Kyle Rawlins

Kyle Rawlins is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Cognitive Science Department at Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on natural language semantics and pragmatics, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches integrating theoretical linguistics, computational modeling, and experimental data. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from UC Santa Cruz (2008) and has taught courses such as Semantics 1 and 2, as well as specialized seminars on questions and discourse dynamics. His work explores topics including definiteness in cross-linguistic contexts, the pragmatics of questions and conditionals, and discourse attention mechanisms. Collaborations with scholars like Justin Bledin and Sadhwi Srinivas have yielded influential studies on presupposition dynamics and anaphoric variability. Rawlins has advised PhD student Sadhwi Srinivas, contributing to her research on Kannada bare nominals. His teaching and research materials, including NASSLLI courses, highlight his commitment to bridging formal semantics with computational and experimental methods.

• Education: PhD in Linguistics, UC Santa Cruz, 2008
• Teaching: Semantics 1/2, NASSLLI courses on questions and conditionals

His research spans definiteness, discourse dynamics, and clause-embedding, often leveraging crowd-sourced data and computational models. Ongoing projects include investigations into Korean demonstratives and Italian polar questions, reflecting his interest in cross-linguistic pragmatics. He has contributed to major journals and conferences, with a focus on bridging theoretical and applied linguistic research.