Jessica Rett - Department of Linguistics

Research

Within the fields of semantics, pragmatics, and the philosophy of language, I’m interested in cross-domain parallels (learning about one sort of semantic object by studying a similar sort of semantic object) and in the semantics-pragmatics interface (studying how compositional semantics can be extended to deal with non-truth-conditional content).

Specifically, my work involves the study of:

degree semantics (the meaning of adjectives and equatives);
event semantics (phenomena like pluractionality and distributivity);
the semantics of paths and vectors (linguistically encoded spatial extension);
implicature (semantic and pragmatic consequences of Grice’s quantity and manner maxims);
evidentials (the ways languages encode sources of evidence);
speech acts (the semantics and pragmatics of questions and exclamatives);
the acquisition of semantics (how children acquire linguistic meaning)

Publications

2022: A typology of semantic entities. in D. Altshuler (ed.) Linguistics meets Philosophy, Cambridge.
2021 (with Dylan Bumford): Rationalizing manner-driven evaluativity inferences, Sinn und Bedeutung 25.
2021 (with B. Sturman): Prosodically marked mirativity. To appear in The proceedings of WCCFL 38.
2021: A comparison of expressives and miratives. To appear in A. Trotzke and X. Villalba (eds.) Functional categories and expressive meanings, Oxford.
2021: The semantics of emotive markers and other illocutionary content. Journal of Semantics 38(2): 305-340.
2020: Eliminating ‘EARLIEST’: a general semantics for before and after, Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 24: 201-218.
2020: Separate but equal: a typology of equative constructions. In P. Hallman (ed.) Degree and quantification, Brill. 163-204. [handout]
2020: Manner implicatures and how to spot them. International Review of Pragmatics 12: 44-79.
2019 (with M. Grant and S. Michniewicz): Immediate commitment, but cost-free processing, for individual/degree polysemy. In K. Carlson, C. Clifton Jr., and Lyn Frazier (eds.) Grammatical Approaches to Language Processing, Springer. 93-125.
2018: The semantics of many, much, few, and little. Language and Linguistics Compass, doi: 10.1111/lnc3.12269
2017 (with A. Brasoveanu): Evaluativity across adjective and construction types: an experimental study Journal of Linguistics, 1-67. doi:10.1017/S0022226717000123
2016: On a shared property of deontic and epistemic modals (preprint draft) Deontic Modality, eds. N. Charlow and M. Chrisman, Oxford University Press.
2015: Antonymy in space and other strictly-ordered domains Perspectives on Spatial Cognition, eds. M. Glanzberg, J. Skilters, and P. Svenonius, pp 1-33. [handout]
2015 (with L. Winans, N. Hyams and L. Kalin): Children’s comprehension of syntactically encoded evidentiality Proceedings of NELS 45, eds. Thuy Bui & Deniz Özyildiz, vol. 3 189–202.
2015: The Semantics of Evaluativity, Oxford University Press. [handout]
2014: Modified numerals and measure phrase equatives, Journal of Semantics 32, 425–475. [handout]
2014: The polysemy of measurement Lingua 143, 242–266.
2014 (with N. Hyams): The acquisition of syntactically encoded evidentiality Language Acquisition 21:2, 173–198.
2013 (with S. Murray): A semantic account of mirative evidentials SALT 23: 453–472. [abstract] [handout]
2013 (with N. Hyams and L. Winans): The effects of syntax on the acquisition of evidentiality BUCLD 37: 345–357.
2013: Similatives and the degree arguments of verbs Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 31(4): 1101–1137.
2012: On modal subjectivity UCLA WPL 16: 131–150.
2012: Group terms and the meaning of meet Ms., UCLA.
2012: Mirativity across constructions and languages CUSP 5, UCSD.
2011: Exclamatives, degrees and speech acts Linguistics & Philosophy 34(5): 411–442.
2010: Equatives, measure phrases and NPIs Amsterdam Colloquium 2009 Proceedings, 364–373. [abstract] [handout]
2009: A degree account of exclamatives SALT 18: 601–618. [abstract] [handout]
2007: Evaluativity and antonymy SALT 17: 210–227. [abstract] [handout]
2006: How many maximizes in the Balkan Sprachbund SALT 16: 190–207. [abstract] [handout]
2006: Pronominal vs. determiner wh-words: evidence from the copy construction CSSP 6: 355–374. [handout]
2006 Context, compositionality and calamity Mind & Language 21: 541–552.
2005: Different agreement morphemes for different agreement configurations: evidence from complementizer agreement in Germanic Ms., Rutgers University. [handout]
2005 (with M. Shatz): Do Numeral Classifiers Influence Similarity Judgments? Ms., University of Michigan.

Dissertation

2008: Degree Modification in Natural Language

This dissertation is a study of the roles played by degree modifiers — functions from sets of degrees to sets of degrees — across different constructions and languages. The immediate goal of such a project is a better understanding of the distribution of these morphemes and how they contribute to the meaning of an expression. More broadly, a study of the semantics of degree modifiers is of interest because it helps demonstrate parallels between the degree and individual domains.

Courses

Linguistics 1 (Introduction to Language) [syllabus]
Linguistics 7 (Language & Identity) [syllabus]
Linguistics 8 (Language in Context) [syllabus]
Linguistics 19 (Fiat Lux seminar: Gossip and facts across languages)
Linguistics 120C (Undergraduate Semantics 1)
Linguistics 165C (Undergraduate Semantics 2) [syllabus]
Linguistics 200C (Graduate Semantics 1) [syllabus]
Linguistics 201C (Graduate Semantics 2) [syllabus]
Linguistics 207 (Graduate Pragmatics, with Jesse Harris) [syllabus]
Linguistics 218 (Mathematical Linguistics 2): Montague Grammar and Dynamic Semantics [syllabus]
Linguistics 252 (Graduate Seminar: The semantics of wh-phrases, Winter 2009) [syllabus]
Linguistics 252 (Graduate Seminar: The semantics of sums & scales, Spring 2010) [syllabus]
Linguistics 252 (Graduate Seminar: The semantics and pragmatics of evidentials, Spring 2011) [syllabus]
Linguistics 254 (Graduate Seminar: The acquisition of semantics, with Nina Hyams, Spring 2012) [syllabus]
Linguistics 252 (Graduate seminar: The semantics of irreality, with Gabe Greenberg, Fall 2013)
Linguistics 252 (Graduate Seminar: The semantics of speech acts, Fall 2014) [syllabus]
Linguistics 252 (Graduate Seminar: The semantics of degree constructions, Spring 2016) [syllabus]

News

November 2023: I will be giving a joint “LinguisticsNOW” colloquium at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University entitled “Hijacked terms and lexical metasemantics”
October 2023: I will be giving a keynote at ICSO IV in Buenos Aires entitled “Illocutionary content and the top of the spine”
September 2023: I gave a talk at Philosophy of Language and Linguistics at the Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik entitled “What ‘means’ means”
June 2022: I gave a talk with W. Starr at SALT 32 entitled “Decomposing as if”
December 2021: I gave a talk with Dylan Bumford at SuB 25 entitled “Rationalizing manner-driven evaluativity inferences”
February 2021: the committee I chaired debuted the REIL Guidebook for equity and inclusion in linguistics conferences
December 4, 2020: I gave a colloquium at Boston University
March 6-8, 2020: I gave a talk at WCCFL 28 at the University of British Columbia
November 27, 2019: I had a baby!
September 9-10, 2019: I gave a talk at Functional Categories and Expressive Meaning at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
September 4, 2019: I gave a talk at Sinn und Bedeutung 24 at Universität Osnabrück
May 17-19, 2019: UCLA hosted Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 29
March 6, 2019: I gave a talk at the Encoding emotive attitudes in non-truth-conditional meaning workshop at the 41st Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) meeting.
March 2, 2019: I gave a talk at the Second UC Irvine Workshop in Logical Semantics.
I’ve written a book entitled The Semantics of Evaluativity. Check it out here!

Resources

Check out Barbara Partee’s phenomenal notes on various semantics topics here.
Read the LSA’s advice on inclusive language here.
See Ora Matushansky’s data on gender in linguistics here.
Some guidelines from Columbia University about gender in the classroom can be found here.
Read my advice on how to write linguistics papers, abstracts and grant proposals here.
Rettymology Many people are curious about the etymology of my last name. It comes from Friuli, a region of north-eastern Italy where my father’s family is from. My Friulian relatives spell it Ret; the extra t was added when my great-grandparents emigrated to the US. The name itself comes from the word Raetia or Raeti, the pre-Roman name of the region and people (who were possibly Etruscan). The same root gives its name to a branch of (Gallo-)Romance languages, the Rhaeto-Romance languages, of which Friulian is a member.