I am a linguist working on the formal semantics and pragmatics of informal language. Since 2014, I have been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania linguistics department. I work with Florian Schwarz's Experimental Study of Meaning lab.  My main interests are in elucidating, through web-based experiments, the information status of locally accommodated presuppositions and the effects of contextual factors on the rate of relevance implicature interpretation. 

I am also an emerita member of the Temple University English department. From fall 1977 through spring 2017, I taught Introduction to Linguistics and Semantics there regularly, along with occasional classes in writing, traditional grammar, and language and race.

I have played the cello and done ventriloquism since I was in the fourth grade.  I play monthly with a reading string quartet. More about my ventriloquial partner, Gregory Grackle, is available on the Ventriloquism page.