Senior research scientist
Linguistic research has revealed that language users have mastery over an array of complex grammatical rules. My research examines how we use these grammatical rules in real-time processing, within the confines of a limited memory system. Specifically, I am interested in how we coordinate syntactic and semantic information in processing sentences, how these processing strategies vary across different linguistic systems, and how we may selectively “break the rules” in some circumstances. I primarily examine these questions through the lens of long-distance dependencies and agreement phenomena. At NYU Abu Dhabi, my focus is on sentence processing in South Asian languages (Hindi–Urdu, Bangla/Bengali), and applying techniques from cognitive neuroscience to these questions.
Previously, I was a Contract Assistant Professor and director of the Minnesota Syntax & Psycholinguistics Lab (MSPLab) at University of Minnesota, and Faculty Fellow at NYU New York. I completed my Ph.D. in 2015 at the University of Maryland.
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