I'm a final year PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at Harvard University, and my dissertation is advised by Dr Gennaro Chierchia (co-chair) and Dr Kathryn Davidson (co-chair) and Dr Veneeta Dayal. My research focuses on natural language semantics and its interfaces with pragmatics and syntax.  I use tools of formal mathematics and logic to study how utterances come to have the meanings they do, and how meaning interacts with linguistic structure and discourse contexts.

I’m particularly interested in investigating issues pertaining to the nominal domain like the semantics of bare nouns in languages with and without determiners, kind reference, semantics and pragmatics of referring expressions, like definites and demonstratives, anaphora, and the cross-linguistic variability in these domains. I explore these issues using a mix of formal theory, experimental methods, and fieldwork.

I am an affiliate at the Meaning & Modality Lab and the The Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard.

Before coming to Harvard, I completed my undergraduate studies in Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics at the Christ University (Bangalore, India) and my Master's degree in Linguistics at The English and Foreign Languages University (Hyderabad, India) .

ankana_saha@g.harvard.edu 

Boylston Hall, 3rd Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138