Karthik Durvasula

Ph.D., Linguistics, University of Delaware

Karthik Durvasula’s research is focussed primarily on understanding how to interface abstract and categorical linguistic theories with the fine-grained and gradient nature of the observed data in formal experimentation. Over the last 10-15 years, he has used a variety of techniques to probe this question: (a) field-work, (b) formal behavioural and neurolinguistic experimentation, and (c) computational modelling. Most recently, he has been looking at fine-grained timing relationships in speech articulations and gradient sound patterns present in the lexicon of a language. He was awarded a collaborative NSF grant in 2022 to research wordlikeness judgements and assess the descriptive/explanatory adequacy of current computational models that reflect a speaker’s knowledge of the gradient sound patterns present in the lexicon of a language.