I am an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College Department of Psychology, where I direct the Language Learning Laboratory.

Language can be used to move thoughts between minds, even those separated by considerable distance or time. The speaker takes a thought, packages it up into a series of sounds (or gestures), from which the listener must recover the original thought. This alone would be an impressive feat difficult for science to explain. We must also explain how children learn these procedures.

I am interested in all aspects of this problem. I have worked on a variety of phenomena in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.