Prof. Kanwit is not available to take on new advisees in Fall 2027.
Courses Taught
LING 1650 Acquisition of Variation
LING 1773 Morphology
LING 1777 Syntactic Theory
LING 2146 Second Language Acquisition
LING 2235/LING 1235: Language, Gender, and Sexuality
LING 2394 Spanish Dialectology
LING 2397 Hispanic Linguistics Special Topics: Acquisition of Variation
LING 2773 Morphology/LING 1873 Accelerated Morphology
Education & Training
- PhD, Indiana University
- MA, University of Georgia
- BA, University of Richmond
Representative Publications
* = graduate student or former advisee co-author
Solon, M., Kanwit, M., & Gudmestad, A. (Eds.). (2025). Research at the intersection of second language acquisition and sociolinguistics: Studies in honor of Kimberly L. Geeslin. John Benjamins.
Gudmestad, A., & Kanwit, M. (2025). Reconsidering the social in language learning: A state of the science and an agenda for future research in variationist SLA. Languages, 10(4), 64. (Special issue: The Acquisition of L2 Sociolinguistic Competence) (Open Access).
Kanwit, M. (2024). Restructuring in L2 Spanish future-time variation: The evolving roles of contextual sensitivity and individual variability in morphological development over time. Journal of the European Second Language Association, 8(1), 97-113. (Open Access.)
*Berríos, J., & Kanwit, M. (2024). Progressive aspect across temporalities: Variation between synthetic and analytic forms in L1 and L2 Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17(2), 161-195. (Open Access.)
Kanwit, M., & Solon, M. (Eds.). (2023). Communicative competence in a second language: Theory, method, and applications. Routledge.
Solon, M., & Kanwit, M. (2022). New methods for tracking development of sociophonetic competence: Exploring a preference task for Spanish /d/ deletion. Applied Linguistics, 43(4), 805-825.
Chappell, W., & Kanwit, M. (2022). Do learners connect sociophonetic variation with regional and social characteristics? The case of L2 perception of Spanish aspiration. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 44, 185-209. (Open Access.)
*Naismith, B., & Kanwit, M. (2021). A corpus study of the English suffixes -ness and -acy: Productivity, genre, and implications for L2 learning. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 24(1), 115-137. (Open Access.)
Kanwit, M., & Geeslin, K. L. (2020). Sociolinguistic competence and interpreting variable structures in a second language: A study of the copula contrast in native and second-language Spanish. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 42(4), 775-799. Full text link: Cambridge Core
Kanwit, M., & *Terán, V. (2020). Ideas buenas o buenas ideas: Phonological, semantic, and frequency effects on variable adjective ordering in rioplatense Spanish. Languages, 5(4), 65. (Open Access.) (Special issue: Revisiting Language Variation and Change: Looking at Metalinguistic Categories Through a Usage-Based Lens).
*Hadodo, M., & Kanwit, M. (2020). Menos masculino, demasiado infantil: How age and gender ideologies index sexuality in perception of diminutives in Madrid Spanish. Journal of Language and Sexuality, 9(2), 127-151.
*Hadodo, M., & Kanwit, M. (2020). Menos masculino, demasiado infantil: How age and gender ideologies index sexuality in perception of diminutives in Madrid Spanish. Journal of Language and Sexuality, 9(2), 127-151.
Kanwit, M. (2019). Beyond the present indicative: Lexical futures as indicators of development in L2 Spanish. Modern Language Journal, 103(2), 481-501.
Kanwit, M., *Elias, V., & *Clay, R. (2018). Acquiring intensifier variation abroad: Exploring muy and bien in Spain and Mexico. Foreign Language Annals, 51(2), 455-471.
Kanwit, M., & Geeslin, K. (2018). Exploring lexical effects in second language interpretation: The case of mood in Spanish adverbial clauses. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 40, 579-603. Full text link: Cambridge Core
Kanwit, M. (2017). What we gain by combining variationist and concept-oriented approaches: The case of acquiring Spanish future-time expression. Language Learning, 67(2), 461-498.
Research Interest Summary
Hispanic Linguistics, L2 Acquisition, Sociolinguistic Variation, Morphosyntax
Research Interests
Matt Kanwit’s research in Hispanic Linguistics focuses on the intersection of second language (L2) acquisition and sociolinguistic variation. Specifically, he is interested in the L2 acquisition of variable morphosyntactic structures, the effect of study abroad on acquisition, and native-speaker morphosyntactic variation in Spanish. A longer description of his research and more links to his work can be found at his personal page.