Chris Barker

Chris Barker is an American chair professor of linguistics at New York University, known for his discovery of the universal iota combinator and for a continuation-based approach to scope in natural language. He earned a bachelor's degree in English from Yale College in 1983, then a bachelor's degree in computer and information sciences in 1986 and a doctorate in linguistics in 1991, both from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His 2001 paper on Iota and Jot asks in its title whether they are the simplest languages, and he co-wrote the 2014 book Continuations and Natural Language. His work sits where formal language theory, combinatory logic and the study of meaning in human languages meet.