I am a Chicago based software engineer and linguist interested in syntax, morphology, and typology.
You can download the latest version of resume here.
About
Experience
I was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at the Univerisity of British Columbia (2019-2020) and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Linguistics at McGill University (2017-2019). I have a PhD in linguistics from University of California, Berkeley. I also have an M.A. in Linguistics from Berkeley and a B.A. in Linguistics and German from the University of Michigan. I also spent some time in the Department of Linguistics at MIT in the Fall of 2015.
You can download the latest version of my academic CV here.
Interests
My primary interests are in syntax, morphology, and typology. My research focuses on the morphosyntax of Ā-dependencies, including the interaction of phi-agreement and Ā-movement and morphological reflexes of Ā-movement. More generally, I am interested in theories of agreement and what they can tell us about the grammar. On a broader scale, my work aims to meld rigorous typological research with minimalist analysis.
I have conducted fieldwork on several understudied languages. These include two languages of Senegal, Seereer (Atlantic) and Noon (Cangin). Some of this work can be seen in my PhD qualifying paper on long distance wh-dependencies in Seereer and my presentations about adjective agreement in Noon. I have also worked on indigenous languages of North America. While in Berkeley I participated in the Karuk Treebank Project. While at University of Michigan, I worked on Sally Thomason's Montana Salish (Flathead) dictionary project.
Dissertation
Anti-Agreement
2018 |
lingbuzz
|
I investigate the sensitivity of φ-agreement to features
typically associated with Ā-extraction, including those
related to wh-questioning, relativization, focus and
topicalization. This phenomenon has been referred to as
anti-agreement (Ouhalla 1993) or wh-agreement (Chung and
Georgopoulos 1988; Georgopoulos 1991; Chung 1994) in the
literature. While anti-agreement is commonly held to result
from constraints on the Ā-movement of agreeing DPs, I argue
that it reduces to an instance of wh-agreement, or the
appearance of particular morphological forms in the
presence of Ā-features. I develop a unified account of
these Ā-sensitive φ-agreement effects in which they arise
from the ability of φ-probes to copy both φ-features and
Ā-features in the syntax, coupled with postsyntactic
morphological operations that manipulate feature bundles
containing both [φ] and [Ā]. The empirical foundation of
the work is a typological survey of Ā-sensitive φ-agreement
effects in 63 genetically and geographically diverse
languages. This study is the largest of its kind to examine
these effects, and brings to light new generalizations both
about the syntax of Ā-sensitive φ-agreement effects and the
behavior of φ-features in the presence of Ā-features.
Papers
Mayan Agent Focus and the Ergative Extraction Constraint:
Facts and Fictions Revisited
2019, Manuscript |
lingbuzz
| with
Jessica Coon
and Ted Levin
Morphological Reflexes of Subject Extraction in Caquinte
2019, Proceedings of WSCLA 23 |
lingbuzz
| with
Zachary O'Hagan
Anti-agreement with Bound Variables
2018, Proceedings of WCCFL 35 |
lingbuzz
| with
Michelle Yuan
Spell-out, Chains, and Long Distance Wh-movement in Seereer
2018, Berkeley Papers in Formal Linguistics |
BPFL link
Adjective Agreement in Noon: Evidence for a Split Theory of
Noun-Modifier Concord
2015, Proceedings of NELS 45 |
lingbuzz
Object Suffixes as Incorporated Pronouns in Seereer
2018, Proceedings of ACAL 45 |
lingbuzz
A Survey of Anti-Agreement Effects
2016, Dissertation Prospectus |
manuscript
Presentations
The Locus of Variation in types of Ā-Sensitive Agreement
CamCos 8, University of Cambridge, May 2-4, 2019 |
poster
Anti-agreement in Selayarese
LSA 2019, New York, NY, Jan 3-6, 2019 |
poster
Multiple Anti-Agreement in Fiorentino
Multiple Agreement across Domains, ZAS, Berlin, November
8-9, 2018 |
poster
A Morphological Theory of Anti-Agreement
LSA 2017, Austin, TX, Jan 5-8, 2017 |
poster
The Unity of Anti-Agreement and Wh-Agreement
CamCos 5, Cambridge, UK, 5-7 May 2016 |
handout
Deriving Partial Anti-Agreement
LSA 2016, Washington D.C., Jan 7-10, 2016 |
handout