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Carlos d'Aragona Balhana


EF Lab for Applied Language Learning
& Language Technology Lab
Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
University of Cambridge
ceb81@cam.ac.uk

RESEARCH
I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics and a research assistant in the EF Lab for Applied Language Learning and the Language Technology Lab at the University of Cambridge, where I work with Dora Alexopoulou and Anna Korhonen.
I am also a member of the Semantics, Pragmatics, and Philosophy (SPP) research cluster.

In my research, I examine how event semantics seemingly conditions the production of morphosyntactic tense and aspect errors during L2 English acquisition. Specifically, I explore how predicate decomposition, lexical aspect, grammatical aspect, and the temporal ordering of events in texts and discourse correlate with specific inflectional errors even after L2 learners have demonstrated morphosyntactic competence in other contexts. Although I base my analysis on a generative framework, I rely heavily on
L2 corpus data, statistical methods, natural language processing, and deep learning models to empirically evaluate theoretical predictions.

PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS
Balhana, C. (2021). Emerging Events: Lexico-semantic Influence on L2 Tense and Aspect. [Invited talk] SLATT, University of Lancaster.

Ballier, N., Canu, S., Petitjean, C., Gasso, G., Balhana, C., Alexopoulou, T., & Gaillat, T. (2020). Machine learning for learner English: A plea for creating learner data challenges. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, 6(1), 72-103.

Balhana, C. (2019, November). Applications of the EFCAMDAT Corpus in Task Design [Conference presentation]. Language Analysis to Inform Language Teaching Workshop, University of Leeds, United Kingdom.

Branting, K., Petersen, S., Shin, D., Finegan, J., Balhana, C., Lyte, A., & Pfeifer, C. (2019, June). ADEPT: Automated Directive Extraction from Policy Texts. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (pp. 250-251).

Balhana, C. & Alexopoulou, D. (2019, June). Towards an automated event semantic approach to L2 learner verb inflection errors [Conference presentation]. 2019 Cambridge Language Sciences Symposium, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. 

Green, A. E., Kenworthy, L., Mosner, M. G., Gallagher, N. M., Fearon, E. W., Balhana, C. D., & Yerys, B. E. (2014). Abstract analogical reasoning in high‐functioning children with autism spectrum disorders. Autism Research, 7(6), 677-686.

Balhana, C. (2013). What Does This Even Mean? Modality, Ordering, and Focus. In Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 1-11). Chicago Linguistic Society.