Interests

I'm interested in understanding how people can create an appropriate balance between their need for structure and their need for change.  This question bears on central issues in diverse fields: how do new functional organisms evolve? how do languages change without becoming unintelligible? how do people process novel linguistic information quickly and appropriately? how can institutions stay in tune with people? My work on these issues has focused on language and has led me from the study of changing languages to the development of a dynamical systems framework for modeling structured but adaptable systems. My Projects pursue this question along several lines. See my Papers for details.

I also teach several Courses related to these topics.

Curriculum Vitae