Projects

Computational Modeling of Behbahani Agreement

To complement my theoretical syntactic analysis, I am developing computational models to formally capture Behbahani agreement and alignment patterns.

• Developing finite-state automata (FSA) using Haskell to formally capture complex interactions between tense, transitivity, and stem choice in a system lacking morphological case.
• Bridging formal syntactic theory with functional programming to test the architectural limits of split alignment systems.

Behbahani Corpus and Syntactic Treebank (In Progress)

To establish a durable empirical foundation for linguistic research on the Behbahani variety, I am currently developing a digitized corpus and a custom syntactically annotated treebank.

• Compiling a foundational textual corpus utilizing primary elicited data and naturalistic speech recordings.
• Designing a theoretically-informed syntactic annotation scheme specifically tailored to capture Behbahani’s unique morphosyntactic properties, including complex agreement patterns and stem alternations.
  

Language Documentation & Mentorship: “Linguists, Meet Behbahani”

Beyond formal analysis, I am invested in the documentation and visibility of the Behbahani variety.

• Co-directed a collaborative documentation initiative alongside Daniel Greeson, utilizing primary data elicited while serving as the Linguistic Consultant and Teaching Assistant for the LIN 431 fieldwork course.
• Handpicked and mentored a team of ten undergraduate researchers from May 2024 through January 2025, guiding the transformation of raw fieldwork data into fully developed theoretical research projects.
• Culminated in a dedicated session at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA). [View LSA Session Booklet]
• Supervised by Dr. Robert Hoberman.