Semantic change: I study how words and constructions, in interaction with linguistic context and conversational logic, give rise to new meanings which may become encoded as a new, invariable meaning of the word over time. My research has primarily focused on the creation of epistemic adverbs in Spanish. I have also co-authored research on the development and progression of future tense forms (Spanish) and adversative connectives (Portuguese).
Politeness: Focusing on epistemic adverbs, I study how speakers use existing linguistic forms to create polite discourse and study how these forms come to be used with politeness functions over time.
US Spanish: Recently, I have begun investigating contact phenomena in US Spanish. In particular, I have analyzed the influence of English pragmatic norms on the production of Spanish speech acts in North Carolina. I am also studying the degree to which Spanish speakers outside of the US associate morphosyntactic and lexical contact phenomena with US Spanish speakers. I am particularly interested in understanding if US Spanish is emerging as a recognized macro-dialect of Spanish.
I employ a variety of methodologies in my research such as corpus analysis, acceptability judgment tasks, forced-choice preference tasks, and pragmatic role plays.
Journal articles
Escalona Torres, J. M., Jarrett, D., and Díaz-Campos, M. A. (2025) “Expressing future tense in Spanish: A cross-dialectal comparative analysis”. Spanish in Context. John Benjamins.
Jarrett, D. (2024). The acceptability of epistemic adverbs in intersubjective contexts: Consideration of epistemic de pronto in Colombian Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 234, 19-33.
Jarrett, D. and Gurzynski-Weiss, L. (2023). “Task-specific motivation and the development of Spanish L2 self during domestic immersion”. TASK. John Benjamins.
Amaral, P. and Jarrett, D. (2022). “Causality and the PA/SN distinction”. Linguistics. De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2021-0112
Amaral, P., Tian, Z., Jarrett, D. and Escalona Torres, J. M. (2022). “Tracing semantic change in Portuguese: A distributional approach to adversatives”. Journal of Historical Linguistics. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.21028.ama
Jarrett, D. (2020). “Developing epistemic meaning: a diachronic study of the Spanish adverb ‘a lo mejor’”. In D. Pascual y Cabo & I. Elola (Eds.), Current Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics (pp. 215-231). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Book chapters
Jarrett, D. and Amaral, P. (2023). “Usage-based approaches to semantic change” in Díaz-Campos, M. and Balasch, S. (eds.) Handbook of Usage-Based Linguistics.
Gurzynski-Weiss, L., Giacomino, L., and Jarrett, D. (2021). “Examining high school learners’ experience of task motivation and difficulty in a two-week Spanish immersion camp”. In Ahmadian, M., & Long, M. (Eds.). The Cambridge Handbook of Task-Based Language Teaching (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics, pp. 566-584). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jarrett, D. and Weissman, B. "Metalinguistic awareness of contact phenomena in United States Spanish"
Jarrett, D. “A corpus analysis of epistemic adverbs in Colombian Spanish”
Jarrett, D. (2026) “Heritage Spanish apologies in Eastern North Carolina: Evidence of pragmatic transfer” Spanish Linguistics in the Southeast (SLISE) / Spanish Linguistics in North Carolina (SLINKI), February 2026, UNC Wilmington, Wilmington, NC.
Jarrett, D. (2025) “Triggering epistemic vigilance: The difference between posiblemente and quizás in contexts of expertise.” Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), September 2025, Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Jarrett, D. (2024) “How expectations of speaker knowledge predict form selection: Epistemic adverbs in contexts of expertise” The Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (HLS), October 2024, University of Nebraska, Omaha, NE.
Jarrett, D. (2024) “A corpus-based behavioral profile of synonymous epistemic adverbs in Colombian Spanish.” Spanish Linguistics in the Southeast (SLISE) / Spanish Linguistics in North Carolina (SLINKI), February 2024, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC.
Jarrett, D. (2023) “The speech act mitigation functions of three Spanish epistemic adverbs: Results from an acceptability judgment task.” The Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (HLS), October 2023, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.