John Grinstead

John Grinstead serves as Department Chair in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at The Ohio State University, within the College of Arts and Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from UCLA (1998), following a B.A. (1989) and M.A. (1994) in Linguistics and Spanish-related fields. His research focuses on developmental linguistics and atypical language development, particularly in Spanish-speaking children, including studies on syntax, semantics-pragmatics, and specific language impairment (SLI). He co-directs the Spanish & Portuguese Department Language Acquisition Lab with Professor Holly Nibert and actively contributes to OSU's Language Acquisition Discussion Group ('Lacqueys').

Education:

• Ph.D., Applied Linguistics, UCLA, 1998
• M.A., Teaching English as a Second Language, UCLA, 1994
• B.A., Linguistics and Spanish, UCLA, 1989

Research Interests: His work explores child Spanish syntax, tense marking in SLI, pragmatic implicatures, prosody, and collective/distributive expressions. He investigates how bilingualism and developmental disorders influence language acquisition, employing experimental and corpus-based methodologies.

Lab & Collaborations: Co-leads the Language Acquisition Lab, advancing interdisciplinary research on language development. His collaborations include studies in Latin America and cross-linguistic comparisons (e.g., Spanish/Italian syntax).

Teaching & Service: Teaches courses in linguistics, language development, and syntax at both departments. Previously served as Associate Editor of Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics (2008–2015).