About me
Download my dissertation (defense draft) here
I am a fourth year linguistics graduate student at the University of Maryland in College Park. I am interested in the resources children bring to the task of language learning. In particular, I work on LF parsing. This means I am interested in how LF parsing works in adults (and whether it mirrors Surface Structure parsing), and whether children have adult-like abilities in this domain. I also work on the factors that determine adults' and children's abilities to perform reanalysis, especially discourse factors. Furthermore, I am investigating how cognitive limitations, such as working memory resources, impact parsing preferences and abilities.
Specifically, I work on the resolution of scope ambiguity in children and adults in a variety of tasks. I am interested not only in task differences, but also the influence of discourse information and age differences. Aside from my main interest in LF parsing, I have a number of side interests. I have done some work on pronouns, including investigating the Personal Dative construction in Appalachian English and also looking at children's adherence to Principles B and C. I am also interested in why questions, including the relation between inversion and interpretation and also weak island effects.