Ivan Ortega-Santos

Hi! I am Professor in the Department of World Languages and Literatures, Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis and the Graduate Coordinator of the Master of Arts in Spanish. I completed my doctoral work in Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and hold an M.A. in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Arizona. I am associate editor of the Hispanic Linguistics journal Borealis as well as board member of the local non-profit Indigenous Pastoral Relief. When I am not doing research or teaching, I love playing drums.

Teaching: I teach courses in Linguistics, Translation and Interpretation as well as Spanish, with an emphasis on breaking down language barriers in the city of Memphis while providing meaningful learning opportunities for students. My community engagement program, Comunidad901, designed to support local Hispanic-serving organizations, earned me a HARC Angel Award from the Highland Area Renewal Corporation, Inc. (HARC), Memphis.

Research: My areas of research include Theoretical Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, Dialectology and Translation and Interpretation. In particular, I study word order variation with an emphasis on Romance languages to understand (i.) how this variation relates to semantics and morphology; and (ii.) the limits that natural language imposes on it. Specifically, I concentrate on subjecthood, focalization, ellipsis and so-called long-distance dependencies. Dialectal variation as related to these and other topics also figures prominently in my work. I also focus on crowdsourcing and data collection standards in linguistic theory as well as educational interpretation. You can find more about my research here.

Contact information: 

Iván Ortega-Santos
Professor

Dept. of World Languages & Literatures

Jones Hall 201H
University of Memphis
Memphis, TN 38152
rtgsntos{at}memphisdotedu