Jonathan Howell

My research is centered in and motivated by theoretical questions within formal semantics and pragmatics, with particular emphasis on meaning and context-sensitivity. However, this inquiry has led me to seek answers using experimental methods and tools from other linguistic subfields and related disciplines, including acoustic phonetics, linguistic typology, computational linguistics and psycholinguistics. In my dissertation, I present a first-ever methodology for search of online speech corpora (e.g. radio and television programs, podcasts) to investigate the semantic interpretation and phonetic realization different focus-sensitive constructions and truth-conditional pitch accent types.

In a second research program, I have investigatd modality and counterfactuals. Most recently I've been working on the semantics of the conditionnel morpheme in French and related expressions in English. In the future I plan to explore similar phenomena in lesser studied languages.

Some Publications

To appear. Web Harvest of Minimal Intonational Pairs (with Mats Rooth). Web as Corpus 2009 (WAC5), 7 September, San Sebastian, Spain.

To appear. Second Occurrence Focus and the Acoustics of Prominence. In On Linguistic Interfaces, eds. R. Folli & C. Ulbrich. Oxford University Press.

To appear. On modal interpretations of the French Conditionnel. To appear in Proceedings of the 39th Annual North East Linguistics Conference. GSLA Publications: UMass-Amherst.

2009. A corpus search methodology for focus realization. (with Mats Rooth). Poster presentation, 157th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Abstract appears in J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 4, pp. 2573-2573. [link]

2008. Why Nishnaabemwin is not 'Martian': In defence of readjustment rules. Poster presentation at the Canadian Linguistics Association Conference, University of British Columbia, May 31-June 2. [poster] [abstract]

2007. Second occurrence focus and the acoustics of prominence. In Charles Bond Chang and Hannah Haynie: Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 26). Cascadilla Press Proceedings Project. [paper]

TEACHING

TA, LING 302: Introduction to Phonology, Spring 08 (Instructor: Draga Zec)

TA, LING 101: Introduction to Linguistics, Spring 07 (Instructor: Molly Diesing)

Instructor, LING100: Testing the Language Instinct, Fall 05, Spring 06, Fall 06 (Freshman Writing Seminar)

SERVICE

Co-editor (with Effi Georgala), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory XV (2005).

Co-editor (with Masayuki Gibson). Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory XVI (2006).

Graduate School Academic Integrity Hearing Board, Cornell University, Spring 2006