I’m a 4th year PhD in Cognition and Perception here in NYU, working with Alec Marantz. I have worked on Levantine Arabic affix meaning typicality, and am currently working on word novelty, affix productivity, and meaning in English.
My main interest is in morphosemantics, or the interaction between meanings or concepts and the grammar of how words are formed. Many words are de-construct-able, with each of their parts having a meaning. For this same reason, we can understand virtually any new word constructification, if weirdous or commonish. This is because each of these morphemes has an abstract meaning. Our learning of how -ist, -ous, -ification, etc. behave and what they mean depends on the regularities of our language. I study how, when, and where the brain handles complex word comprehension given grammar.
Before my PhD, I did my undergraduate degree in Psychology in Lebanon, and then my MSc in Psychology of Language at the University of Edinburgh. Though I was interested in language, I was mainly trained in neuropsychology, and my main areas of interest were in bilingualism and emotions (the focus of both my theses) and bilingualism and clinical applications.
My dive into morphology was accidental, when in 2019 I was researching in a cognitive neuroscience lab and was tasked to get the lab’s eyetracker running with a language experiment, since that would be my master’s.
I then discovered the complexity of Arabic morphology and have maintained my interest in it since then.
Aside from my main research, I am deeply interested in morphology and semantics in neuropsychological cases, in which I’ve recently studied morphosemantic errors in patients with dysgraphia. In relation to my language and emotion research, I write poetry and songs (sometimes children’s!), and was the organizer of poetry societies between Lebanon and the UK. You’ll also find some novel-but-understandable words in my poetry, as if trying to prove a morphosemantical point even in art.
Lastly, I care about public outreach and science communication, so if what I do seems interesting to you but full of convoluted words and concepts, reach out and I’ll be glad to talk about language!