Ponrawee Prasertsom ponrawee.prasertsom@ed.ac.uk
I am a PhD student at the Centre for Language Evolution, University of Edinburgh. My research focuses on organisational constraints on the linguistic encodability of meanings: How formal and semantic properties (costs, conceptual domains, symmetry, etc.) of larger organisation (noun classification, lexica, grammatical paradigms, etc.) affect what meanings will or will not be formally encoded (in words, affixes, etc.). Supervised by Prof Jennifer Culbertson and Prof Kenny Smith, I explore these questions using experimental and computational methods. More broadly, I am interested in syntactic and semantic universals, with some focus on reducing classical domain-specific constraints to domain-general explanations. I also dabble in theoretical/descriptive Thai syntax and semantics from time to time.
I hold an MSc in Evolution of Language and Cognition (Distinction) from University of Edinburgh, and an MA in Linguistics from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, where I was supervised by Prof Attapol T. Rutherford. I've since worked with him on some natural language processing projects. I am also involved (as instructor, among other roles) in the annual Thailand Linguistics Olympiad.
I am committed to higher language data quality in linguistics and cognitive sciences. If you need to consult about anything on Thai, please feel free to email me for potential scheduled calls.