#  Kathryn Davidson 

Assistant Professor of Linguistics

 

 

 



   ![Kathryn Davidson](/sites/g/files/omnuum8171/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/harvard-iqss/files/kathryn_davidson_0.png?itok=5ev_rhAl) 

 



 

 email <kathryndavidson@fas.harvard.edu> 

 



 

I'm an assistant professor in [Linguistics at Harvard University](http://linguistics.fas.harvard.edu/) where my research investigates the unique capacity that we have to understand an infinite number of sentences that we've never heard before (**semantics**), how we incorporate contextual information into these meanings (**pragmatics**), and how we ever learn to do this (**development**). I'm especially interested in what we can learn about linguistic meaning from **visual language**, both in full natural languages like American Sign Language and in co-speech gestures to spoken languages like English. My background is in math and theoretical linguistics, and in my research I make balanced use of theory for hypothesis creation with psycholinguistic experimental methods for gathering and analyzing data. 

 

 

 





 

 

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