Presidential Scholars Program

Fun fact: I have synesthesia, which means I see colors when hearing sounds or reading words.

I am Arushi Kalpande and I’m from Lexington, Massachusetts. I intend to double concentrate in linguistics and computer science. Ever since I was young, I’ve been interested in words and languages, and being able to study them and how they work is really fascinating to me. I am excited to be a part of PSP as I get to experience what research in my field is like, and I get to interact with professors and learn about their work. Outside of academics, I enjoy dancing, drawing, and listening to music.

This past semester, I worked with Professor Pauline Jacobson in the CLPS department on a project in semantics. We observed the phenomenon that sentences with relational terms, such as “I am the oldest of my siblings,” seem to imply that the subject is their own sibling. We looked at other languages, specifically Marathi and Hindi, and found that similar phenomena exist there. In addition, since both languages are gendered and have more complex systems of kinship terminology, we found that speakers made some other interesting accommodations as well. From this project, I learned about what semantics research even looks like to start off, but then more specifically, I learned how to interview informants effectively so that I can best assess their intuitions without confusing them with linguistics terminology. I also learned how to formulate questions to guide my research and narrow down the source of the phenomenon.