Computation Institute,
and Dept. of Linguistics
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL 60637
kobele@uchicago.edu
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Assistant Professor Computation Institute, and Dept. of Linguistics University of Chicago Chicago, IL 60637 kobele@uchicago.edu |
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My interests center on the human ability to use and to learn to use language. Among the many uses to which language is put, perhaps the most basic is the transmission of information. It is a marvelous fact that competent speakers of a language can communicate even completely novel thoughts and ideas with ease. At its heart, this is due to the fact that humans become attuned to certain regularities in the form of the expressions of their languages, which contribute to the meaning of an utterance in a systematic way. My work focuses on formally characterizing the kinds of linguistic regularities to which humans are attuned, and the nature of the contributions the various regularities can make to the interpretation of utterances.