Professor Emerita of
Linguistics
The Ohio State University
Affiliate, Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science
My main areas of specialization within linguistics are formal semantics
and pragmatics. Within these fields, my principal research interests are:
- Anaphora,
definiteness, and specificity. Indexicals and proper names.
- Formal models of the
context of utterance and its role in interpretation: Presupposition,
focus, implicature, perspective, and domain
restriction
- The semantics and
pragmatics of modality, mood, tense, and aspect
My current projects mainly revolve around modelling how indexicality and
perspective influence interpretation in natural languages. I'm completing a
monograph on the subject, and related papers on Kaplan's notion of Character
and on the indexicality of English epistemic modal auxiliaries. See my
Papers
for the manuscripts.
I also have on-going work on
the relationship between pragmatics and semantics, and on dynamic
pragmatics.
I've been collaborating with David
Beaver, Mandy
Simons, and Judith
Tonhauser since 2006 on projects that pertain to projective meaning:
presupposition, conventional implicature, and other
non-assertoric aspects of utterance meaning. We currently have a
collaborative grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (2015-2020):
"What's the question? A cross-linguistic investigation into
compositional and pragmatic constraints on the question under
discussion".
My colleague at OSU Philosophy, Stewart Shapiro, and I
have a long-term project on natural language metaphysics. We're currently
working on papers on the problem of logical omniscience in epistemic modal
statements, and on Waismann's notion of open-texture
in meaning.
I'm a member of the editorial board of Semantics and
Pragmatics.
Contact Information:
Email: roberts DOT 21 AT osu.edu
