KMap
The semantics of human languages involves complex representations and operations over those representations. The goal of my research is to design logics in which one can define representations and operations over those representations that closely mimic what is observed in human languages. This allows us to then model how people interpret the meanings of arbitrary expressions in the languages they speak. To understand how meaning in human languages works in general, we need evidence from a large variety of languages. For this reason my research has a strong empirical component. I have done primary fieldwork on a number of Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. I work to describe, document, and analyze these languages in their own right, while also discovering what they can tell us about how human languages work in general.

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Courses
  • AIL
    American Indian Languages

  • IFS
    Introduction to Formal Semantics

  • IMAL
    Introduction to Mathematical Approaches to Language

  • FS
    Formal Semantics

  • FFL
    Formal Foundations of Linguistics

Grants
  • Funding agency logo
    Comparative Morphosemantics of Plurality

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2020

    $449.0K
    Active
  • Funding agency logo
    Collaborative Research: Investigations into Tone and Stress in a Complex Prosodic Systems

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2016

    $166.9K
Publications (59)
Recent
  • Tonal variability and marginal contrast: Lexical pitch accent in Uspanteko

    2022

  • The phonetics and phonology of Uspanteko (Mayan)

    2022

  • Xoqoneb’: una historia uspanteka de las tierras altas centrales de Guatemala

    2022

  • Dependent pluractionality in Piipaash (Yuman)

    2022

  • Dependent numerals in Kaqchikel

    2021

  • A corpus of K’iche’ annotated for morphosyntactic structure

    2021

  • Social meaning in repeated interactions

    2020

  • Proposing to ignore discourse updates in Colloquial Singaporean English (CSE)

    2020

  • Pluractionality and distributivity on the edge of Mesoamerica

    2020

  • Towards functional, agent-based models of dogwhistle communication

    2020

  • Signaling without Saying: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Dogwhistles

    2019

  • Dogwhistles, Trust, and Ideology

    2019

  • Dogwhistles, trust and ideology

    2019

  • Dogwhistles and the at-issue/non-at-issue distinction

    2019

  • Pluractionality and distributivity

    2019

  • Basic K'ichee'Grammar: 38 Lessons Revised Edition

    2019

  • Contrasting code-switching theories: insights from Kaqchikel-Spanish code-switched nominal constructions

    2019

  • The roots of measurement

    2018

  • Expressive updates, much?

    2018

  • Donkeys under discussion

    2018

  • How dogwhistles work

    2018

  • Nasal hardening and aspect allomorphy in Kaqchikel

    2018

  • Adverbs and variability in Kaqchikel agent focus: A reply to Erlewine (2016)

    2018

  • The composition of stativity in Chuj

    2018

  • Prosodic smothering in Macedonian and Kaqchikel

    2018

  • Pluractionality in mayan

    2017

  • Compositional semantics: An introduction to the syntax/semantics interface by Pauline Jacobson

    2017

  • A demonstration-based account of (pluractional) ideophones

    2016

  • Mayan Semantics

    2016

  • Variation in dependent indefinites

    2016

  • Introduction to Mayan Linguistics

    2016

  • Swarms: Spatiotemporal Grouping Across Domains

    2016

  • Expressive, much?

    2015

  • Linguistically establishing discourse context: Two case studies from Mayan languages

    2015

  • At-issue proposals and appositive impositions in discourse

    2015

  • AN OVERVIEW OF MAYAN PHONOLOGY, SYNTAX, AND SEMANTICS

    2015

  • More than words: Towards a development-based approach to language revitalization

    2014

  • Dependent indefinites and their post-suppositions

    2014

  • The prosodic structure of inflection in Kaqchikel (Mayan)

    2014

  • Quantizing scalar change

    2013

  • Accent in Uspanteko

    2013

  • Language revitalization and the problem of development in Guatemala: Case studies from health care

    2012

  • Ways of pluralizing events

    2012

  • The pragmatics of quantifier scope: A corpus study

    2012

  • A scalar account of Mayan positional roots

    2012

  • Morphological alternations at the intonational phrase edge

    2012

  • Pluractional distributivity and dependence

    2011

  • Agent focus morphology without a focused agent: restrictions on objects in Kaqchikel

    2011

  • Crossing the appositive/at-issue meaning boundary

    2011

  • So that we don’t lose words: reconstructing a Kaqchikel medical lexicon

    2011

  • Two binding puzzles in Mayan

    2011

  • Latest insertion in K’ichee’

    2010

  • Non-defeasible Counterfactuality Blocks Epistemic Inference: Evidence from" If not for" Counterfactuals

    2010

  • if not for” counterfactuals: negating causality in natural language

    2010

  • A case-agreement split in Kaqchikel

    2009

  • Varieties of Distributivity:'One by One'vs' Each'

    2009

  • Allomorphy and K’ichee’prosodic structure. Ms., UC Santa Cruz

    2008

  • Observations on the syntax of adjunct extraction in Kaqchikel

    2007

  • Robert henderson

    1894

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