About me

Hi! I’m a postdoc in Psychology of Language at the University of Toronto, where I work with Dr. Blair C. Armstrong as part of the Computation and Psycholinguistics Laboratory (CAP lab). In my work, I combine psycholinguistic experiments, corpus analyses, and computational modeling to investigate language representation, processing, and learning.

—– NEWS: check out my two books from 2023 —–

• Structural priming in the grammatical network (2023), John Benjamins
• Constructionist approaches: Past, present, future (2023), with Stefan Hartmann, Cambridge University Press (Open Access)

—– Current projects —–

• Modeling literacy acquisition: How can neural network simulations help us optimize phonics instruction (i.e., how children learn to map sounds onto letters)?
• Creative argument structure: How do language users comprehend grammatically creative ("coerced") sentences like She sneezed the napkin off the table?
• Evolution of linguistic extravagance: Is speakers' desire to "be extravagant" (i.e., stand out and be noticed) a plausible driver of language change?
• "Snowclone" constructions: How are meme-like idioms like [X is the new Y] used across different languages?
• Implicit arguments: How do speakers infer implicit but unpronounced themes (e.g., As they were eating ∅ [dinner], ...)?

—– Other research interests —–

• Construction Grammar and cognitive-linguistic theory: see our Cambridge Element (Open Access) on constructionist approaches and my recent paper (Open Access) on why "constructionhood" is gradient
• Priming as a window into grammatical representation: see my new book on how priming research and cognitive-linguistic theory can inform each other, my paper (author version here) on priming between the English caused-motion and the resultative construction, and my paper (author version here) on how priming can be extended to new constructions
• Language as a network: see my paper (author version here) about "vertical" and "horizontal" links between constructions and these slides on how network science methods can be used in linguistics
• Creativity in current and historical language change: see our paper on the concept of "extravagance", its application to "snowclone" constructions like X is the new Y (preprint here), and our paper on extravagant German quantifiers and degree modifiers