Elena Pagliarini

I investigate how children face the challenge of mapping word forms/sentences into meaning. 

I ask how children learn to interpret structures that contain inherently abstract operators, such as logical connectives and quantifiers. 

I address questions such as “what are the first assumptions that children make about such words/sentences when they hear them in language?” and “what kinds of evidence do they use to decode their meaning?”.

Language learners (and language users more in general) are not only influenced by semantic properties of these expressions, but also by pragmatic principles that govern how words are interpreted in conversation.

I am also interested in gaining new insights into the nature of the impairment of individuals with Developmental Dyslexia and Specific Language Impairment.