Kyle Jerro, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Kyle Jerro is interested in the interface between syntax and semantics. In particular, their research looks at possible verb meanings across languages, with a particular emphasis on languages in the Bantu family. Currently, Jerro is looking into how information structure interacts with verb meaning, with a broader interest in how pragmatics constrains and interacts with argument structure. Other topics of interest are the semantics of location and directed motion, reference and fictional worlds, and the psycholinguistic categorization of noun classes in Bantu languages. In collaboration with community linguists in the D.R. Congo, Jerro is contributing to a project on the revitalization of the Bantu language, Kihunde.

Outside of linguistics, they enjoy spicy food, horror movies, and magical realism.

Jerro is fine with any pronouns, but “they/them” elicits joy.