Semantics
In semantics we approach the theory of grammar from the side of meaning, with theoretical and experimental research in a range of areas, including modality, attitude verbs, speech acts, argument structure, causal constructions, quantification, and anaphora.
Grammars pair sounds or gestures with meaning. In semantics we approach the theory of grammar from the side of meaning. What sorts of meanings does the grammar yield and by what rules are these meanings assembled? Answering these questions involves us in others. What is the syntax, relative to which sound and meaning are paired? How do the meanings of expressions relate to acts of using expressions and to various aspects of cognition, especially those deployed immediately in communication? And how does semantic knowledge develop in children? At Maryland we address these questions with theoretical and experimental research in a range of areas, including modality, tense, aspect, argument structure, causal constructions, comparatives, attitude reports, implicature, presupposition, reference, number and quantification.
Our work proceeds in close collaboration with colleagues in syntax, acquisition and psycholinguistics. We have a special relation to the Department of Philosophy, with a long history of connections between the two. Alexander Williams is an Associate Professor in the department, Valentine Hacquard is an Affiliate Professor, and we work closely with others in the department, especially professors Paolo Santorio and Fabrizio Cariani. Philosophy at Maryland is strong not only in language, but also in logic and the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Together with our students, we meet regularly at the Meaning Meeting.
Maryland is among a group of departments that participate in MACSIM, the annual Mid-Atlantic Colloquium of Studies in Meaning. Many of our semantics students also take courses in the Philosophy Department, and have led PHLING, a graduate student research group comprising students from the departments of linguistics and philosophy, which now continues as the Meaning Meeting.
Primary Faculty
Valentine Hacquard
Professor, Linguistics
Affliliate Professor, Philosophy
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
1401 F Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Alexander Williams
Associate Professor, Linguistics
Associate Professor, Philosophy
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
1401 D Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Secondary Faculty
Norbert Hornstein
Professor Emeritus, Linguistics
3416 G Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
Jeffrey Lidz
Professor and Chair, Linguistics
Member, Maryland Language Science Center
1413 Marie Mount Hall
College Park
MD,
20742
ActivitiesExplore more of our research activities
Syntactic Bootstrapping
A review of evidence for syntactic bootstrapping in the acquisition of verb meanings.
Author/Lead: Jeffrey Lidz, Elizabeth SwansonIn syntactic bootstrapping, children draw on syntactic information to constrain their hypotheses about word meanings. We review evidence for syntactic bootstrapping, focusing primarily on the acquisition of verb meanings. For verbs describing physical actions, children can use the argument structure from event descriptions to zero in on the verb meaning. For attitude verbs, which refer to mental states, the syntactic distribution is informative about their semantics. By making use of systematic syntax-semantics correspondences, syntactic bootstrapping provides a foothold for word learning when cues from the physical world are underinformative.
The main event in resultatives
Analyzing change in terms of Cause does more harm than good.
Author/Lead: Alexander WilliamsI explore what modification and negation tell us about the logical form of resultatives: a resultative relates the events of its two parts, but is a predicate of a third event, a change, equal to neither. This is important for explaining the construction—most significantly, the direct object restriction—and understanding how it differs from others that seem similar. It also shapes how we might use resultatives in the analysis of synthetic causatives.
A pragmatic solution to anankastic conditionals
Necessitation By Attitude.
Author/Lead: Valentine Hacquard, Jingyi ChenStandard accounts of modals and conditionals fail to derive the correct meaning of anankastic conditionals like ‘If you want to go to Harlem, you have to take the A train’, where it seems as if the modal in the consequent is restricted by the embedded complement of want (you go to Harlem), rather than by the whole antecedent (you want to go to Harlem). This has led to proposals for a special semantics for want (Condoravdi and Lauer, 2016) or a covert purpose clause associated with teleological (goal-oriented) modality (von Fintel and Iatridou, 2005). In this paper, we show that the apparent non-compositionality of anankastic conditionals is more general, and can be replicated with other modal flavors and attitude verbs: all can trigger what we call “harmonizing readings”. We offer a pragmatic account that generalizes across modal flavors and attitudes. Specifically, we argue that harmonizing arises when the meaning of the antecedent together with background assumptions gives rise to a modal inference that matches in flavor with the consequent modal. Our account predicts when harmonizing is possible and when it isn’t, without relying on any lexical or syntactic idiosyncrasies.
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