all updates

• November 1, 2023

  I was promoted to Staff Machine Learning Scientist at Glassdoor.

• August 8, 2023

  I received the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer certification from The Linux Foundation.

• February 22, 2023

  I received the Certified Kubernetes Administrator certification from The Linux Foundation.

• November 1, 2022

  I was promoted to Senior Machine Learning Scientist at Glassdoor.

• July 3, 2022

  My paper with Elaine Grolla and Jeff Lidz, “Cognitive inhibition explains children’s production of medial wh-phrases”, was just published in volume 29, issue 3 of Language Acquisition.

• May 20, 2022

  I graduated with my PhD from the Department of Linguistics at University of Maryland. My dissertation, “Explorations in Diagnosing Competence and Performance Factors in Linguistic Inquiry”, can be found here.

• March 18, 2022

  I defended my dissertation, “Explorations in Diagnosing Competence and Performance Factors in Linguistic Inquiry”, which was co-advised by Jeff Lidz and Norbert Hornstein. My committee also included Yi Ting Huang, Howard Lasnik, Colin Phillips, and Omer Preminger.

• January 31, 2022

  I started as a Machine Learning Scientist at Glassdoor today. I’ll be finishing up my last semester of my PhD program while also working at Glassdoor.

• August 1, 2021

  Along with Jeff Lidz, I was awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant by the National Science Foundation, titled Subjacency, the Empty Category Principle (ECP), and the nature of constraints on phrase movement, to fund the work for my dissertation in my final year of the Linguistics PhD program at University of Maryland.

• May 23, 2021

  My paper with Jeff Lidz, “Non-Actional Passives Can Be Comprehended by 4-Year-Olds”, is out now in the BUCLD 45 proceedings.

• November 5, 2020

  Myself and Jeff Lidz presented our poster “Non-actional passives can be comprehended by 4-year olds” at the 45th Boston University Conference on Language Development, hosted virtually by Boston University.

• October 22, 2020

  “The Development of Language and Its Interaction with Other Aspects of Cognition: The Case of Medial Wh-Questions in English and in Brazilian Portuguese”, a paper by Elaine Grolla, me, and Jeff Lidz, is out now in Ilha do Desterro: A Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies.

• August 11, 2020

  My paper with Karthik Durvasula, “There is a simplicity bias when generalising from ambiguous data”, is out now in Phonology.

• May 1, 2020

  Karthik Durvasula and me have made all materials, data, and analysis scripts for our accepted paper “There is a simplicity bias when generalizing from ambiguous data” available on GitLab at ka-research/simplicity_bias. The paper is accepted for publication with Phonology, and a preprint is available on LingBuzz.

• January 2, 2020

  I presented my paper “Modeling the Learning of the Person Case Constraint” with Naomi H. Feldman at the Society for Computation in Linguistics 2020, which was co-located with the LSA 2020 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA. Slides for the talk can be found by following this link, and the paper can be downloaded by following this link.

• December 20, 2019

  My paper “Modeling the Learning of the Person Case Constraint” with Naomi H. Feldman was published in the Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics, ahead of SCiL 2020, which will be co-located with the LSA 2020 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA.

• April 12, 2019

  I gave the invited keynote talk at the 2019 Michigan State Undergraduate Linguistics Conference, “Why do you think why kids produce medial wh-phrases: Grammar or performance?”, which is joint work with Elaine Grolla and Jeff Lidz.

• March 21, 2019

  Alan Munn presented our paper with Rachel Stacey, Robert Felster, Adam Smolinski, and Cristina Schmitt called “Context effects in children’s calculation of scalar implicatures: The case of disjunction” at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting in Baltimore, MD.

• January 4, 2019

  Hanna Muller and Phoebe Gaston presented our paper with Bethany Dickerson, Karthik Durvasula, Mina Hirzel, Kasia Hitczenko, Maggie Kandel, Paulina Lsykawa, Jackie Nelligan, Max Papillon, and Laurel Perkins called “Gender bias in representation and publishing rates across subfields” at the LSA 2019 Annual Meeting in New York, NY. This paper is part of ongoing work with the Bias in Linguistics working group.

• July 12, 2018

  Rachel Stacey, Robert Felster, and Adam Smolinski presented our paper with Alan Munn and Cristina Schmitt called “Scalar Implicature Variability in Adults and Children: The Case of ‘or’” at the Scalar Implicatures: Formal and Experimental Exploration workshop, hosted by Università di Siena in Siena, Italy.

• March 23, 2018

  My paper “Grammaticalized number, implicated presuppositions, and the plural” with Tess Huelskamp, Chris Heffner, and Cristina Schmitt was published in Glossa.

• October 2, 2017

  My paper “The Interpretation of Plural Morphology and (Non-)Obligatory Number Marking: An Argument from Artificial Language Learning” with Chris Heffner and Cristina Schmitt was published in Language Learning and Development.

• August 20, 2017

  I’ve released a much overdue update to my LaTeX workshop (for linguists) handout. I hope you will find this useful; feedback is more than welcome! 😀 🎉

• April 4, 2017

  I’ve accepted a Flagship Fellowship at the University of Maryland, where I will be joining the Department of Linguistics to complete a PhD.

• May 8, 2016

  Karthik Durvasula and me gave an invited talk, “Complexity of feature generalizations and learnability”, at the 9th North American Phonology Conference, hosted by Concordia University, in Montréal, Canada. (The title of the talk in the program (“Learning Phonological Patterns from Ambiguous Data”) is different from the title that we put on our slides (“Complexity of feature generalizations and learnability”). Oops. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

• May 3, 2016

  I succesfully defended my MA thesis in Linguistics at Michigan State University, titled “The Acquisition and Syntax of the Passive in English”. My committee was Alan Munn (chair), Cristina Schmitt, and Marcin Morzycki.

• April 22, 2016

  Along with Ai Taniguchi, I was named Outstanding Graduate Student in Linguistics by the Michigan State University Department of Linguistics and Languages.

• February 28, 2016

  I gave a talk, “Reevaluating the Maratsos Effect”, at the inaugural Graduate Linguistics Expo at Michigan State (GLEAMS), which is joint work with Tess Huelskamp, Susima Weerakoon, and Alan Munn.

• January 9, 2016

  Karthik Durvasula and me presented our poster “Generalising from ambiguous data” at the LSA 2016 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

• November 14, 2015

  Myself, Tess Huelskamp, Susima Weerakoon, and Alan Munn presented our poster “What drives the Maratsos Effect, agentivity or eventivity?” at the 40th Boston University Conference on Language Development, hosted by Boston University in Boston, MA.

• October 17, 2015

  Myself, Tess Huelskamp, Chris Heffner, and Cristina Schmitt presented our paper “Non-grammaticalized number entails an exclusive interpretation of plural morphology” at the 2015 Workshop on Linguistics and Cognitive Aspects of Quantification, hosted by the Research Institute for Linguistics at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, Hungary.

• October 11, 2015

  Karthik Durvasula and me presented our poster “Learning generalisations in the face of ambiguous data” at the the 2015 Annual Meeting on Phonology, jointly hosted by the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

• August 12, 2015

  Now that the 2015 Linguistic Institute is over and I’ve had a bit of a chance to catch my breath, I’ve updated the handout that I used for the LaTeX workshop that I gave at the Institute to include information about bibliographies. I hope you will find this useful!

• July 29, 2015

  I gave the second part of an impromptu two-part workshop introducing linguists to the typesetting software LaTeX at the 2015 Linguistic Institute. The handout for the workshop can be found here. As much as I can, I will keep the handout up to date so that it continues to be useful. Minimally, I plan to add information about bibliographies soon.

• July 22, 2015

  I gave the first part of an impromptu two-part workshop introducing linguists to the typesetting software LaTeX at the 2015 Linguistic Institute. The handout for the workshop, which I plan to periodically update, can be found here.

• October 18, 2014

  I presented my paper “Toward an Explanatory Account of Appositives” at the Graduate Workshop of the American Midwest and Prairies 2014, hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in Milwaukee, WI.

• May 4, 2014

  I received my two BA degrees from Michigan State University, one in Philosophy and one in Linguistics, where I also completed a specialization in Cognitive Science and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies. I was also named Outstanding Graduating Senior in Linguistics by the Department of Linguistics and Languages.

• April 22, 2014

  I was awarded a Board of Trustees’ Award at Michigan State University.

• April 1, 2014

  Today, the seventh volume of Stance—for which I served as an Assistant Editorial Board Member—was published. Stance is an international undergraduate philosophy journal.

• October 5, 2013

  Myself, Chris Heffner, and Cristina Schmitt presented our paper “Inclusive Plural Interpretations Depend on Grammaticalized Number” at the 2013 Workshop on the Acqusition of Quantification, hosted by University of Massachusetts Amherst in Amherst, MA.

• April 25, 2013

  I was awarded the Genevieve Gillette Fellowship by the Michigan State University Honors College to support my undergraduate thesis research over the summer.

• April 12, 2013

  I presented my paper “Beyond an Animal Care Ethics: A First Approximation of Dialogic Standpoint Theory” at the Sixth Annual Undergraduate Ethics Symposium, hosted by the Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN.

• April 6, 2013

  Myself, Chris Heffner, and Cristina Schmitt presented our paper “An Artificial Language Investigation of Number and Number Neutrality” at the 2013 Great Lakes Expo for Experimental and Formal Undergraduate Linguistics, hosted by Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI.

• April 5, 2013

  Myself, Chris Heffner, and Cristina Schmitt presented our paper “An Artificial Language Investigation of Number and Number Neutrality” at the 2013 Michigan State Undergraduate Linguistics Conference, hosted by Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI.

• April 1, 2013

  Today, the sixth volume of Stance—for which I served as an Assistant Editorial Board Member—was published. Stance is an international undergraduate philosophy journal.

• March 13, 2013

  I was awarded a Linguistic Institute Fellowship by the Linguistic Society of America to attend the 2013 Linguistic Institute.

• January 15, 2013

  I’ve been admitted to the MA program in Linguistics at Michigan State University, where I will be completing an MA at the same time as my BA as part of Michigan State University’s dual enrollment program.

• November 10, 2012

  I presented my paper “Facebook’s Facility for Necessary (Political) Identities: A Case Study of Asymmetric Moral and Epistemic Standings” at the 7th Annual Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, hosted by Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in Edwardsville, IL.

• April 20, 2012

  Chris Heffner, me, and Cristina Schmitt presented our poster “Lions, Zebras, and Plurals, Oh My!: Learning a Novel Number System” at the 2012 Michigan State Undergraduate Linguistics Conference, hosted by Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI.

• April 13, 2012

  Chris Heffner, me, and Cristina Schmitt presented our poster “Lions, Zebras, and Plurals, Oh My!: Learning a Novel Number System” at the 2012 University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum, hosted by Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI.

• April 23, 2011

  Chris Heffner, me, and Cristina Schmitt presented our poster “Dogs not Put in Boxes by Boys: Learning a Novel Number System” at the 2011 Great Lakes Expo for Experimental and Formal Undergraduate Linguistics, hosted by Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI.

• April 22, 2011

  Chris Heffner, me, and Cristina Schmitt presented our poster “Dogs not Put in Boxes by Boys: Learning a Novel Number System” at the 2011 Michigan State Undergraduate Linguistics Conference, hosted by Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI.

• April 8, 2011

  Chris Heffner, me, and Cristina Schmitt presented our poster “Dogs not Put in Boxes by Boys: Learning a Novel Number System” at the 2011 University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum, hosted by Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI.

• April 8, 2011

  I presented my paper “Towards a Theoretical Tool against Anthropogenic Environmental Harm: Bringing the Western ‘Bio-logic’ into View” at the 2011 University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum, hosted by Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI.

• August 25, 2010

  I’ve accepted a University Distinguished Scholarship at Michigan State University, where I will be going for my bachelor’s degree.