Category Archives: Semantics

Linguistics Major Thomas Truong Selected as UMass Rising Researcher

It is our great pleasure to share the news that Linguistics Major Thomas Truong (Class of 2025) has been selected as one of this year’s Rising Researchers:

– https://www.umass.edu/gateway/research/stories/rising-researchers

As explained at the link above, the Rising Researcher Award is a University-wide honor that “recognizes undergraduate students who excel in research, challenge their intellect, and exercise exceptional creativity.”

Thomas was selected for the award based upon his independent research into the semantics of the past-marker ‘da’ in Vietnamese, research which he presented at this summer’s CreteLing and DGfS Summer School at the University of Goettingen.

For more information about Thomas’s work and his experiences as a UMass Linguistics Major, please check out the profile below:

– https://www.umass.edu/gateway/research/stories/rising-researchers/linguistics-language-semantics

Congratulations, Thomas!

Thomas Truong Receives Grant to Attend Linguistics Summer Schools

Please join us in congratulating undergraduate Linguistics major Thomas Truong, who has received a competitive scholarship to attend this year’s DGfS Summer School at the University of Goettingen. All of Thomas’s airfare, lodging, and tuition will be covered by the grant. In addition, Thomas will be giving a student poster presentation of his research on the semantics of the Vietnamese tense/aspect particle “da”, which was conducted as part of an independent study course this year with Seth Cable.

Alongside the DGfS school, Thomas was also accepted to and will be attending this year’s Crete Summer School of Linguistics (a.k.a. ‘CreteLing’) in July.

Congratulations, Thomas!

Shay Hucklebridge Receives Multiple Grants to Support Fieldwork

We’re very happy to share the news that recent alum Shay Hucklebridge has received two highly competitive grants to support her fieldwork on the Dene languages of Northern Canada.

Shay was selected for both a Jacobs Research Fund grant (for $4077) and a grant from the Phillips Fund for Native American Research (for $3200). This is in addition to the $115,000 SSHRC postdoctoral research fellowship that Shay was awarded last year, and which continues to fund her scholarship at Memorial University in Newfoundland.

This summer, Shay will be conducting fieldwork on the Northern Dene languages of the Mackenzie Subgroup, including Tlicho Yatii, Sahtúgot’iné, K’ashógot’ine, and Shíhgot’ine. The project will be focusing upon the the languages’ future-marking morphology, and the possible variation in their semantics, as either temporal operators or modal operators.

Please join us in congratulating Shay!

Jelly Hill Presents Talk at ILLC Workshop on Causation & Modality

PhD Student Jelly Hill recently presented an invited talk at the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation, as part of their Workshop on Causation and Modality in Logic and Language. Titled “Two Peas in a Causal Pod: Testing the Relationship Between Modals and Causatives”, this talk highlighted the research that forms Jelly’s recent (second) Generals Paper.

Congratulations Jelly!

Kimberly Johnson Accepts Full Time Position at Chickasaw Language Revitalization Program

Please join us in congratulating alum Kimberly Johnson, who has just accepted a full time position as the Lead Transcriptionist for the Chickasaw Language Revitalization Program.

Starting this May, Kimberly will be working alongside Dr. Samantha Cornelius and Dr. Juliet Morgan, to advance the documentation of the Chickasaw language, including the development of a searchable database of Chickasaw.

Congratulations, Kimberly!

Mariam Asatryan gives talk at Theoretical Linguistics and Languages of the Caucasus (TLLC), in Istanbul

On June 18th, Mariam Asatryan presented her research in a talk at Theoretical Linguistics and Languages of the Caucasus (TLLC), held at Istanbul Bilgi University.

The talk, titled “Inq: An Uncompetitive Pronoun in Eastern Armenian and Its Challenges to Binding Principles”, is a development of her first Generals Paper. She will also present this work again later this summer, as a flash talk at GLOW in Asia XIII (details to be announced later).

Kimberly Johnson in Natural Language Semantics

A paper by our own Kimberly Johnson appears in the newest issue of Natural Language Semantics. Based upon her recent doctoral dissertation, “Time and Evidence in the Graded Tense System of Mvskoke (Creek)“, provides a detailed description and analysis of the evidential meaning of tense & aspect morphology in the Mvskoke language. The abstract is copied below.

Congratulations, Kimberly!

Abstract: “In recent years, much attention has been given to the puzzling relationship between tense and evidence type found in languages where a single morpheme appears to encode both reference to time and to the evidential source for the assertion. In natural language, tense has long been understood as serving to locate the time at which the proposition expressed by the sentence holds. The two main theories of evidentials both agree that these morphemes serve to identify the type of evidence the speaker has for their assertion. In languages with evidential-tense morphology, these two categories of meaning are intertwined in ways that are unexpected given our understanding of both phenomena. Specifically, these evidential-tense morphemes appear to encode reference to a time that is linked to the situation in which the speaker gains evidence for their assertion. Two competing approaches have emerged in the literature as to whether these evidential-tense morphemes make crucial reference to the time evidence was acquired (Lee 2013; Smirnova 2013) or to the time and place of the speaker with respect to the event (Faller 2004; Chung 2007). This paper examines the temporal and evidential properties of the Mvskoke (or Creek) graded past tense system and finds novel support for the view in which evidential-tenses encode Evidence Acquisition Time (EAT). Mvskoke is shown to have three evidential-tenses which form part of its graded tense system, comprising recent, middle, and distant past. The main proposal is a formalization of EAT as a moment of belief-state change, i.e., the moment the speaker comes to believe the proposition. It is shown that Mvskoke’s evidential-tenses are compatible with a range of evidence types, and this distribution is explained through interactions with viewpoint aspect.”

Angelika Kratzer is this year’s John Locke Lecturer (April 27- June 1)

Angelika Kratzer will give this year’s John Locke Lectures at Oxford University:

https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/john-locke-lectures

As the website explains, “most of the greatest philosophers of the last half century have been Locke Lecturers”. Looking back over the years, it seems that Angelika is the second linguist(philosopher) who has been invited (the last one was in 1968-69). There will be a total of six lectures (April 27-June 1) and the overall title is ‘Reports of what we say, know, or believe’.

Lecture 1 ‘The puzzles: What we are trying to understand’ 

Lecture 2 ‘Reporting what we say’

Lecture 3 ‘Modal building blocks’

Lecture 4 ‘Reporting what we know’

Lecture 5 ‘Reporting what we believe’

Lecture 6 ‘Towards a typology’ 


For those of us unfortunately not in Oxford at that time, note that the website includes links to recordings of past lectures and handouts. Hopefully, we will be able to virtually enjoy Angelika’s presentation.

Paper by Kimberly Johnson Published in Natural Language Semantics

Kimberly Johnson’s paper “Time and evidence in the graded tense system of Mvskoke (Creek)”  has just been published in Natural Language Semantics. Based upon portions of her recently defended dissertation, this paper explores the direct and indirect evidence inferences associated with four past tenses in Mvskoke (Creek), an indigenous language spoken in Oklahoma. Access the full text of her article here: https://rdcu.be/cKGzl

Kimberly Johnson Successfully Defends Dissertation

We’re delighted to share the news that Kimberly Johnson has successfully defended her dissertation, “On the Semantics of Verbal and Nominal Tense in Mvskoke (Creek)”.

The defense, which took place on Friday March 11th, was held remotely. Noteworthy among the participants were her two committee members from outside of UMass, Daniel Altshuler (University of Oxford) and Jack Martin (College of William and Mary). The other members of her committee are Ana Arregui and Seth Cable (Chair).

Dr. Johnson’s dissertation concerns the semantics of graded, evidential, and nominal tenses in Mvskoke (Creek), an endangered Muskogean language of North America. It is the first in-depth formal and empirical treatment of this system, and greatly advances our understanding of both verbal and nominal tenses across languages.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Kimberly Johnson!

A screenshot of Dr. Kimberly Johnson with her committee members, classmates, and the UMass Dissertation Fish (held by Seth Cable).