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Hello! I am a sixth-year Ph.D. student at Northwestern University. I’m primarily interested in understanding what humans ‘know’ when they know a ‘language’. One way I like to look at this is by investigating how people interpret utterances where the traditional form-meaning correspondence has broken down, i.e. ellipsis. In particular, I’m interested in seeing what clausal ellipsis (e.g. Stripping, Sluicing, Gapping) can tell us about the structure of sentences and the nature of human language.

Some of my other interests include properties of complementizers (and discourse particles), syntactic islands, evidentiality, language preservation and documentation, and minority languages in China (e.g. Shanghainese).

I work primarily as a generative syntactician, though I am also an alternating Teaching Assistant for undergraduate linguistics courses at NU, and an ESL tutor for Northwestern’s English Language Program.

Besides language, I also enjoy hot coffees, peaty scotches, art museums, and relaxing with my wife and cat. Once in a while I dabble as a Dungeon Master and adventure author for Dungeons & Dragons.

“Speak to a man in a language he knows and you speak to his head. Speak to him in his language and you speak to his heart.” – Nelson Mandela