BOUSO-RIVAS, TAMARA

Tamara Bouso holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Santiago de Compostela (2011), an MA in English Studies (2012) and a Doctorate (2018) in English Linguistics; in July 2019 she completed an MA in Secondary Education at the UNIR (Universidad Internacional de La Rioja). Between 2013 and 2017 she prepared her PhD at Santiago de Compostela, under funding from a four-year FPU research grant (ref. FPU2012/01669) from the Spanish Ministry of Education.

As an ERASMUS exchange student (2009-2010) Tamara studied at the University of Birmingham. As a postgraduate student and postdoc she has carried out research at the Universities of Edinburgh (September-December 2014; MECD grant EST13/00567), Neuchâtel (June-July 2016, MECD grant EST15/00230; July-August 2021, UIB grant 7/2021) and Zurich (June 2022, UIB grant 11/2022; June 2023, Swiss National Fund grant IZSEZ0_213179/1; July 2023, UIB grant 33/2023). She has been invited to teach and/or present results of her work at the Universities of Osnabrück (May 2016, January-February 2020), Mainz (April 2018), Neuchâtel (September 2019), UC Riverside (August 2020, October 2021, November 2022, April 2023, February 2024), California State University - Fullerton (February 2021), Lake Forest College (April 2024), Naxos Summer School on Diachronic Linguistics (July 2021 and 2022), and the University of Athens, within the CIVIS course on Diachronic Linguistics (March 2023 and April 2024).

In November 2012 Tamara received one of the annual awards granted to junior investigators by AEDEAN, the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies. In December 2019 she obtained the Extraordinary PhD Award 2017-2018 from the University of Santiago de Compostela.

Tamara has considerable experience in research and development. She was one of the organizers of the Fourth International Postgraduate Conference on Language and Cognition (ELC4), held at the University of Vigo (Spain) in February 2015. Together with Pablo Ruano-San Segundo (U. of Extremadura) she has compiled the British Sentimental Novel Corpus (ISBN 978-84-09-60357-2), a 21 m. word corpus spanning the Romantic (1798-1836) and Victorian periods (1837-1900). Jointly with Marianne Hundt (University of Zurich), she has received funding from the Swiss National Science Fund (Scientific Exchanges Programme; ref. IZSEZ0_213179/1) to carry out research on object constructions in historical American English.

Tamara has worked as a Lecturer in English at the universities of Extremadura (2019) and the Balearic Islands (September 2019-August 2023). In September 2023 she returned to the University of Santiago de Compostela on a tenure-track position as 'Ayudante Doctora'.

Contact information:

Department of English and German
Facultad de Filología
Universidad de Santiago de Compostela
E-15782 Santiago de Compostela, SPAIN
E-mail: tamara.bouso.rivas@usc.gal
Office: 309, third floor

MA Dissertation (September 2012): Reaction object constructions in Contemporary American English: A preliminary corpus-based study. Supervisors: Teresa Fanego and Belén Méndez-Naya.

MA Dissertation (July 2019): Desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa en la enseñanza inglesa a través del enfoque por tareas en 1º de Bachillerato. Supervisor: Elena Carrión Candel. [Grade obtained: Distinction ('Matrícula de Honor').]

PhD Dissertation (23 January 2018): Changes in argument structure in the history of English, with special reference to the emergence and development of reaction object constructions (International Doctorate; Cum Laude; Extraordinary PhD Award 2017-2018). Supervisors: Teresa Fanego and Belén Méndez-Naya. Examiners: Professors J. Carlos Acuña-Fariña (University of Santiago de Compostela), Martin Hilpert (University of Neuchâtel), Cristina Suárez-Gómez (University of the Balearic Islands). Click here to view a picture.

H-index & Publications:

(Forthcoming). "A sisterhood of constructions? A structural priming approach to modelling links in the network of Objoid Constructions". Cognitive Linguistics 35. [First author, with Marianne Hundt & Laetitia Van Driesche.]

(2024). "Towards a usage-based characterization of the English Superlative Object Construction". Constructions and Frames 16(1): 1-30. Published online in OA: 6 February 2024.

(2024). "They worked their hardest on the construction’s history: Superlative Objoid Constructions in Late Modern American English". Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 20(1): 91-121. [First author, with Marianne Hundt.]

(2024), compiler. British Sentimental Novel Corpus (BSNC). Santiago de Compostela: Avda. de Castelao.  ISBN 978-84-09-60357-2. [Second editor, with Pablo Ruano San Segundo]. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10846049

(2023). "Una mirada al desarrollo de competencias en Economía del Turismo y la Hostelería e Inglés II a través del enfoque por tareas". In Innovación en la formación docente y en el desarrollo de competencias en el aprendizaje de las Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, ed. by María Dolores Oliver Alonso & Gema Albort Morán. Madrid: Dykinson S.L., pp. 392-406. ISBN: 978-84-1170-359-8. [First author, with Ítalo Raúl Abraham Arbulu Villanueva.]

(2023). "Los retos del enfoque por tareas: Un estudio de caso sobre el desarrollo de competencias en estudiantes de Economía del Turismo y la Hostelería en educación superior". In La universidad: del reto de la transferencia a la transformación de la sociedad, ed by Víctor Luis Gutiérrez Castillo. Ediciones Egregius (Colección Actas y Resúmenes), pp. 344-345. ISBN: 978-84-1177-014-9. [First author, with Ítalo Raúl Abraham Arbulu Villanueva.] 

(2023). "Assessing task-based language teaching in Higher Education: A pilot interdisciplinary study on students' competence development". In Propuestas educativas y docentes desde la innovación y la transferencia de conocimiento a la sociedad, ed. by Belén Puebla Martínez & Raquel Vinader Segura. Ediciones Egregius (Colección Actas y Resúmenes), pp. 516-517. ISBN: 978-84-1177-007-1. [First author, with Ítalo Raúl Abraham Arbulu Villanueva.]

(2023). "Task-based language teaching to the test: A study on students’ competence development in Higher Education". In Innovación en la enseñanza de lenguas: Mejoras docentes para el aprendizaje del siglo XXI, ed. by María Valero-Redondo & Francisco José Rodríguez-Mesa. Madrid: Dykinson S.L., pp. 902-925. ISBN: 978-84-1170-296-6. [First author, with Ítalo Raúl Abraham Arbulu Villanueva.] 

(2023). Chapter on "English Language". In The Year's Work in English Studies, volume 101(2): 1-142. DOI: 10.1093/ywes/maad020. [Joint chapter, with Viktorija Kostadinova, Marco Wiemann, Gea Dreschler, Beáta Gyuris, Ai Zhong, Maggie Scott, Lieselotte Anderwald, Wiebke Alers, Manuela Vida-Mannl, Kholoud A Al-Thubaiti, Shawnea Sum Pok Ting, Ida Parise, Alessia Cogo & Elisabeth Reber.]

(2022). "Where does lexical diversity come from? Horizontal interaction in the network of the Late Modern English Reaction Object Construction". English Studies 103(8): 1334-1360.

(2022). "The English Reaction Object Construction: A case of syntactic constructional contamination". Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies 65: 13-36.

(2022) "Crear para innovar". In 2 Selfie: Autorretratos de experiencias universitarias docentes. Universitat de les Illes Balears: Ediciones UIB, pp. 119-121 [first author, with Ítalo Arbulú].

(2021). "The British Sentimental Novel Corpus (BSNC) and the ROC-DDC alternation at the level of the individual". Nordic Journal of English Studies 20(1): 215-257. [First author, with Pablo Ruano-San Segundo.]

(2021). Changes in argument structure. The transitivizing Reaction Object Construction. (Linguistic Insights 277). Bern: Peter Lang, 392 pp. ISBN 978-3-0343-4095-3. Reviewed by Sune Gregersen, Research in Corpus Linguistics 10/1 (2022): 192-204; Olaf Mikkelsen, Nexus-AEDEAN 22/2 (2022): 88-91. This monograph was shortlisted for the ESSE 2022 Book Awards.

(2021). "Another turn of the screw on the history of the Reaction Object Construction". Functions of Language 28(2): 208-231. [First author, with Pablo Ruano-San Segundo.]

(2020). “The growth of the transitivising Reaction Object Construction”. Constructions and Frames 12(2): 239-271.

(2020). Review of Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, Emma Moore, Linda van Bergen & Willem B. Hollmann (eds.). 2019. Categories, constructions, and change in English syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Journal of Historical Syntax 4(2): 1-14.

(2020). "The shaping of the Late Modern English Reaction Object Construction". In Thresholds and ways forward in English Studies, ed. by Lourdes López Ropero, Sara Prieto García-Cañedo & José Antonio Sánchez Fajardo. Alicante: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante, pp. 179-191. ISBN: 978-84-1302-079-2.

(2017), ed.  New trends and methodologies in applied English language research III: Synchronic and diachronic studies on discourse, lexis and grammar processing. (Linguistic Insights, vol. 209). Bern: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3-0343-2039-9; 280 pp. [Fourth editor, with Sofía Bemposta-Rivas, Carla Bouzada-Jabois, Yolanda Fernández-Pena, Yolanda J. Calvo-Benzies & Iván Tamaredo.]

(2017). "Muttering contempt and smiling appreciation: Disentangling the history of the Reaction Object Construction in English". English Studies 98(2): 194-215.

(2014). "On the nonprototypical status of reaction objects and other nonsubcategorized objects". In Building interdisciplinary knowledge. Approaches to English and American Studies in Spain, ed. by Esther Álvarez López, Emilia María Durán Almarza & Alicia Menéndez Tarrazo. Oviedo: AEDEAN & KRK Ediciones, pp. 307-314. ISBN 978-84-8367-475-8.

(2014). "Procesos de transitivización no inglés moderno e contemporáneo: un estudo de corpus das construcións con obxectos de reacción". In A Investigación Predoutoral na USC: Novos camiños: I Encontro da Mocidade Investigadora (Decembro de 2012). Libro de resumos. (Colección Cursos e Congresos da USC, vol. 227). Universidade de Santiago de Compostela: Servizo de Publicacións e Intercambio Científico, p. 77. ISBN-13: 978-84-15876-84-7.

(2013). "A preliminary study of sexist language in Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men through the female characters of Betty Draper, Joan Holloway and Peggy Olson”. In Hopes and Fears: English and American Studies in Spain, ed. by Rosario Arias, Miriam López-Rodríguez, Antonio Moreno-Ortiz & Chantal Pérez-Hernández. Málaga: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Málaga, pp. 189-194. ISBN: 978-84-616-6917-2.

(2013). "The role of presupposition in the discourse of advertising: Nutritional advertising in health and fitness magazines as a testing-ground". Published abstract of IWoDA'13 (Second International Workshop on Discourse Analysis, Santiago de Compostela, June 19th-21st 2013), pp. 23-24. ISBN C-1219-2013.

(2012). "Presupposition, persuasion and mag food advertising: A preliminary study". Odisea. Revista de Estudios Ingleses 13: 19-47.

Conference presentations:

26-28 June 2024: 6th Variation and Language Processing Conference (VALP6), University of Vigo: "A structural priming approach to links among English Objoid Constructions". [first author, with Marianne Hundt & Laetitia Van Driesche].

23-24 April 2024: III Congreso Internacional CIINECO (Innovación Docente, Educación y Transferencia del Conocimiento): "La enseñanza del inglés a través de actividades colaborativas mediadas por TIC: La perspectiva del alumnado de los Grados en Ingeniería Química y Lengua y Literatura Inglesas". [Second author, with Noelia Castro-Chao.]

12 April 2024: "A conversation on constructional contamination and its application to the ROC". Invited lecture (online) for "Introduction to Linguistics”,  Lake Forest College, Illinois (USA).

22 February 2024: "Eliciting Galician: Fostering knowledge of the Galician language abroad". Invited lecture (online) for LINGUISTICS 131: Morphology, Deparment of Comparative Literatures and Languages, University of California Riverside (USA).

15 January 2024: "A construction grammar approach to marginal syntax". Invited lecture at Centro Singular de Investigación en Tecnoloxías Intelixentes (CiTIUS), University of Santiago de Compostela.

7-11 August 2023: 16th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, HHU Düsseldorf (Germany): "We tried our best to do so: Modelling the Superlative Objoid Construction in Late Modern American English" [first author, with Marianne Hundt].

8-9 June 2023: III Congreso Internacional Innovación en la Docencia e Investigación de las Ciencias Sociales y Jurídicas: (online) "Los retos del enfoque por tareas: Un estudio de caso sobre el desarrollo de competencias en estudiantes de Economía del Turismo y la Hostelería en educación superior" [first author, with Ítalo Raúl Abraham Arbulu Villanueva].

19-21 May 2023: 12th International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG12), Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic): "Modelling the SOC in Contemporary American English".

27 April 2023: "The sociolinguistics of Galician". Invited lecture (online) at the Linguistics Program, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages, University of California Riverside.

20-21 April 2023: II Congreso Internacional Innovación Docente, Educación y Transferencia del Conocimiento (CIINECO), King Juan Carlos University: (online) "Assessing Task-Based Language Teaching in Higher Education: A pilot interdisciplinary study on students' competence development" [first author, with Ítalo Raúl Abraham Arbulu Villanueva].

19-20 January 2023: Invited presentation at the International Workshop Modelling the Linguistic Architecture of English: Cognitive and Empirical Developments, University of Vigo: "She tried her damnedest to provide a usage-based characterisation of the SOC in contemporary American English".

23 November 2022: Invited lecture (online) at the Ignition Seminar in Honors, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages, University of California Riverside: "Constructional contamination in English syntax, with special reference to the ROC".

16-18 November 2022: 45th AEDEAN Conference, University of Extremadura (Cáceres): "Promising her return, she mumbled her adoration: Attitudinal discourse presentation structures in the British sentimental novel" [first author, with Pablo Ruano].

27-30 July 2022: ICAME 43, Anglia Ruskin University (Cambridge, UK): "While the Beacon-fire blazed its brightest, the two women shrieked their loudest: On the Superlative Object Construction (SOC)".

5-11 April 2022:  IV Jornades d'Experiènces Docents, University of the Balearic Islands: “Consolidación del aprendizaje del inglés como lengua instrumental a través de un proyecto de innovación educativa interdisciplinar” [first author, with Ítalo Raúl Abraham Arbulu Villanueva & Iria María Bello Viruega].

5 December 2021: 2nd International Twitter Conference on Linguistics - Linguistweets, Brazilian Linguistics Association (ABRALIN): "Constructional contamination meets the ROC".

24-26 November 2021: 44th AEDEAN International Conference, University of Cantabria: "Some thoughts on what corpus data reveals about the ROC-DDC alternation: The English ROC as a case of constructional contamination".

11-13 November 2021: III Congreso Internacional "Escritura y lectura en la educación superior: prácticas sociales de formación profesional y desarrollo humano" (III ALES 2021), Universidade Federal da Paraíba (Brasil): "Satisfacción y rendimiento académico en estudiantes universitarios a través del enfoque por tareas (TBLT): Resultados preliminares de un proyecto de innovación docente interdisciplinar" [first author, with Ítalo Raúl Abraham Arbulu Villanueva & Iria María Bello Viruega].

14 October 2021: Invited lecture (online) at the Linguistics Program, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages, University of California Riverside: "On Galician, productivity and syntax".

18-20 August 2021: 11th International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG11), University of Antwerp: "The English Reaction Object Construction and its alternations: A case of constructional contamination in English syntax".

3 August 2021: Invited presentation on "Where does diversity come from? Horizontal interaction in the network of the Late Modern English ROC", Institut de langue et littérature anglaises, Université de Neuchâtel.

7-11 June 2021: ICEHL-21, University of Leiden (The Netherlands): "Laughing impertinence and smiling sweetness: On the influence of the British sentimental novel on the development of the reaction object construction".

19-23 April 2021: III Jornades d’Experiències Docents, University of the Balearic Islands: Tamara Bouso-Rivas, “Desarrollo de competencias y el enfoque por tareas en el nuevo Grado en Dirección Hotelera de la UIB: la perspectiva del alumnado” [first author, with Ítalo Raúl Abraham Arbulu Villanueva & Iria María Bello Viruega].

23 February 2021: Invited lecture (online) at California State University, Fullerton, Master of Arts in Spanish: "Unha ollada á lingua galega dende a historia, a literatura e a lingüística".

6 August 2020: Invited lecture (online) at the Linguistics Program, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages, University of California Riverside: "On syntactic productivity: The case of the English Reaction Object Construction".

3 February 2020: Invited lecture at the Institute for English and American Studies of the University of Osnabrück (Germany): "Towards a comprehensive account of the history of the English reaction object construction".

13-15 November 2019: 43rd AEDEAN Conference, University of Alicante: "The shaping of the transitivizing Reaction Object Construction".

30 September 2019: Invited lecture at the Institut de langue et littérature anglaises, Université de Neuchâtel (Switzerland): "A diachronic account of the English Reaction Object Construction".

25 April 2018: Invited lecture at the Department of English and Linguistics at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (Germany): “The transitivizing reaction object construction”.

18-19 November 2017: International Workshop on 'Gradience and Constructional Change', University of Edinburgh: "The reaction object construction and the way-construction: Two parallel developments?".

9-11 November 2016: 40th AEDEAN Conference, University of Zaragoza (Huesca): "The Reaction Object Construction: A British innovation?".

19 May 2016: Invited presentation at the Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik, University of Osnabrück (Germany): "From yelping sorrow to muttering contempt: On the history of the English Reaction Object Construction".

2-5 September 2015: 48th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (The Netherlands): "Argument structure in flux: On the emergence of two valency-increasing constructions in the history of English" [first author, with Teresa Fanego].

27-31 July 2015: 22nd International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL22), University of Naples Federico II (Italy): "When the minstrels rustled into the room, she whispered disbelief: On the development of two valency-increasing constructions in the history of English"[second author, with Teresa Fanego].

20-25 July 2015: 13th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC-13), Northumbria University (UK): "Exploring the history of Reaction Object Constructions. A collostructional analysis".

22-24 October 2014: International Symposium on Verbs, Clauses and Constructions. Theory, Variation and Change (VCC Symposium 2014), University of La Rioja: "Whispering adieus and smiling a welcome: Changes in argument structure in the history of English".

3-6 September 2014: 8th International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG8), University of Osnabrück (Germany): "'They threw their caps..., shouting their emulation': Reaction Object Constructions in Early and Late Modern English".

13-15 November 2013: 37th AEDEAN Conference, University of Oviedo: "Towards an understanding of nonprototypical objects, with special reference to reaction objects".

19-21 June 2013: IWodA'13, Second International Workshop on Discourse Analysis, University of Santiago de Compostela: "The role of presupposition in the discourse of advertising: Nutritional advertising in health and fitness magazines as a testing-ground".

14 January 2013: LOT Winter School 2013, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (The Netherlands): "Reaction object constructions in English" [poster presentation].

13-15 December 2012: I Encontro da Mocidade Investigadora EDI-USC, University of Santiago de Compostela: "Procesos de transitivización no inglés moderno e contemporáneo: un estudo de corpus das construcións con obxectos de reacción" [poster presentation].

14-16 November 2012: 36th AEDEAN Conference, University of Malaga: "A preliminary study of sexist language in Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men through the female characters of Betty Draper, Joan Holloway and Peggy Olson”.