How do we undertake, attribute and avoid commitments through language? How is narrative perspective grounded in the language used? My research addresses bigger questions about language and communication, and I'm always keen to develop new ways to tackle such issues, bringing together researchers from different fields.
My research combines insights and techniques from a range of disciplines. To date, I have combined the fields of semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, classical scholarship on Ancient Greek, computational linguistics, experimental linguistics and narratology. Example projects are my NWO Veni project on speech reports and my ERC Starting Grant project on perspective in language.
In my current research, I have broadened the scope even further and also study how we take on commitments in communication. As part of this, I am currently leading an experimental project on the assignment of commitments, together with Harriet Yates, Peter de Swart and Bob van Tiel. We have shown in a proof of method study that we can use fEMG, facial electromyography, to measure norm violations in discourse and from there derive the conversational commitments taken on. This method can now be used to learn more about what happens when we communicate. You can find our paper about the proof-of-method study here. Feel free to contact me if you would like to learn more about this.
research fields
- semantics (including formal semantics)
- pragmatics (including experimental pragmatics)
- philosophy of language
- Ancient Greek linguistics
- digital humanities
research topics
- perspective in language
- commitments through language
- indexicality
- evidentiality
- speech and attitude reports
- tense
- aspect
- performativity
- statistical natural-language processing