Olivia Griffin
PhD Candidate, UC San Diego
I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at UC San Diego with an interest in the relationship between form and meaning in human and non-human communication systems. Before coming to UCSD, I completed my B.A. (Honours) in Linguistics at the University of Ottawa.
Research Interests
My research centres on iconicity -- a non-arbitrary link between form and meaning in language. Some of the questions that drive my work are what types of iconicity occur across human languages?, how do iconic linguistic processes fit into the grammatical system as a whole?, what happens when multiple instances of iconicity occur at the same time?, and (how) does linguistic experience affect sensitivity to iconicity?
I am also interested in iconicity outside of human language. I ask whether (Multimodal) Large Language Models are sensitive to the types of iconicity observed in human language, and whether iconicity occurs in cetacean communication.
Contact
ogriffin at ucsd dot edu
Department of Linguistics
9500 Gilman Drive #0108
UC San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093-0108