I am a professor in the OSU Psychology department.

I study how children acquire language, and in particular, how they learn about meaning. My research has looked at various dimensions of meaning, including children’s understanding of temporal and event semantics (especially the linguistic category of aspect), and their understanding of social indexical meanings coded in dialect and register.  You can see my full CV here.

I am the director of the Language Sciences Research Lab at the Columbus Center of Science and Industry (COSI) where I collect data and help to educate the public about language and linguistics.  I’m currently funded to investigate how effective our lab really is with the public education mission.  And I’ve just written a book about how to talk with people about language science in an accessible way.

Contact Information
email:   wagner.602 at osu.edu
office:   241 Psychology
phone:  614-634-2648