Luisa Marti, PhD (UConn)

Profile

I am a theoretical linguist with a specialization in semantics and its interfaces with morpho-syntax and pragmatics. My work investigates issues such as the syntax and semantics of grammatical number and of numerals, the semantics and pragmatics of definiteness and specificity, the nature of natural language quantification, the relationship between the morphology of quantifiers and the possible meanings they can express, and the representation of implicit content in the syntax of natural languages. I study these issues from a theoretical, cross-linguistic and experimental perspective. I work on Atara Imere, Spanish, German, English, Slovenian, Russian and other languages. I've recently held two British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grants, one on the scopal and identifiability properties of Russian indefinites (with Tania Ionin), and another one on the semantics and pragmatics of articles in Atara Imere, an understudied language of Vanuatu (with my colleague Coppe van Urk). I currently hold a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship to investigate the properties of numeral phrases across languages and what these reveal about the architecture of the human language faculty.

Research

Research Interests:

Semantics and its interfaces with morpho-syntax and pragmatics

Publications

(2022) “Zero N: Morphology and Semantics”, Natural Language Semantics, 30, 215–237

(2020a) Dual Numbers and the Typology of the Numeral-Noun Construction. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 19, 159–198.

(2020b) Numerals and the Theory of Number. Semantics and Pragmatics. 13, 3.

(2020c) Inclusive Plurals and the Theory of Number. Linguistic Inquiry, 51, 37-74.

(2015a) 'The morphosemantics of Spanish indefinites', Proceedings of SALT 25, 576-594

(2015b) 'Grammar vs. Pragmatics: Carving Nature at the Joints', Mind and Language, 30: 4, 437-473

(2010) 'A Unified Approach to Split Scope', Natural Language Semantics, 18:4, 435-70 (wih Klaus Abels)

(2009) 'Contextual Restrictions on Indefinites: Spanish algunos and unos', in A. Giannakidou and M. Rathert (eds.), Quantification, Definiteness and Nominalization, Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 22 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 108-132

(2008) 'The Semantics of Plural Indefinites in Spanish and Portuguese', Natural Language Semantics, 16:1, 1-37

(2007) 'Restoring Indefinites to Normalcy: an Experimental Study on the Scope of Spanish algunos', Journal of Semantics, 24:1, 1-25

(2006) 'Unarticulated Constituents Revisited', Linguistics and Philosophy, 29:2, 135-66 (reprinted in A. Kasher (ed.), Pragmatics: Critical Concepts II (London and New York: Routledge, 2011)

(2003) Contextual Variables, MITWPL, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA