Semantics and Pragmatics
Research interests in Semantics and Pragmatics extend to a number of neighboring fields: Syntax and Morphology (within Linguistics) and Logic and Ontology (within Philosophy).
Research Collaboration in Semantics:
Collaborative work with Eva Kehayia, one of the co-principal investigators of the project Words in the mind; Words in the brain, funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, and involving researchers from across Canada and around the world.Publications in Semantics - Books
- Semantics: A Reader (edited in collaboration with Steven Davis), Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Sets, Orders and Lattices (mss)
- Grammatical Structure and its Interpretation (mss)
Publications in Semantics - Articles
Published articles that pertain to the semantics of noun phrases, the distinction between mass and count nouns, natural language connectors and ambiguity and the related concepts of deixis, indeterminacy and vagueness.
Relational Words:
- Implicit complements: a dilemma for model theoretic semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy. v. 35, n. 4, pp. 313-359, 2012.
- The model theory for words with context-sensitive implicit arguments. Context-Dependence, Perspective and Relativity. Mouton de Gruter, edited by François Recanati, Isidora Stojanovic and Neftali Villaneuva, 2010, pp. 127-140.
- On the semantics pragmatics distinction. Synthèse : v. 165, 2008, pp. 373-384.
- French relational words, context sensitivity and implicit arguments. Making Semantics Pragmatic. Elsevier Science, edited by Ken Turner.
Noun Phrases:
- Semantic categorization. Handbook of categorization in cognitive science. Elsevier, edited by Henri Cohen and Claire Lefebvre, 2005, pp. 167-185.
- Phrase structure grammar and model theory. Linguistic Analysis : v. 36, n. 1-4, pp. 419-440, 2010.
- Collectivity and distributivity internal to English noun phrases. Language Sciences : v. 18, 1996 pp. 443-468.
- Indefinite noun phrases and plurality in English. Current Research in the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface : v. 1, 1991, pp. 1-21.
- Plural noun phrases and their readings: A reply to Lasersohn. Linguistics and Philosophy : v. 13, n. 4, 1990, pp. 477-485.
- Bare plurals as plural indefinite noun phrases. Defeasible Reasoning and Knowledge Representation. Dordrecht, D., Reidel Publishing, edited by Greg Carlson, Henry Kyburg and Ron Loui, 1990, pp. 139-191.
- The readings of plural noun phrases (in English). Linguistics and Philosophy : v. 10, 1987, pp. 199-220.
Mass and Count:
- Mass terms. Philosophy Compass: v. 7, n.10, pp. 712-730.
- Introduction to The syntax-semantics interface and the origins of philosophy by J. Lambek. The Mental Lexicon : v. 4, n.1, pp. 147-149.
- Lexical access of mass and count nouns: How word recognition reaction times correlate with lexical and morpho-syntactic processing (with Sara Mondini, Eva Kehayia, Giorgio Arcara and Gonia Jerema). The Mental Lexicon : v. 4, n. 3, 2009, pp. 354-379.
- The lexical semantics of English count and mass nouns. The Breadth and Depth of Semantic Lexicons Kluwer, edited by E. Viegas, 1999, pp. 19-37.
- The mass count distinction: Evidence from psycholinguistic performance (with Eva Kehayia and Vanessa Taler). Brain and Language : v. 68, 1999, pp. 205-211.
- On the semantic differences between mass nouns and count nouns. Parts and wholes: conceptual part-whole relations and formal mereology. Workshop Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, August 1994, pp. 157-160.
- Towards a common semantics for English count and mass nouns. Linguistics and Philosophy : v. 15, 1992, pp. 597-640.
English Connectors:
- Three theories of anaphora and a puzzle due to C.S. Peirce. Proceedings of the 10th Amsterdam Colloquium, Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation, University of Amsterdam, edited by P. Dekker and M. Stokhof, 2000, pp. 283-298.
- Anaphora and some non-commutative uses of or. The Journal of Pragmatics : v. 28, 1997 pp. 373-381.
- Contraposition and Lewis Carroll's Barber Shop Paradox. Dialogue : v. 36, 1997, pp. 247-251.
- Peirce's challenge to material implication as a model of if. Analysis : v. 55, 1995 pp. 280-282.
- Grammatical number and donkey Anaphora in English. Revue québecoise de linguistique : v. 23, 1994, pp. 35-60.
Ambiguity:
- Ambiguity, indeterminacy, deixis and vagueness: Evidence and Theory. Semantics: A Reader. Oxford University Press, edited by S. Davis and B. Gillon, 2004, pp. 157-187.
- Ambiguity, generality, and indeterminacy: Tests and Definitions. Synthèse : v. 85, 1990, pp. 391-416.
- Truth theoretical semantics and ambiguity. Analysis : v. 50, 1990, pp. 178-182.