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: have a look at my two books from 2023 —–

—– Current projects —–

  • Modeling literacy acquisition: How can neural network simulations help us optimize phonics instruction (i.e., teaching children how to map letters to sounds)?
  • 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?

—– Other research interests —–

  • Construction Grammar and cognitive-linguistic theory: Our Cambridge Element provides a concise introduction to constructionist approaches; and here I argue that "constructionhood" is gradient
  • Priming as a window into grammatical representation: My monograph illustrates how structural priming can inform network models of grammar; here I present priming results between the English caused-motion and the resultative construction; and here I discuss how priming can be extended to new construction types
  • Language as a network: see my theoretical piece (here) on why vertical and horizontal links in constructional networks are two sides of the same coin
  • Creativity in language and language change: We have discussed the concept of linguistic extravagance (here) and its applications to "snowclone" constructions in English (here) and crosslinguistically (here) as well as to German quantifiers and degree modifiers (here)