I have recently completed my PhD at the University of Cambridge (Fitzwilliam College). I work on minimalist syntax and morphology. My PhD project was on the interaction between Voice, case and external arguments in Urdu. I was supervised by Theresa Biberauer and Ian Roberts.
I am funded by the Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholarship.
Download my CV here.
research interests
My primary research areas are case systems and Urdu syntax. Other research interests include decomposition of the verbal domain, word order, and South Asian linguistics. Something I am particularly excited about at the moment is micro-variation between Hindi and Urdu, two near-identical languages which are often lumped together in syntactic theory.
My PhD project investigates case in Urdu. I look at case in two respects: (i) how case is affected by other syntactic factors, specifically, active/passive voice, and (ii) how case itself affects other syntactic phenomena, in particular, the core concept of subjecthood. My dissertation zooms in on patterns that have previous been reported as exceptions to robust cross-linguistic generalisations, such as accusative-preserving passives, and looks for regularities in these patterns. One of my key findings is that many so-called exceptions in Urdu are only superficial, bringing us one step closer to establishing universals. My dissertation also offers novel perspectives on differential object marking, dative intervention, ergative case assignment, and subjecthood. You can download my dissertation here.
education
I did my masters at the University of Cambridge (2018-19). My MPhil thesis was supervised by Theresa Biberauer and focused on accusative case in Hindi-Urdu. It also attempted a composite case-checking analysis for nominative, ergative and accusative cases in Urdu. You can download my MPhil thesis here.
I was at University College London (UCL) for my undergraduate degree (2015-18). My BA thesis was titled Case-(Mis)Matching in Urdu Sluicing and was supervised by Klaus Abels. I introduced novel data from Urdu sluicing and showed that there must be syntactic structure in the ellipsis-site and that it stands in a semantic identity relation to its antecedent. The thesis won the Outstanding Undergraduate Dissertation in Linguistics prize from the Linguistics Association of Great Britain (LAGB). The dissertation was later developed into a working paper and published in The Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics (COPiL). You can find it here.
languages
I am a native speaker of Urdu and English. I am slowly learning German.
non-academic interests
I like cooking, baking, and feeding people. I also like psychological thrillers, documentaries and reality tv.
I was vice-president of the graduate student committee in my college from 2020-21. Before this, I was social secretary in 2019-20. I have a lot of experience in leadership, organising and running events, and working with teams.