I am a PhD student in Linguistics at UMass. Before coming to Amherst, I studied Linguistics and Philosophy at the Humboldt University and the Free University in Berlin. My main interests are in formal semantics and pragmatics of natural language. I am also very interested in psycholinguistic perspectives on theoretical issues in this area.
Currently, I am exploring a morphological distinction in German definites, which seems to provide excellent testing grounds for a number of theoretical issues in dynamic semantics and presupposition theory. A first overview of the relevant data and their theoretical implications was presented at the OSU Presupposition Accommodation workshop. [See my poster and poster-handout]
I have done experimental work on presuppositions for my first generals paper, mainly looking at the German additive particle ‘auch’ (’too’) [see my Journal of Semantics paper (to appear)]. I think that psycholinguistic work on issues in formal semantics is an exciting area, and plan to continue this line of work in the future.
Another project of mine in formal semantics concerns so-called intensional transitive verbs. By reviewing the different empirical motivations for the competing theoretical accounts and based on some new data, I argue that at least two types of intensional transitive verbs need to be distinguished [See my SALT 16 paper]. I am currently following up on this with an eye tracking study, which tests whether the theoretical differences I propose are reflected in processing.
A further line of work that intrigues me is that of linguistic fieldwork. My Humboldt University master’s thesis ‘Focus Marking in Kikuyu’ looked at the interplay of syntax and information structure in Kikuyu, a Bantu language spoken in Kenya [See my contribution to a volume edited by Aboh, Hartmann, and Zimmermann], and in the spring of 2005, I did fieldwork on Kono (spoken in Sierra Leone), as part of a ‘Field Methods’ class.
