About me and my research

My research focuses on the syntax of natural language, and its interface with semantics and pragmatics. My primary interests lie in exploring how speaker and addressee are encoded in natural language. I have worked on honorification and its realization in verbal and nominal domain, Indexical shift phenomena, syntax and semantics of discourse particles, syntax of split constructions. I have also worked on syntax and semantics of bare nominals. I am also interested in applying linguistics knowledge to Natural language processing (NLP) and computational linguistics.

I received my Ph.D. in Linguistics from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA, in October 2020. My dissertation is advised by Mark Baker and Veneeta Dayal. The two other committee members are Troy Messick and Paul Portner. My dissertation takes as its starting point the view that speaker and addressee are also implicated in sentences that do not have first and second person pronouns that are used to refer to the speaker and addressee in natural language. It investigates two linguistic phenomena: honorification and indexical shift, and the interactions between them, and show that these discourse participants have an important role to play. The investigation is based on Magahi, an Eastern Indo-Aryan language.

Currently, I am working as Sr. Linguist at Panlingua Language Processing LLP, New Delhi, India.

Dissertation: Speaker and Addressee in Natural Language: Honorificity, Indexicality and their Interaction in Magahi(pdf)

My CV
 

RESEARCH

PUBLICATION

 

to appear. Morphosyntax of Magahi Addressee Agreement. Syntax.

to appear. The syntax of Magahi Addressee Agreement. In proceedings of the 9th Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages (FASAL-9).

to appear. Jointly with Troy Messick. Stripping in Hindi: Does clause size matter?. Language science press.

to appear. Magahi Imperatives: with and without Jussive?. In proceedings of the 10th Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages (FASAL-10)

Under Review. Asymmetry in splitting of subject and object in Hindi and Magahih. Indian Linguistics .

2020. Jointly with Akanksha Bansal, Atul Kr. Ojha, Bornini Lihiri, Ritesh Kumar. KMI- Panlingua-IITKGP @SIGTYP2020: Exploring Rules and Hybrid Systems for Automatic Prediction of Typological Features. Proceedings of the Second Work- shop on Computational Research in Linguistic Typology (under the EMNLP 2020, November 16-20, 2020 ) by ACL,

2019. Jointly with Atul Kr Ojha and Sriniket Kumar Mishra, A corpus-based study of semantics of bare nominals in Magahi and Bhojpuri: The case of article-less languages. Linguistic Ecology of Bihar, Europa Publisher..

2018. Jointly with Ritesh Kumar, Bornini Lahiri, Atul Kr. Ojha, Mayank Jain, Abdul Ba- sit, Yogesh Dawar. Automatic Identification of Closely-related Indian Languages: Resources and Experiments. In proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Indian Language Data: Resources and Evaluation (under the 11th LREC2018, May 07-12, 2018) by European Language Resources Association (ISBN: 979-10-95546-09-2 EAN: 9791095546092).

2017. Jointly with Veneeta Dayal, Scope Marking at the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Oxford Research Encyclopedia.

2016. The syntax of split: The case of Hindi and Magahi. In Mythili Menon and Saurov Syed (ed.), proceedings of the 6th Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages (FASAL-6), 53-61..

2014. The morpho-syntax of Nominal Particle -wa. Indian Linguistics, 75 (3-4), 39- 44. ISSN: 0378-0759.

2014. Magahi Nominal Particle -wa. Indian Linguistics, 75 (1-2), 69- 74, ISSN: 0378- 0759

2013. Jointly with Bornini Lahiri and Ritesh Kumar. Bihari Hindi as a Mixed Language. In processing of the International Conference on Language Contact in India: His- torical, Typological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, Deccan College,199-208.

2012. Jointly with Bornini Lahiri and Ritesh Kumar. Developing a POS tagger for Magahi: A Comparative Study. Proceedings of 10th Workshop on Asian Language Resources, 24th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Mumbai.

2011. Jointly with Bornini Lahiri and Ritesh Kumar. Developing a POS tagger for Magahi: A Comparative Study. Magahi.Proceedings of 5th Language Tech- nology Conference: Human Language Technologies as a Challenge for Computer Science and Linguistics, Poznań, Poland, pp. 60-64, Fundacja Uniwersytetuim. A Mickiewicza: Poland.

Manuscript.2018. Jontly with Mark Baker, On the Mechanics (Syntax) of Indexical Shift: Evidence from Allocutive Agreement in Magahi. Ms., Rutgers University

 

TALKS& POSTERS

 

2021. Jointly with Bill Haddican, On some parameters of allocutive marking. The 9th Cambridge Comparative Syntax conference (CamCoS 9), Feb.

2021. Jointly with Mark Baker, Person and Honori cation: Features and Interactions in Magahi. The 95th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2021), Jan 7-10.

2021. Jointly with Bill Haddican, Cross-linguistic di erences in embedded/root asymmetries in allocutive marking. The 95th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Jan 7-10.

2019. 2nd person pronoun bound by Hr: Evidence from Magahi Addressee Agreement. Poster presented at the workshop on Person and perspective, May 3- 4. Los Angeles, CA.

2019. Morphosyntax of Magahi Addressee Agreement. FASAL-9, March 16-17, Portland, Oregon.

2019. Jointly with Mark Baker, On the Syntax of Addressee Agreement and Indexical Shift in Magahi. LSA, Jan 3-6, New York.

2016. Jointly with Ritesh Kumar, Atul Kr. Ojha, Bornini Lahiri, Developing Resources and Tools for some Lesser-known Languages of India. Regional ICON(regICON) 2016, IIT-BHU,Varanasi, December 16, Varanasi

2016. The syntax of split: The case of Hindi and Magahi. FASAL-6, March 12-13, UMass Amherst.

2014. On two forms of Magahi nouns. FASAL-4, March 29-30, Rutgers University.

2013. Jointly with Mustafa Al-humari, Agreement and Feature Inheritance. Poster presented at the Faculty of Language Design Interfaces, Feb 11-12th Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Delhi, New Delhi, India.

2013. The morpho-syntax of Nominal Particle -wa. SCONLI-7, Feb 8-10, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.

2012. Jointly with Sriniket kumar Mishra, What do Indian Languages have: DP or NP? 18th Himalayan Languages Symposium (18th HLS), Sep 10-12, BHU, Varanasi.

2012. Magahi Spatial Postposition. SCONLI-6, Feb 17-19, BHU, Varanasi.

2011. Case in Magahi. Poster at Essex, England.

2011. Causative Construction in Magahi. SCONLI-3, Feb 19-20, Jawaharlal Nehru Univer- sity, Delhi.

2008. Honorifcity in Magahi. SCONLI-2, Feb 9-10, Delhi University, Delhi.

2006. Jointly with Anil Thakur and Ravi Prakash, Some Socio-Psycho-Linguistic Aspects of Abusive Words in Hindi-Bhojpuri. The 28th All India Conference of Linguists, BHU. Nov, 2-4.

 

INVITED TALK

2019. Indexical shift and addressee agreement: The case of Magahi. NYU Syntax BB talk, April 5, 2019

2018. Bare nominals and definiteness. K.M. Institute of Hindi and Linguistics, Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Agra, August 11, 2018

TEACHING

2019 Fall- Ling 201: Introduction to Linguistic Theory, Rutgers University [undergraduate]

2017 Summer- Ling 201: Introduction to Linguistic Theory, Rutgers University [undergraduate]

2017 Spring- Ling 201: Introduction to Linguistic Theory, Rutgers University [undergraduate]

2016 Fall- Ling 201: Introduction to Linguistic Theory, Rutgers University [undergraduate]

WORK EXPERIENCE

Fall 2019- Part-Time Lecturer, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA.

May-Aug 2019- As a Linguist, Project: "Semantic Evaluation" Panlingua Language Processing LLP, India.

2008-2009- As a Linguist, Project: "Disambiguation of Particle Element in Hindi for Hindi-English Machine Trans-lation. BHU, Varanasi, India.

Nov,2010-March,2011-- As a Linguist, Project: "English- Hindi pronunciation Electronic Dictionary", New Delhi.

2008- As a Linguist, Seven-day project work "To develop key board for Hindi typing" in CDAC-KOLKATA.

AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS

2020- Special Study Award, Tarak Nath Das Foundation.

2019-2020- Half Excellence Fellowship for Doctoral Study, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA.

2017-2018- Excellence Fellowship for Doctoral Study, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA.

2017- TA/GA Professional Development Fund, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA.

2016- Mellon Summer Research Grant, Andrew Mellon Foundation.

2014-2016- Excellence Fellowship for Doctoral Study, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA

2012- Junior Research Fellowship (UGC-NET JRF), University Grants Commission, India (UGC).

2010- Gold Medal (standing rst in M.A), Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, India.

2008- Certificate of Merit (standing first in B.A), Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, India.

2008- The most promising paper, SCONLI-2, Delhi University.