meaning @ northwestern

We are interested in a range of topics relating to meaning, including semantic and pragmatic theory, the semantics-pragmatics interface, information structure, intonational meaning, game-theoretical approaches to pragmatics and their empirical verification, quantification, comparatives, events, number, focus, modality, reference, anaphora, and conditionals. We use a variety of methodologies including:

• formal semantics and pragmatics
• logic & philosophy of language
• experimental semantics and pragmatics
• language acquisition
• psycholinguistics
• computational methods for extracting semantic information from text
• cross-linguistic comparison

Gregory Ward's research interests situate themselves along the pragmatics-semantics frontier: identifying and distinguishing between those aspects of meaning that are a function of the linguistic system (semantics) and those that are a function of the use of that system in context (pragmatics). He is the faculty advisor to the Truth Conditional Project, an empirical investigation of the impact that various types of conversational implicature have on the assignment of truth conditions. His other research interests include pragmatic theory, information structure (especially word order variation), intonational meaning, and reference.