Nikolas Webster  (he/him/his)

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Hello, and welcome! My name is Niko, and I am a Ph.D. candidate in my 5th year at the UC Santa Cruz Department of Linguistics. I am a theoretical syntactician, with an empirical focus on Korean. My primary advisor is Ivy Sichel.

I have interest in the syntax and semantics of argument structure, verb decomposition, and locality. In my independent research, I have worked on or continue to work on: nominalization paradigms and nominal argument structure in Korean, syntactic approaches to morphology, information structure effects on island extraction, presuppositionality and differential case marking, animacy biases in online processing, and the consequences of timing with respect to syntactic vs. post-syntactic head movement operations. I incorporate both theoretical and experimental approaches to syntax in my work.

I am an active member and a previous lead organizer of the student-led project group EquiL (Equity in Linguistics). We plan and host a grad-led orientation for incoming first-year students, graduate wellness events, peer support programming for international grads, and department-wide pedagogy workshops. I was also the 2023-2024 UCSC linguistics graduate representative.

Prior to joining UC Santa Cruz, I received my B.A. in Linguistics from New York University (NYU), with minors in Korean Language and Studio Art. Outside of work, I enjoy crochet, video games, and queer Argentinian tango.