PRITHA CHANDRA
PROFESSOR OF THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS & COGNITIVE SCIENCE
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI 

I work with the first principles of Generative Grammar that there is a dedicated grammar machine in the mind, with a set of operations that construct natural language sentences, and that this machine is species-specific and universal. My enquiries are directed at the extent of linguistic variability that this cognitive faculty can support, and if variation can throw any light on how language(s) may have evolved in the human species. 

My research group at IIT Delhi investigates different phenomena from South Asian languages, more recently in asymmetric bilingual contexts, to answer questions of language variation, change and the factors underlying change. For interested students: if you have a theoretical question or an empirical puzzle that you want to explore further, feel free to drop me a line at pritha(at)iitd.ac.in.