Sarah Brogden Payne

[sɛɹə bɹɒgdən pɛjn] (she/they)

Hi! I'm a PhD student in Linguistics and an IACS and NSF GRFP fellow at Stony Brook University (entered 2022). I work primarily with Dr. Jordan Kodner, Dr. Jeff Heinz, and Dr. Owen Rambow. My research interests are in language acquisition, particularly morphological, phonological, and morphophonological acquisition, and the primary goal of my work is to develop algorithmic accounts of how children learn their native language.

Before Stony Brook, I received a B.A. in Linguistics and Computer Science with a minor in Cognitive Science from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2022. At Penn, I worked primarily with Dr. Charles Yang. My bachelor's thesis, When Collisions are a Good Thing: the Acquisition of Morphological Marking, investigated how children learn which morphosyntactic features are marked in their language.

I care deeply about increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in academia, and served as 2021 chair of Penn's Abuse and Sexual Assault Prevention Group. I also represented survivors of sexual violence on Penn's University Council. I'm originally from Bloomington, Indiana, but also grew up in the UK, mainly near Ipswich, Suffolk. I have both British T-glottalization and American flapping, so my /t/'s are a mess!