☄ NEW

Islands don't reflect WM constraints

A test of the relation between working memory capacity and syntactic island effects

with Jon Sprouse & Colin Phillips, forthcoming in Language

2012 LSA Annual Meeting Presidental Address

Bridging methodologies: experimental syntax in the Pacific

with Sandra Chung & Manuel F. Borja. (gi finu' Chamorro)

My research and instruction centers on the mental data structures of syntactic representation and the interface between language structure and memory. The question that interests me most is, how are richly-detailed, hierarchically-ordered representations bound together in memory during language processing? Some of the questions that guide my research include:

• how are linguistic representations segmented in memory?
• what are the mechanisms for the prediction and retrieval of syntactic information?
• and how do linguistic feature systems control access to constituent encodings?

Related to this interest in working memory, I have done work on how grammatical principles and extra-linguistic constraints do and do not interact.

In a newer vein, I've focused on semantic/pragmatic competition and appropriate methods for eliciting judgments in that domain.

My current project is on incremental comprehension and WH agreement in Chamorro. This is part of an effort to increase the contribution to psycholinguistic theory made by languages which are spoken by relatively few speakers; or which aren't possessed of the social, political and economic status associated with languages whose real-time processing profile has been most intensively investigated. My collaborators are Sandra Chung (UCSC) and Manuel F. Borja (Inetnon Åmot yan Kutturan Natibu, CNMI). [photo]

training
2009: Post-doc, New York University, advisor: Brian McElree
2008: Ph.D., Linguistics, Maryland, advisor: Colin Phillips
2003: A.B. (Honors), Molecular biology (Neuroscience), Princeton, advisor: Sam Wang
1999: Diploma, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics

collaborators
Pranav Anand, Sandy Chung, Brian Dillon, Donka Farkas, Ellen Lau
Brian McElree, Colin Phillips, Jon Sprouse, Ming Xiang, Masha Polinsky
Nate Arnett, Adam Morgan, Joseph King, Caroline Andrews