Principal Investigator
Whitney Tabor Principal Investigator
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My current language research is focused around Metric Grammars—grammars which lie in a continuum, relating the discrete phenomena of syntax to the graded phenomena of semantics, conceptual structure, social structure, language change. My group coordination research focuses on critical behavior in groups of people. “Critical” here means “poised on the boundary between order and chaos.” |
whitney.tabor@uconn.edu
Graduate Students
Hyosun Lee Graduate Student
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I am interested in the forces that drive linguistic innovation. I explore this through denominal verbs, using an experimental approach to investigate the underlying mechanisms of language change. |
Kaya LeGrand Graduate Lab Affiliate (Developmental Psych)
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I study language in autism. I’m particularly interested in why some autistic individuals remain minimally verbal, and what this can tell us about what is required for linguistic generativity. |
Abigail Petrsoric Graduated August, 2025 |
Abby is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Glasgow |
Caitlin Senni Graduate Student
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I’m interested in the interface between language and cognition in the development of conceptual knowledge. I study processes of inductive learning and generalization during the formation of abstract concept representations. I aim to understand how these processes shape the development of conceptual knowledge in children—particularly for mental state concepts and Theory of Mind. |
Walter Shaw Graduate Lab Affiliate (Linguistics)
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I study changes in the functions of linguistic items, specifically how synchronic grammars give rise to cross-linguistic pathways. I also have a broader interest in verbal morphosyntax. |
Emma Wing Graduate Student
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I study the relationship between linguistic and conceptual structure. I am also interested in how language processing data may contribute to creating a model of meaning composition across domains (syntax, semantics, concepts). |