The overarching goal of my research is to help uncover principles that govern the mapping between linguistic form and meaning, more specifically, how humans compute the intended meaning of a sentence on the basis of its form.

To this end, I have been exploring topics such as Internally-Headed Relative Clauses and Event Structure (e.g., my dissertation), Complementation vs. Modification, Factivity, E-type Anaphora, the category of Adjective, Adjective Ordering, Noun Phrase Internal Structure, Definiteness, Binding, Free Choice, Tense/Aspect/Mood/Evidentiality, Copular Sentences, Existential Sentences, Case, Focus, Demonstratives, and Affectivity, looking at data drawn from both spoken languages and signed languages. 

I am also interested in language acquisition, and have developed several experiments on the acquisition of the syntax/semantics of Standard American English and African American English. Additionally, I have interests in grammaticalization and heritage language maintenance.

 

Why do I research? (short video interview)