My name is Elena Pagliarini and I am currently a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain).
I investigate how children face the challenge of mapping word forms/sentences into meaning.
I ask how children learn to interpret structures that contain inherently abstract operators, such as logical connectives and quantifiers.
I address questions such as “what are the first assumptions that children make about such words/sentences when they hear them in language?” and “what kinds of evidence do they use to decode their meaning?”.
Language learners (and language users more in general) are not only influenced by semantic properties of these expressions, but also by pragmatic principles that govern how words are interpreted in conversation.
I am also interested in gaining new insights into the nature of the impairment of individuals with Developmental Dyslexia and Specific Language Impairment.
In my free time, I love dancing and hiking.
For more information about my research, please contact me at elena.pagliarini[at]uab.cat
Find here more information about my latest funded project: https://webs.uab.cat/dapss/en/
Do not hesitate to contact me if you are interested in joining our group!
------I invite expressions of interest from researchers working in language acquisition who are eligible to apply for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA PF) 2026 call. Further information on the MSCA PF scheme is available at https://marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/funding/msca-postdoctoral-fellowships-2026. The application deadline is 9 September 2026.