Hi, I'm John R. Starr!

I am a fourth-year PhD candidate at Cornell University, where I study Linguistics with a minor in Cognitive Science. For my undergraduate studies, I attended the University of Pittsburgh and graduated in 2020 with a BA in Linguistics, a BA in English Writing, and a minor in Persian.

My primary research interests lie within the interfaces of linguistics, cognitive science, and psychology. At the moment, I am researching the interaction(s) of lower-level phonological structures (syllables, segments), incremental sentence processing, and discourse. See the Research page for an up-to-date list of projects I am working on.

My teaching load for the 2023/2024 academic calendar is LING1100: Language, Thought, and Reality: How We're Laughter Crafters (Course Instructor, Course Designer) in Fall 2023 and Computational Linguistics I (Graduate Teaching Assistant for Dr. Marten van Schijndel) in Spring 2024.

I am a member of the Cornell University Computational Psycholinguistics Discussions Group, or CPsyd for short. I am advised by the director of the lab, Dr. Marten van Schijndel. I am also a member of the Linguistic Meaning (LiMe) lab at Cornell University, and the Senior Editor of the SALT 32 Proceedings.

In my spare time, you will likely find me skipping rocks on either Cayuga Lake or one of the various creeks in Ithaca. I also arrange a cappella music professionally and am a washed-up former Music Director for The Songburghs, an award-winning co-ed collegiate group based out of Pitt. In the early months of the year, I may even be judging a cappella music!