dissertation & related work
- 2023, Monograph. Actuality inferences: causality, aspect, and modality. Oxford University Press.
- related material: implicatives, enough/too constructions, ability
- 2024. [Keynote.] On the interaction of aspect and causality in two Hindi/Urdu ability constructions. (Formal) Approaches to South Asian Languages 14. Apr 4-6.
- 2023. Ms, under review. Variable implicativity in enough constructions: causation, coercion, and composition.Dec 30.
[Ms updates the technical treatment of aspectual composition and coercion from the monograph above.]
- 2023. Causal semantics for implicative verbs. Journal of Semantics, Oct 3.
[Lingbuzz preprint]
- 2022. Causation and the logic of ability. COCOA hybrid meeting, CNRS, Paris. Jun 28.
- 2020. Poster: Causality, aspect and modality in actuality inferences. SALT 30, Cornell University. Aug 17-20. [Preprint of proceedings paper.]
- 2020. Causal dependence in ability and actuality [slides]. University of Amsterdam, ILLC, Discourse in Philosophy Colloquium.
- 2020. Causal necessity and sufficiency in implicative entailments. Guest lecture at the ILLC, University of Amsterdam. Apr 20.
- 2019. Dissertation. Causality,
aspect, and modality in actuality inferences. [pdf]
- 2019, talk. Causal dependence in
ability and actuality. 20th Semantics Fest, Stanford
University, Mar 15-16. Also presented at the 11th
California Universities Semantics & Pragmatics Workshop
(CUSP 11), Berkeley, Oct 27-28, 2018 (handout).
- 2018, invited talk. Necessity,
sufficiency, and actuality: causal dependence in
implicative inferences. Linguistics colloquium,
Rutgers University (February 28) and University of
Southern California (March 5). Updated version presented at Saarland University, Dept of English, Nov 6, 2019.
- 2017, talk. Implicative inferences and causality in
enough and too constructions. Amsterdam
Colloquium, December 20-22. [Handout]
- 2016. Causal
necessity and sufficiency in implicativity. SALT
26, University of Texas at Austin, May 12-15. [Poster]
ongoing work
- Causal models for event types and event structure
Complex, bounded event types (e.g., accomplishments) link together simpler events, states, properties, and individuals/thematic roles with respect to their relationship to a goal or point of culmination. Type-level causal models provide a way of capturing the world knowledge that constitutes these types and feeding into lexical semantic structure in a way that interacts with (non-)culminating interpretations under modification by grammatical aspects and aspectual verbs. Joint work with Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal.
- 2022.[Workshop presentation.] Causal models are (not) about events. Converging on Causal Ontology Analyses (COCOA). Oct 12.
- 2022. [Talk] Modeling progress: event types, causal models, and the imperfective paradox. WCCFL 40, Stanford University. May 13-15. [Paper pre-print]
- 2022. [Talk] Aiming at culmination: causal models, event types, and the imperfective paradox. Agency and Intentions in Language 2 (AIL2), Harvey Mudd College. Jan 12-14.
- 2021. [Seminar] Modeling progress: event types, causal models, and the imperfective paradox. Department of Linguistics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Nov 30.
- 2021. [Workshop presentation.] Modeling progress towards completion: causal models and the imperfective paradox. Converging on Causal Ontology Analyses (COCOA). July 10.
- Causation, semantics of aspect and telicity
A causal approach to the mereological structure of telic predicates,
extensional approaches to (non-)culminating aspects. Joint work with
Hana Filip.
- Causal dependence relations and causative verbs
Causal modeling approaches to lexical semantics,
semantics/pragmatics of periphrastic
causatives.
- Exceptives, unless, and quantification
Semantics and pragmatics of exceptive expressions,
unless-conditionals, and quantified
generalizations. Joint experimental work with Dan Lassiter.
- 2019, with Dan Lassiter. Unless, exceptives,
and the pragmatics of conditionals. Manuscript.
- 2018, with Dan Lassiter. An experimental look at
the negative implications of exceptives.
NELS 48, University of Iceland,
Oct 27-29. [Poster]
- 2015, poster, with Dan Lassiter. Unless as a restrictor of non-universal
quantifiers. XPRAG 2015, Chicago,
Illinois. July 16-18.
- 2014, manuscript. Unless,
exceptionality, and the pragmatics of
conditional statements. Qualifying paper, Stanford.
- 2014, with Dan Lassiter. Unless: an experimental
approach (with Dan Lassiter). SuB 19. [Slides]
-
2014. Unless, exceptionality,
and conditional strengthening. ESSLI Student
Session 2014.[Slides]
- 2013, manuscript. "Unless," exceptionality, and
conditional strengthening.
Final essay for M.Phil. semantics module, Oxford.
- Semantics and pragmatics of conditionals
Conditional perfection, quantified indicative
conditionals, effects of tense. Joint work where stated.
- 2018, invited talk. Quantified indicative conditionals and the
relative reading of "most". Rutgers, Feb 28.
Joint work with Sven Lauer.
- 2016, with Sven Lauer. Quantified indicative conditionals and the
relative reading of "most". SuB 21, University of
Edinburgh, September 4-6.
- 2015, talk. Don't panic: the inverse reading of
most conditionals. 17th SemFest,
Stanford, March 11. Joint work with Sven Lauer.
- 2015, talk. Towards an
explanatory account of conditional perfection. LSA
2015, Portland, OR, Jan 8-11.
- 2013. If
... (and only if): conditional perfection and
completeness. M.Phil. thesis,
Oxford.
other work
- Focus, processing, grammaticality
Processing accounts of weak crossover and anaphoric
reference; the effects of focus on coreference phenomena
- 2016. Focus
improvements to weak crossover. Qualifying paper, Stanford.
Comments: This is a very incomplete piece of
work.
I remain interested in the
issues this project raises (the semantic
analysis of questions and focus, processing
accounts of grammaticality judgements, the
differences and overlap between emphatic focus
and focus particles), and hope to return to
these questions at some point when I am better
equipped to tackle at least one of them).
- 2013. Weak crossover and the direct association
hypothesis. LFG 13, University of Debrecen,
Hungary, July 18-20.
- 2012, talk. Weak crossover and the direct association
hypothesis. 9th South of England
Lexical-Functional Grammar Meeting (SE-LFG09).
School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
November 3.