Research

My research focuses on the semantics of natural language, and its interface with syntax and pragmatics, typically from a cross-linguistic perspective. The topics I have worked on can be classified under four broad categories: Questions and relative clauses; Bare nominals and genericity; Free choice items; Syntactic structure of Hindi.

My current projects include:

• The Open Handbook of (In)definiteness: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to interpreting bare arguments, an edited volume exploring the relationship between the morpho-syntax of noun phrases and their possible interpretations in seven languages, in preparation for MIT Open Handbooks in Linguistics.
• L2 acquisition of the article system by L1 speakers of article-less languages, jointly with Gita Martohardjono, CUNY Second Language Acquisition Lab..
• Wh Scope-taking in Questions, a study of different aspects of scope taking involved in the interpretation of questions, with particular attention to multiple wh constructions, in preparation for Linguistic Inquiry Monographs.
• (Quasi-)subordination and speech acts, with special reference to how interrogative meanings are built up and how they are used as direct and indirect questions.
• Differences between ever-free relatives and any with respect to epistemic modality, the (in)compatibility of polarity items and definites, and the contribution of the Hindi-Urdu additive particle bhii to negative polarity and free choice readings.