I’m an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA.
I’m a linguist who takes a cross-linguistic approach, focusing on Mayan, (Heritage) Spanish, and Bantu. I’ve recently been thinking about pseudoclefts, ellipsis licensing, relative clauses, split ergativity, and null complement anaphora. Other topics I’ve worked on include weak crossover, agreement, sibilant harmony, linearization, A’-extraction restrictions, and information structure.
Language revitalization and documentation are also a key part of my work. I have contributed to these areas in Guatemala (Xinka, Kaqchikel, Tz’utujil) and in California (Rumsen).
I received my PhD in Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park. My dissertation “Identity Conditions on Ellipsis” is available here.
The wonderful members of my UMD cohort (collectively known as SMAART) were Sigwan Thivierge, Mina Hirzel, Anouk Dieuleveut, Aaron Doliana, _ and Tyler Knowlton.
Recent / To appear papers:
- “Ellipsis in Contact: VPE and Sluicing in Spanish Heritage Speakers” with Erin Mauffray and Victoria Mateu. To appear. The Proceedings of the 50th Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD 50): [link]
- “El cuento de kokolom/chi’jolom: Bosquejo gramatical y comparación dialectal del idioma Chuj“. To appear. Tlalocan: [link] to latest version.
- “Weak Crossover in Spanish Relative Clauses” with Greg Scontras and Masha Polinsky . 2025. Probus. [link]
Papers under review:
- “Diagnosing the diagnostics: Evidence from Spanish relative clauses” with Masha Polinsky and Greg Scontras; e-mail me for a draft!
- “Wh-questions and predication in Mayan” with Justin Royer and Cristina Buenrostro; [link] to latest version.
- Book chapter “VP-ellipsis in Spanish“; e-mail me for a draft!
Contact me:
ranero [at] ucla [dot] edu
Rodrigo Ranero 