Associate Professor of Linguistics & Spanish
Research and Teaching
Professor Erker teaches courses in general linguistics and Spanish linguistics. His research interests include language variation, contact, and change, sociolinguistics, acoustic and articulatory phonetics, Spanish in the United States, the languages of Latin America, and the evolution of human language.
Professor Erker is the director of The Spanish in Boston Project. This research, which is funded by the National Science Foundation (BCS-1423840), examines a range of variable linguistic phenomena in order to assess the possibility that language and dialect contact are promoting the emergence of a Boston Spanish speech community. At present, the research team has interviewed approximately 200 Bostonians, making our corpus among the largest of its kind.
Our work has produced several academic publications (including several co-written with students). It has also been the focus of media meant for a general audience:
- A TEDx talk that summarizes some of the study’s findings.
- An article in theBoston Globe.
- An interview on WGBH’s Under The Radar.
- A written piece in WBGH’s local news section.
- An article about the project in BU’s online daily newspaper BU Today.