Research Interests

Though my work spans several subfields of linguistics, my primary interests lie in psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics.

Multilingualism and cognition

  • How do multilinguals manage and interact with several languages without deficits in communication?

  • Do the cognitive mechanisms facilitating multilingual communication adapt as language knowledge undergoes changes in acquisition and attrition contexts, or are they static capacities?

  • Is language attrition fundamentally an issue of access to language knowledge, and if not, how does attrition affect dimensions such as morphosyntactic and phonetic perception and production?

  • What are the neural and cognitive bases of cross-linguistic transfer?

Methodology: cognitive tasks, eye-tracking, grammaticality judgments, surveys

Socio- and forensic linguistics

  • How does language use vary across varieties and social groups?

  • How has the internet influenced or changed previously identified trends in language usage?

  • Which aspects of language production might result in unconscious bias against speakers from a stigmatized group or of a stigmatized variety?

  • To what extent, if any, should traditional language groupings be considered a monolith versus a collection of distinct varieties?

  • How do multilinguals characterize their language knowledge, and what are the sociolinguistic and methodological implications of discrepancies between self-identification and prescribed group membership?

  • What can extralinguistic style choices reveal about cognition or social factors during language production?

  • How do linguistic biases affect courtroom outcomes?

Methodology: corpus linguistics, acoustic analysis, grammaticality judgments, surveys, interviews