Research Interests
My primary research interests are in the areas of semantics and pragmatics. The theme of my research is context dependence with the aim of better understanding how compositional semantics interacts with discourse structure and discourse coherence. My monograph, Events, States and Times. An essay on narrative discourse in English (2016, De Gruyter) investigates the temporal interpretation of narrative discourse, looking at the semantics and pragmatics of the word, now, and past and present tenses in English. My monograph (co-authored with Robert Truswell), Extraction from Coordinate Structures at the Syntax-Discourse Interface, explores interactions between syntactic structure and discourse structure, through a focused case study of patterns of extraction involving the word, and. It is forthcoming with Oxford University Press next year.
My research also explores how literary discourse motivates particular extensions of dynamic-semantic frameworks. In particular, I am exploring the phenomenon of imaginative resistance in fiction and writing a new monograph on garden-pathing in the French novella, Sylvie. The monograph (co-authored with Dag Haug) is entitled Literature as a Formal Language (under contract with Routledge). It is an ode to Richard Montague’s pioneering work in the 1970s.
I have also worked on the phonetics, phonology and documentation of Osage and have active interests in philosophy of language and philosophy of literature (including their intersections, with broader questions in philosophy of art and narratology). My new edited volume, Linguistics meets Philosophy, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Please see below for further details. My research can also be downloaded at Google Scholar and ORCID. Here is my Academic Tree.
Books
Events, States and Times. An essay on narrative discourse in English. Warsaw/Berlin: de Gruyter. (2016).
The Semantics of Plurals, Focus, Degrees, and Times Essays in the Honor of Roger Schwarzschild. (co-edited with Jessica Rett. Springer. (2019)
A course in semantics (co-authored with Terence Parsons and Roger Schwarzschild) Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press (2019)
Selected Work
- Coping with Imaginative Resistance (with Emar Maier). Ms., comments welcome.
- Formal properties of ‘now’ revisited (with Una Stojnić). Ms., comments welcome.
- If pictures are stative, what does this mean for discourse interpretation? (with Julian Schlöder), Sinn und Bedeutung 25.
- A puzzle about narrative progression and causal reasoning, in The language of fiction, E. Maier and A. Stokke (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press. (forthcoming).
- Death on the Freeway: Imaginative resistance as narrator accommodation (with Emar Maier), in Making Worlds Accessible: Festschrift for Angelika Kratzer. Amherst: UMass ScholarWorks. (forthcoming).
- (Non)culmination by abduction (with Zsófia Gyarmathy), Linguistics 58(5): 1373-1411.
- By now: Change of State, Epistemic Modality and Evidential Inference (with Laura Michaelis), Journal of Linguistics 56(3): 515-539. (2020).
- Tense and temporal adverbs ("I learned last week that there would now be an earthquake"),The Blackwell Companion to Semantics, D. Gutzmann, L. Matthewson, C. Meier, H. Rullmann, E. Zimmermann (eds). (2020).
- The present perfective paradox across languages by Astrid DeWit (review), Language 94(2): 471-475. (2018).
- Factors licensing embedded present tense in speech reports (with Corien Bary, Kristen Syrett and Peter de Swart), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, U. Sauerland and S. Solt (eds.), vol. 1, ZASPiL 60, pp. 127–142. ZAS, Berlin. (2018).
- 'Now' with subordinate clauses (with Sam Carter), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 27, D. Burgdorf, J. Collard, S. Maspong, and B. Stefánsdóttir (eds), pp. 358-376. (2017).
- The semantics of provisional temporal anaphors and cataphors (with Dag Haug), presented at 40th GLOW Colloquium and Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Sprachwissenschaft. (2017).
- On double access, cessation and parentheticality (with Valentine Hacquard, Tom Roberts and Aaron White), Proceedings of SALT 25, S. D'Antonio, C. Little, M. Moroney,and M. Wiegand (eds), pp. 18-37. (2015).
- An argument for definitional adequacy of RESULT and NARRATION (with Károly Varasdi), Proceedings of SALT 25, S. D'Antonio, C. Little, M. Moroney,and M. Wiegand (eds), pp. 38-56. (2015).
- Double access (with Corien Bary), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 19, E. Csipak and H. Zeijlstra (eds.), 89-106. (2014).
- In defense of the reference time (with Susanna Melkonian), Semantics‐Syntax Interface 1(2):133–149. (2014).
- A typology of partitive aspectual operators, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 32(3): 735-775. (2014).
- Commentary by Ana Arregui
- Discourse transparency and the meaning of temporal locating adverbs, Natural Language Semantics 22(1): 55-88. (2014).
- Correlating cessation with double access (with Roger Schwarzschild), Proceedings of the 19th Amsterdam Colloquium, M. Aloni, M. Franke and F. Roelofsen (eds.), pp. 43-50. (2013).
- There is no neutral aspect, Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 23, pp. 40-61. (2013).
- Moment of Change, Cessation Implicatures and Simultaneous Readings (with Roger Schwarzschild), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 17, E. Chemla, V. Homer, and G. Winterstein (eds.), pp. 45-62. (2012).
- Aspectual meaning meets discourse coherence: A look at the Russian imperfective, Journal of Semantics 29(1): 39-108. (2012).
- Meaning of ‘now’ and other temporal location adverbs, Logic, Language and Meaning: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6042, M. Aloni & K. Schulz (eds.), 183–192. Heidelberg: Springer. (2010).
- Quantity insensitive iambs in Osage, International Journal of American Linguistics 75(3): 365-398. (2009). (An earlier and longer version entitled “Osage fills the gap: The quantity insensitive iamb and the typology of feet” is available on the ROA)
- Narrative effects in Russian indirect reports and what they reveal about the meaning of the past tense, Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 18, T. Friedman & S. Ito (eds.), pp. 19-36. CLC Publications, Cornell University. (2008).
- Parenthetical null topic constructions in Romance (with Viviane Deprez), Romance Linguistics 2006, José Camacho et al (eds.), pp. 1-15. Amsterdam: Johns Benjamins. (2007).
- WCO, ACD and what they reveal about complex demonstratives, Natural Language Semantics 15(3): 265-277. (2007).