I am a linguist. I specialize in semantics and pragmatics, with a particular focus on language acquisition and cross-linguistic variation. My main research areas include modality, tense and aspect, indexicals, logical operators, implicatures.

I am currently a postdoc in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Geneva, working with Isabelle Charnavel on a project on indexical binding. Before, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle (LLF) in Paris, working on the acquisition of modals in French, a project funded by the Fyssen Fondation. I completed my PhD in linguistics at the University of Maryland (USA) in July 2021, where I was advised by Valentine Hacquard and Alexander Williams.  Before, I studied at the CogMaster in Paris, working with Benjamin Spector and Emmanuel Chemla, and I was a Course Lecturer/Research Trainee for one year at McGill University in Montréal.

I’m particularly interested in modality: the way languages allow us to talk about non-actual states of affair, possibilities, necessities and impossibilities. How are modal concepts expressed across languages? What patterns and regularities do we find in how languages express modal meanings? What does that tell us about modal cognition in general? My dissertation, “Finding Modal Force” (available here), focuses on when and how children figure out the “force” of modals: that words like can mean ‘possible’, whereas words like must mean ‘necessary’. In my first postdoc, I’ve developed this work, notably looking at French.

My work benefits from many exchanges with colleagues and friends, non-exhaustively including Annemarie van Dooren, Morgan Moyer, Oana Lungu, Milica Denić, Mora Maldonado, Rachel Dudley, Ailís Cournane, Tom Meadows, David Müller, Keny Chatain, Yu’an Yang, Jessica Mendes, Jad Wehbe, Maria Lialiou, Malin Spaniol, Yaru Wu, and though not a linguist, Aymeric Dieuleveut. My amazing(ly) smart UMD-cohort members were Sigwan Thivierge, Mina Hirzel, Aaron Doliana, Rodrigo Ranero and Tyler Knowlton. I’m a member of the ModSquad (UMD/NYU/elsewhere Modality Group), of the GRISP (Groupe de Recherche sur les Inferences de la Sémantique et Pragmatique), and of the ad-hoc reading group in Paris.