Isabelle Charnavel's website

Department of Linguistics
UCLA
3125 Campbell Hall
Box 951543
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543 – United States
email: icharnavel(AT)ucla(DOT)edu

Institut Jean Nicod
UMR 8129
Pavillon Jardin
Ecole Normale Supérieure
29, rue d'Ulm
F-75005 Paris - France
email: Isabelle(DOT)Charnavel(AT)ens(DOT)fr

I am a fifth-year graduate student in the UCLA Department of Linguistics, and I have just defended my dissertation at the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris (co-advised PhD).

My primary research interests are at the interface between theoretical syntax and semantics. In particular, I work on reflexivity and the interaction between binding and focus. I am also interested in psycholinguistics and the relationship between linguistic theory and language processing.

Education

University of California, Los Angeles

PhD candidate in Linguistics 2009-present
Master of Arts in Linguistics (Advisor: Dominique Sportiche) 2009

Institut Jean Nicod – Université Pierre et Marie Curie Paris VI-Jussieu

PhD (Ecole Doctorale : Cerveau, Cognition, Comportement) 2009-2011

Ecole Normale Supérieure de la rue d'Ulm, Paris

Student 2002-2007
Agrégation de grammaire 2005

University of Paris IV-Sorbonne

Master 2 de Lettres Classiques (Master of Arts in Classics 2)                       2006-2007
Maîtrise de Lettres Classiques (Master of Arts in Classics 1)                          2003-2004
Licence de Lettres Classiques (Bachelor of Arts in Classics)                            2002-2003

University of Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle

Licence d'études indiennes (Bachelor of Arts in Sanskrit studies) 2006-2007

Freie Universität, Berlin

Visiting student 2005-2006

Current Projects and Interests

Syntax and Semantics

Reflexivity - Anaphoricity and Logophoricity

Reflexive se, son propre, soi and lui-même in French
Reflexivity in Lakhota (based on field work)

Binding and Focus

Son propre ('his own') and lui-même ('himself') in French

Scope

Même/différent ('same'/'different') in French

Relational nouns and adjectives

Pertinence of animacy in syntax

Covert focus operators and scalarity

Exploration of E, même (even)

Psycholinguistics

Testing Reconstruction (with Dominique Sportiche and Ted Gibson)
Using the eye-tracking technique to understand sight-reading (Research Assistant for Carson Schütze, 2010)
Unaccusativity of reflexive se in French (with Flavia Adani and Nina Hyams, 2010)

Dance cognition

Exploring the cognitive structures of dance/movement and comparing them to that of sign languages, music and spoken languages (project integrated into Philippe Schlenker's larger project LINGUAE)

Published papers

- Peer-reviewed articles in proceedings or journals

2011 "On the Distribution of même in French and Pluractionality", in Berns, Janine, Haike Jacobs and Tobias Scheer (eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2009. Selected papers from 'Going Romance', Nice 2009; 55-70.

In this paper, I focus on the sentence-internal reading of même ('same') in French. I argue for an analysis in terms of events and I relate the analysis of même to the notion of pluractionality.

2011 "On French Possessive son propre ('his own'): Evidence for an Interaction between Intensification and Binding", in O. Bonami & P. Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 8; pp. 53–74.
http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss8/charnavel-eiss8.pdf

Based on French possessive son propre ('his own'), I show that intensification and binding interact with each other: the behavior of son propre can only be understood if the intensifying properties of propre ('own') are correlated with the binding properties of son propre ('his own').

2010 "Anaphoricity, Logophoricity and Intensification: the Puzzling Case of son propre in French", in S. Colina, A. Olarrea, A.-M. Carvalho (eds), Romance Linguistics 2009, selected papers from the 39th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Tucson, Arizona; Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

The goal of this paper is to shed light on the existence of an interaction between binding and intensification based on the behavior of French possessive son propre ('his own'). When propre ('own') intensifies the possessor, son propre ('his own') behaves like an anaphor or/and a logophor; but when propre intensifies the possessum, son propre does not exhibit any anaphoric properties.

2008 "Caractéristiques syntaxiques de la parenthèse en latin : linéarisation, délimitation et insertion", in Discours, 3.
http://discours.revues.org/index4573.html

The aim of the paper is to analyse the syntactic rules of the incidental clause -parenthetical sentence- in Latin. I propose that despite its syntactic autonomy, the incidental clause obeys precise syntactic contraints of insertion.

- Other published articles in proceedings

2011 "On French un même and Antispecificity", in Reich, Ingo et al. (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn & Bedeutung 15, pp. 133–147. Universaar – Saarland University Press: Saarbrücken, Germany, 2011.
http://universaar.uni-saarland.de/monographien/volltexte/2011/30/artikel/Charnavel_sub15.pdf

In this paper, I examine the definiteness problem raised by sentence-internal même ('same') in French, as in this language (vs. English), même does not only combine with the definite determiner (le même), but also with the indefinite article (un même).

2010 "On the sentence-internal Reading of French le même ('the same')", in Nan Li & David Lutz (eds.), Semantics and linguistic theory (SALT) 20, 216–232. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications.
http://elanguage.net/journals/index.php/salt/article/view/20.216

This article focuses on the sentence-internal reading of French le même ('the same') and addressees two main issues: the problem of definiteness and the problem of compositionality. I propose that le même is an existential quantifier over a plural event that is partitioned along participants or times.

2009 "On the Intensifier propre ('own') in French: a Counterpart of même ('self') in Possessive DPs?", in Ed Cormany, Satoshi Ito, & David Lutz (eds), Proceedings of the 19th Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) Conference, 72-90.
http://elanguage.net/journals/index.php/salt/article/viewFile/19.5/1864

I argue here that propre ('own') is a counterpart of the intensifier -même ('-self') in possessive DPs. More specifically, propre behaves like a flexible intensifier that can contrast either the possessor or the possessum with a contextually determined set of alternatives. Furthermore, I suggest that the parallelism between propre and même argues for a unification of the different uses of -même.

2009 "The Problem of Quantifiers in Object Position: a New Experimental Evidence against the Extra Computation that they are Supposed to Trigger", in Yukio Otsu (ed.), the Proceedings of the Tenth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics.

This paper is based on Hackl's idea of handling the theoretical problem of quantifiers in object position with sentence processing methodology. I use a self-paced reading experiment to examine quantifiers in object position in the case of French causative constructions (that exhibit the property of showing subject and object in the same linear position). A 2x2 comparison of the online processing of quantifiers and definite descriptions demonstrates that quantifiers in object position do not trigger a specific processing cost in this case.

2009 "The Online Processing of French Reflexives: Experimental Evidence for an Unaccusative Analysis" (with Flavia Adani and Nina Hyams), in Yukio Otsu (ed.), the Proceedings of the Tenth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics.

The aim of this paper is to provide experimental evidence showing that French reflexives behave like unaccusatives. Using the Cross Modal Lexical Priming technique, we compare the online processing of reflexives with that of unaccusatives and unergatives. Moreover, we argue that the VP-internal Subject Hypothesis should be integrated in the CMLP experimental investigation of languages like French that exhibit an auxiliary alternation between unaccusatives and unergatives.

2008 "L’alternance avoir été/être eu dans les auxiliaires du passé surcomposé en français : un nouvel argument pour le caractère syntaxique du morphème se", in Susie Jones (ed.), Actes du congrès annuel de l’Association Canadienne de Linguistique 2008/Proceedings of the 2008 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistics Association.
http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cla-acl/actes2008/CLA2008_Charnavel.pdf

In this paper, I provide a new argument in favor of a syntactic analysis of the reflexive se in French, based on novel data concerning auxiliaries in the French passé surcomposé: while unaccusatives present the auxiliary combination avoir été ('have been'), reflexives exhibit another one, namely être eu ('be had').

Manuscripts

Under review "Scalar Readings of French propre ('own'): a new argument for the existence of the scalarity operator E", UCLA-IJN manuscript.

Under review "A Unified Analysis of Iddi Terms (terms expressing identity and difference) - The Case of French", UCLA-IJN manuscript.

Under review "Sorting Out Binding Behaviors: the Case of Possessive son propre in French", UCLA-IJN manuscript.

2010 "On the Semantics of Agreement: the Case of Conjunction of Singular Quantifiers", UCLA manuscript.

2009 "Reflexivization in Lakhota: Lexical or Syntactic?", UCLA manuscript.

Based on field work, I describe the reflexive markers used in Lakhota, and I provide arguments showing that reflexivization in Lakhota is a syntactic process rather than a lexical one.

2009 Linking Binding and Focus: on Intensifying son propre in French. Master Thesis, University of California, Los Angeles.

The goal of this thesis is to explore the relation between intensification and binding in the light of French possessive son propre ('his own') and to show that these two modules of the grammar interact with each other. To this end, I argue that propre ('own') exhibits intensifying properties that have consequences on the binding properties of son propre ('his own').

2007 "Les énoncés parenthétiques chez Cicéron : syntaxe et pragmatique", Mémoire de Master 2 (Second M.A. Thesis), University of Paris IV-Sorbonne manuscript.

The goal of this thesis is to examine parenthetical sentences in the Latin language of Cicero: I first show the syntactic constraints of insertion, and I then analyse the pragmatics of this construction in various texts of Cicero.

2004 "Les subordonnées qui dépendent d’un nom et autres que les relatives en latin", Mémoire de Maîtrise (First M.A. Thesis), University of Paris IV-Sorbonne manuscript.

In this thesis, I examine non-relative clauses that depend on a noun in Latin. I first establish a typology of the clauses and the nouns involved in this kind of constructions, and I then analyse the relationship between them from a syntactic and semantic perspective.

External Talks and Posters

November 2011 "On French possessive son propre ('his own'): scalarity and locality", Invited talk at the ZAS, Berlin, Germany.

September 2011 "The Scalar Reading of French son propre ('his own'): Evidence for the Existence of a Scalarity Operator", Sinn und Bedeutung 16 (SuB16), Utrecht, Netherlands.

September 2010 "On French un même and Antispecificity", Sinn und Bedeutung 15 (SuB15), Saarbrücken, Germany.

April 2010 "On le même ('the same') in French", poster presented at the 20th Conference on Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT20), Vancouver, Canada.

December 2009 "On the Distribution of même ('same') in French and Pluractionality", Going Romance 23, Nice, France.

September 2009 "On French Possessive son propre ('his own'): Evidence for an Interaction between Intensification and Binding", 8th Syntax and Semantics Conference (CSSP 2009), Paris, France.

April 2009 "On the Intensifier propre ('own') in French: a Counterpart of même ('self') in Possessive DPs?", Conference on Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT19), Columbus, Ohio.

March 2009 "Anaphoricity, Logophoricity and Intensification: the Puzzling Case of son propre in French", 39th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL39), Tucson, Arizona.

March 2009 "The Problem of Quantifiers in Object Position: a New Experimental Evidence against the Extra Computation that they are Supposed to Trigger", 10th Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (TCP10), Tokyo, Japan.

March 2009 "The Online Processing of French Reflexives: Cross Modal Lexical Priming Experimental Evidence for their Unaccusativity" (with Flavia Adani and Nina Hyams), 10th Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (TCP10), Tokyo, Japan.

March 2009 "Reactivation of two Different VP-Internal Subject Positions (Unergative Verbs vs Unaccusative and Reflexive Verbs): Processing Evidence from French" (with Flavia Adani and Nina Hyams), poster at the 22th Annual Meeting of the CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing (CUNY2009), Davis, California.

June 2008 "L’alternance avoir été/être eu dans les auxiliaires du passé surcomposé en français : un nouvel argument pour le caractère syntaxique du morphème se", Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association (CLA Conference 2008), Vancouver, Canada.

Internal presentations

September 2011 "Théorie de la distribution des réfléchis : nouveaux arguments en faveur de la théorie classique" (theory of the distribution of reflexives: new arguments in favor of the classical theory), Poster presented at the Journée des doctorants de l'UPMC, Paris.

April 2011 "The scalar Reading of French son propre ('his own'): Evidence for the Existence of a Scalarity Operator, Talk presented at UCLA Syntax/Semantics seminar, Los Angeles

January 2010 "On the Sentence-internal Reading of French même ('same')", Talk presented at UCLA Syntax/Semantics seminar, Los Angeles.

December 2009 "On French Possessive son propre ('his own'): Evidence for an Interaction between Intensification and Binding", Talk presented at SIGMA Linguistic Meetings, Paris.

March 2009 "Reflexivization in Lakhota: Lexical or Syntactic?", Talk presented at UCLA Lakhota Conference, Los Angeles.

February 2009 "Anaphoricity, Logophoricity and Intensification: the Puzzling Case of son propre ('his own') in French", Talk presented at UCLA Syntax/Semantics seminar, Los Angeles.

October 2008 "The Online Processing of French Reflexives", Talk presented at UCLA Psycholinguistics seminar ('Psychobabble'), Los Angeles.

March 2008 "Ge-Greek: an OT Analysis of Perfect Reduplication in Ancient Greek", Talk presented at UCLA Phonology 2 Class Conference, Los Angeles.

Teaching experience (as Teaching Assistant)

Department of Cognitive Studies at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris (ENS Ulm)

Fall 2011 DEC-B09-S1: Syntax (Professors: Léa Nash and Dominique Sportiche)

DEC-C02-S1: Introduction to Linguistic Theory (Professors: Vincent Homer and Dominique Sportiche)

Fall 2010 DEC-B09-S1: Syntax (Professor: Elena Soare)

DEC-C02-S1:Introduction to Linguistic Theory (Professors: Vincent Homer, Luigi Rizzi and Dominique Sportiche)

Fall 2009 DEC-B09-S1: Syntax (Professor: Elena Soare)

DEC-C02-S1:Introduction to Linguistic Theory (Professors: Luigi Rizzi, Benjamin Spector and Dominique Sportiche)

DEC-B11-S1: Semantics (Professors: Emmanuel Chemla and Philippe Schlenker)

Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Winter 2010 Ling. 165B: Syntax II (Professor: Dominique Sportiche)

Spring 2009 Ling. 127: Syntactic Typology and Universals (Professor: Anoop Mahajan)

Winter 2009 Ling. 165B: Syntax II (Professor: Dominique Sportiche)

Fall 2008 Ling. 120B: Syntax I (Professor: Carson Schütze)

Experience as Research Assistant

Spring 2010        Research Assistant for Carson Schütze at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
                            Task: Using the eye-tracking technique to understand sight-reading.

                           Research Assistant for Tim Stowell at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
                           Task: Examining scope facts involving same and different in French and English.

Summer 2008    Research Assistant for Fernande Dupuis at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
                            Task: Categorization and labelling of Ancient French Corpus.

Languages

Modern Languages

French: native

English: fluent

German: fluent

Arabic: reasonable working knowledge (2003: DEAC’s Degree, Cairo, Level 1)

Lakhota: basic (UCLA Field Methods class, Fall Quarter 2008 and Winter Quarter 2009)

Russian: basic (one-year class)

French Sign Language (LSF): basic notions

Swahili: basic notions

Ancient Languages

Latin: very good level (Agrégation)