I am a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University with expertise in language development and in language variation and change, with a particular focus on understudied language communities.

My research program encompasses two main strands. The first focuses on how typically developing children acquiring their first language(s) navigate the process of learning the complex linguistic systems found in African languages, and the implications this has for theories of language development. My work here examines the production of complex stops (e.g., doubly articulated stops like [k͡p, ɡ͡b]) in Ga-speaking children, specifically as it relates to linguistic milestones associated with these segments. Future work will explore potential neutralization/covert contrast of complex stops with the simplex ones, the perception of the complex-simplex contrast, as well as whether bilingualism in English and/or Akan influence the development of Ga complex stops.

The second focus of my research adopts a variationist sociolinguistic approach to examine the production and perception dynamics of sound change in the Akan vowel harmony system. The goal is to better understand the points of convergence and divergence in variationist sociolinguistic patterns between Western and understudied non-Western communities (such as Ghana), and how differences in social stratification influence linguistic outcomes in these contexts. This work also explores the relationship between speech production and perception during ongoing sound change, as well as how children acquire variable linguistic phenomena in ongoing sound change.