Mercedes Martinez Bruera

Linguistics PhD. Candidate at Goethe University Frankfurt

I am a third year PhD student currently working on the relationship between language processing and diachronic change. I am interested in understanding if cognitive factors play a role in why a language devolops in a specific way. I am also interested in the reasons why heritage speakers may be different from monolingual speakers. To do this I use different psycolinguisitc methods to evaluate language processing and production

News

Going to the US for HSP 2025!

I'll present during the second poster session on Friday morning! I hope to see you there!

I'll talk about my work on how optional variants of the same structure are not always processed equally: equal meaning does not mean equal processing!

March 2025

I presented at Hispanistiktaag 2025

I presented my work on the consequences of language variation and change on the online processing of clitic doubling sentences in Spanish. [slides]

Thank you everyone for the feedback and comments! I had a great time in Hamburg!

March 2025

See you at AMLaP 2024

I'll present my work during Saturday's poster session at AMLaP 2024

I'll talk about my results on heritage language variation and diachronic change. See the poster here and read the abstract.

September 2024

Education

Goethe University Frankfurt

PhD Student
I moved from Argentina to start my PhD in May of 2022. Currently I am in my third year.
May 2022 - Present

Argentinian Catholic University

Bacherlor's in literature and linguistics

I did a 5 year university degree where I studied linguistics, world literature, classics and also received training as a teacher.

March 2017 - April 2022

Publications

Pañeda, C., Kandel, M. Bahmanian, N., Martinez Bruera, M., Phillips, C. & Lago, S. (2025): Linguistic representations matter for pronoun production: evidence from grammatical number and gender attraction in Spanish.. Journal of Cognition. pre-print

Martinez Bruera, M., Weingärtner, D., Listanti, A., Gattei, C., Álvarez Gonzalez, C.J., Barber, H., Rinke, E. & Lago, S. (under review): Heritage Grammars and Language Change: The Case of Clitic Doubling in Spanish

Rinke, E., Weingärtner, D., Flores, C., Martinez Bruera, M., Listanti, A., Novo Gomes, J., Correa, L., Lago, S. (under review): One step ahead. Comparing heritage speakers with speakers of different varieties of Portuguese in their comprehension of null object constructions.

Martinez Bruera, M (2022): ¿Competencia o Ilusión? El desgaste de la lengua segunda después de la educación bilingüe en Argenitna. [on line] Bachelor's Thesis. Universidad Católica Argentina

Presentations

Peer-reviewed presentations

Martinez Bruera, M. & Lago, S. (2023) Invariable le affects comprehension of clitic-doubled sentences. Talk at Hispanistiktag, Hamburg, Germany, March 11–14

Martinez Bruera, M., Listanti, A. & Lago, S(2024) Heritage speakers do not always accelerate language change. Poster at AMLaP 2024. Edingurth, Scotland, September 5-7. [poster] / [abstract]

Martinez Bruera, M., Weingärtner, D., Flores, C., Lago, S. & Rinke, R. (2023) EVOLVE: relating diachronic change and heritage languages. Talk at Romanistentag, Leipzig, Germany, September 24–27.

Pañeda, P., Kandel, M., Bahmanian, N., Martinez Bruera, M., Phillips, C. & Lago, S.,(2023) Linguistic representations matter for pronoun production: evidence from grammatical gender attraction. Poster at AMLaP 2023, San Sebastian, Spain, August 31–September 2.

Kandel, M., Pañeda, C., Bahmanian, N., Martinez Bruera, M., Phillips, C. & Lago, S., (2023). Number and gender attraction in Spanish pronoun production. Poster at HSP 2023, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 9–11.

Martinez Bruera, M (2022): Diachronic change and bilingualism: acceptability of clitic doubling in monolingual and heritage Spanish. Poster at Workshop on L2 sentence and discourse processing. University of Cologne. November 18th.

Invited talks

Martinez Bruera, M. (2024) El cerebro y el lenguaje: ¿Qué es la psicolingüística? Talk at Universidad Católica Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 11th.

Martinez Bruera, M. (2024) ¿Podemos predecir el cambio lingüístico en poblaciones de hablantes de herencia? El caso del doblado de clíticos de acusativo. Talk at Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 5th.

Martinez Bruera, M. (2023) ¿Podemos predecir el cambio lingüístico en poblaciones de hablantes de herencia? El caso del doblado de clíticos de acusativo. Talk at Predoctoral colloquium on Spanish as a heritage language in Germany. Heidelberg University. June 23rd.

Contact me!

MartinezBruera@em.uni-frankfurt.de
Office
Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen
IG Farben, room 6.155
Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1
60629 Frankfurt am Main