Rojda Ozcan

I'm interested in language acquisition and the representation of concepts and knowledge in developing children and in artificial systems. My research focuses on how structured semantic representations emerge from sparse, developmentally realistic linguistic and visual input. I use tools from distributional semantics and classical computational linguistics to explore how symbolic and statistical processes interact in lexical acquisition and conceptual development. I'm particularly interested in how a principle of compositionality might be instantiated in cognitive systems, and what kind of representational formats and operations may be at play in language and thought.