Yangchen Roy

I'm fascinated by how children learn language — how they build a full, working grammar out of sparse, messy input — quite unlike the data an LLM is trained on — and what that says about what's uniquely human in our capacity for language. I study this both to understand how language is structured in the mind, and to put those findings to work in pedagogy. As a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, I study child language as part of the ERC Synergy Grant project LeibnizDream. My PhD looked at how children acquire pronouns and reflexives in Bangla and Malayalam. Insights from research in acquisition and psycholinguistic research shape the pedagogical tools and linguistics-based language games I design, and the language and writing I've taught — at IIT Delhi's Language Learning Centre and in community centres.

My training in theoretical syntax and morphology also grounds my documentation work: I recently co-authored A Grammar of Gaddi (UCL Press), a descriptive grammar of an under-documented Himalayan language.

I trained as a linguist at Jawaharlal Nehru University and The English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad. My academic CV can be found here.

Feel free to get in touch at yangchen.roy@hu-berlin.de.