Hello! I’m Yage (/jakɤ/, or “yah-kuh” where the “k” is unaspirated) and I’m a first-year PhD student in Language Science at UC Irvine. I recently finished my undergraduate studies at UC San Diego, double majoring in Linguistics and Cognitive Science (with a minor in Music).

I believe that we can’t fully understand language and cognition unless we understand the language and minds in different groups across various situations. I first became interested in pragmatics and processing thinking about communication in autism, in relation to theory-of-mind or mental state reasoning. Now, my research interest includes whether and how theory-of-mind reasoning is involved in pragmatics, its traces in language, and the link between language and other cognitive processes. I am interested in both experimental and computational approaches.

Outside of academics, I am passionate about music and art, as well as reading and writing.