Hello! I’m Yage (/jakɤ/, or “yah-kuh” where the “k” is unaspirated) and I am a 4th year undergrad at UC San Diego, majoring in Linguistics and Cognitive Science. (and minoring in Music!) I’m an incoming PhD student in Linguistics at somewhere that’s still TBD, starting Fall 2026.

I want to believe that we can’t fully understand language and cognition unless we understand the language and minds in different groups across various situations, and to some extent that’s what motivates my research. Broadly speaking, my research interest centers around the cognitive devices involved in pragmatics and semantics. I am particularly interested in the role of theory of mind, and it’s development and breakdown, in language. I first became interested in this area thinking about communication in autism (and how theory of mind/egocentricity is/isn’t involved), and now I like to approach this big topic using various methods from different aspects. I am also interested in the internal experience one has and its interaction with language, such as bilingualism, musical pitch perception, and aphantasia. Additionally, I like to explore computational approaches and tools to study language.

Outside of academics, I am passionate about music and art, as well as reading and writing. There are a bunch of topics that I particularly care about, including disability rights, theology & philosophy, and anthropology.

News?

Nothing exciting is going on right now… Come check later :D