Research

Syntactic Theory

I seek to answer questions concerning the underlying mechanisms that cause language to appear to us as it does. I am interested in minimalist syntactic theories that model complex phenomena that humans naturally acquire from a young age with astonishingly little input.

My primary modes of investigation for these phenomena are Internet corpora, and the elicitation of grammaticality judgments and linguistic data. I am particularly interested in data from colloquial or nonstandard varieties of language, as these offer crucial information on the human language faculty and are often overlooked (unintentionally or otherwise) in syntactic research. A few specific syntactic phenomena that I am interested in (in no particular order) are:

The distribution of null elements in the syntax.
Syntactic constituents that make no contribution to semantic interpretation (e.g. expletives).
Feature mismatches in Agree operations.
English multiple modal constructions.
The syntax of inversion constructions (e.g. quotative, locative, predicate) and Voice.
Neopronouns as a syntactic phenomenon.
The distribution and projection of phi-features.

Emoji linguistics

I am interested in the distribution of emoijs in natural language, particulary emojis that appear in sentences as morphosyntactic constituents (e.g. "I ❤️ NY"). I am interested in how these pictorial symbols are combined with preexisting linguistic structures and how they are interpreted as iconic or semi-iconic elements.

My research definitively shows that language users have grammaticality judgments and intuitions about the placement of emojis in written (and even spoken!) utterances, and that these judgments conform to the rules of the relevant language. I am interested in the questions this raises for theories of language processing and acquisition

Generative AI systems such as ChatGPT struggle with the intepretation of sentences containing emojis as lexical items. I am interested in researching how generative AI systems interpret and predict emoji use in human language users.

Syntactic Variation

I am interested in the ways syntactic phenomena vary across dialects and language, and how these variations can be accounted for in the Minimalist program. I am mostly interested in colloquial forms of language, minoritized dialects, and phenomena specific to computer-mediated communication (CMC). Some languages I have worked on include English, Spanish, Dutch, Setswana, and Tshila.

I investigate syntactic variation via fieldwork and Internet corpora.

This is a photo of Chris Collins, two of our Tshila consultants, and myself doing fieldwork in the village of Kaudwane in the Kalahari desert in Botswana.

Queer Language

I am interested in the languague used by LGBTQ+ individuals and their communities, how these varieties differ from the language of the dominant culture, and what this community's language can tell us about the architecture of human language and culture. I research language use specific to the LGBTQ+ community online, as well as the syntax of gender in queer language.