. Until that dream becomes a reality, I will hold steady at the helm of Infoling.

I am a professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. I believe that the Spanish university system, of which AUB is a part, is fundamentally broken. Higher education in Spain is in a state of decay; this is why not a single Spanish university is among the top 200 in the world. The only politically viable way to deal with this deteriorating system would be to let it collapse gradually while creating a new, parallel network of universities that had to compete with each other for better state funding. Only then could we have universities where quality instruction and innovative research were the real driving forces in academic life.

I love jazz—flamenco jazz, all kinds of jazz. My current idol is Chano Domínguez. I want to be a musician in my next life.

My main research interest is in using technology to aid in language teaching and learning, especially teaching Spanish as a foreign language. As happens with everything in life, I ended up working in this field partly by accident and partly due to my natural predilections; I've always been attracted to languages, machines, and discovering worlds that are different from mine. And perhaps because I'm interested in so many things, I consider systems that enable us to organize, store, and share knowledge to be essential. This is why I have always believed in Infoling, despite our limited means. My interest in the processing and management of linguistic data has also steered me into research in corpus linguistics—especially in how it can be used for language teaching. I am fascinated by all of the applications of linguistics and its relations to other disciplines.

Since 1995, I have been a Professor of Spanish in the School of Philology at the University of Barcelona. I am proud to be part of a university that is so closely linked to my city’s past and present—and thereby to my own history. I really enjoy teaching, especially hands-on interactive sessions. Every day, I am fortunate enough to be with students who are both interested and interesting, and who challenge me with their questions and show me how our social fabric is evolving. I believe in a university that serves society.

To make up for all the time I spend with technology at work, I stay away from it in my free time. I prefer to go out with friends, talk, take walks, and enjoy nature. The simple things in life.

CV: Projects and Publications

I owe my interest in linguistics, especially in syntax, to three people: Covadonga López Alonso, who opened my eyes to linguistics and supervised my dissertation; Maurice Gross, who taught me about Lexicon Grammar and supervised my Master's project; and Carlos Subirats, whom I met when I spent a semester in 1999 working with him and his team at the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Ever since, he has always invited me to participate in his projects and continued to teach me more about wonderful worlds like syntax and semantics.

I should take the opportunity to make it clear, in case there was ever any doubt, that all linguists are at least a little bit crazy. The only sane person on this team is our programmer, whom we torture by constantly demanding new widgets to help us with natural language processing.

In addition to the above, I am an associate professor at Rey Juan Carlos University, where I teach French. (Like a good Gemini, I have an undergraduate degree in French Philology and a doctorate in Spanish Philology.)

After years of research in NLP and virtual worlds, I have found that there is no better way to relax than to come back to the real world and have a few beers with my friends.

At Infoling, I am in charge of the Job Openings section. I am happy that we’re all doing this for the love of it—and, in my case, as a way to give back to society a little bit for all the good fortune I've had in my life.

After more than three years as a graduate student, in September 2009 I began my career as a university lecturer. On top of teaching, I am also involved in two different research projects. I am part of a research group headed by Dr. Coloma Lleal that is putting together a Diccionario general y etimológico del castellano del Siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón(General and Etymological Dictionary of Fifteenth-Century Castilian Spanish in the Crown of Aragon). My other project is my doctoral dissertation, supervised by Dr. Emília Anglada Arboix, in which I am developing a historical linguistic analysis of the representation of collocational units in Spanish dictionaries.

I was fortunate to be on the Board of Directors of the Asociación de Jóvenes Investigadores de Historiografía e Historia de la Lengua Española(Association of Young Researchers in the History and Historiography of the Spanish Language), where young scholars who are trying to carve a niche for themselves in the difficult world of research in historical linguistics can find a venue for scientific exchange and, most importantly, an environment of mutual respect for our work.

I can't help being fascinated by the possibilities offered by new technologies, so when I was invited to participate in Infoling, I didn't hesitate for an instant. The idea of contributing in some way to such an initiative was a very attractive prospect for me: 15 years disseminating information on Spanish linguistics, 4,100 subscribers, over 50 countries...

When I need to breathe some non-academic air, I escape to Poblado de Algar in Córdoba, Spain, a tiny village with just over 120 people, where the professional fades into the background and the personal comes to the fore. Music, books and family are always my faithful travel companions.

CV

Ever since I entered the world of information technology, with the help of a humble ZX Spectrum 16, I've always had a keyboard near to hand. Programming is my passion, and I've turned it into a career. My other great love has always been natural language processing—it all began when I was little, when I discovered HAL 9000. I still believe in thinking machines. And although time and age have lowered my expectations, I'm still enchanted by the idea. I like to think I am in some small way furthering progress toward something that for now is only fully possible in the movies.

For the last 11 years, I have been researching and developing natural language processing systems as a member of several research projects, currently including the Spanish FrameNet project. I am also an associate professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

I'm lucky to be part of an initiative like Infoling, and to have been able to contribute by developing a new submissions and search system that will improve how we provide information on Spanish linguistics.

To get away from the computer screen, I focus on my other great passion, my family. I like to spend time enjoying their company, reading a good book on a quiet beach, doing anything that will keep me from thinking...about thinking machines.

We live in language and we live in society through language, like Juan Luis Guerra’s fish in the fishbowl. Studying language is therefore not only vital, it is also enjoyable. I began with learning the usual languages, because they were useful, and from there I moved on to studying philology and linguistics. I attended the Central University of Venezuela during a very interesting moment in its history, the so-called Renewal of the School of Letters. Despite the constant movement of living in "No-Man’s Land", that world was present and calm, a haven of beautiful sculptures and amazing libraries. There I was fortunate to be surrounded by prestigious linguists, who met regularly with colleagues from all over the country and all over the world; this made language an object of great interest and enjoyment for me.

I earned my Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics from Georgetown University in the United States before joining the University of the Andes and its young and dynamic department, where studying linguistics became my lifelong project. I'm now retired from my position as a professor, but this really means very little, as I am still active in my work. My current research interest is in the discourse analysis of politeness and identity, including some work on political discourse. I am a member of the Grupo de Lingüística Hispánica (Spanish Linguistics Group). I have published some books, among them Malabí-Maticulambí: Estudios afrocaribeños (Malabí-Maticulambí: Afro-Caribbean Studies, 1987), Cortesía y descortesía: teoría y praxis de un sistema de significación (Politeness and Impoliteness: Theory and Praxis in a System of Meanings, 2005), Textos sociolingüísticos (Sociolinguistic Texts, 2007) y Poética del habla cotidiana (The Poetics of Everyday Language, 2008, new edition). Two of these titles were published in Estudios de Lingüistica del Español (Studies in Spanish Linguistics).

After ten years of working at my alma mater, the Institute for Ibero-Romance Languages at the University of Basel, where I experienced all of the seasons of academic life—undergraduate student, graduate student, and professor—in February 2010, I took a position as a professor of Spanish Linguistics at the Institute for Spanish Language and Literatures at the University of Bern.

I owe my interest in Sephardic studies, particularly in the fascinating world of Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino), to Professor Beatrice Schmid at the Institute for Ibero-Romance Languages, who has been working in this area for ten years and has built an important Judaeo-Spanish research center within the Institute..

I believe in an independent, competitive university, at the service of society and free of nepotism, whose main objectives are providing good education to its students and fostering quality research.

When I'm not wrestling with linguistic questions, I'm usually in the kitchen. I love cooking and trying dishes from all over the world, though I must admit that—perhaps simply due to my love for my native land—Peruvian cuisine is one of my favorites.

I also spend part of my free time watching good films. Fortunately, the offerings in Switzerland are of excellent quality, and I've found many real cinematic gems that are outside the mainstream. Finally, I'm a great believer in the saying "A sound mind in a sound body", so I try to get some exercise at least once a week.

Curriculum Vitae and Publications

Research Projects

Ever since I was a little girl, I remember having been fascinated by antiquarian bookshops. Perhaps my passion for old books foreshadowed my present dedication to studying the history of linguistics, particularly the history of Spanish grammar. I have spent more than half my life engaged with those disciplines, and I hope to spend the rest of it continuing to be amazed by languages and their magic. I am currently a professor of General Linguistics at the University of Córdoba in Spain. That is my basecamp, but since I do not believe universities should be static, isolated entities, I am always ready to travel to other places to share experiences and knowledge with colleagues. I recognize how much I have learned from the scholars who have preceded me; I am in their debt. I am equally indebted to my current colleagues and students. I have worked with some of those colleagues for many years in the research group Lenguajes; I have worked with my students exploring semiotics, terminology, the history of linguistics, semantics, general linguistics, and many other things.

I have also learned a lot from the School of Life; I feel connected to nature, which I respect and care for as much as I can manage. A good classic film, a walk between the columns of Córdoba’s mosque, getting lost in the labyrinth of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter, reading a story by Alice Munroe or Dino Buzzatti... These are the essential pleasures in life.