Current Projects:
- Right Node Raising and the semantic interpretation of multi-dominance structures.
- Deriving ergativity in the nominalizations of nominative-accusative languages.
- The semantics of structurally low discourse particles in German imperatives.
- Deriving the intonation patterns of English imperatives.
Previous Research:
My MA (Mag.Phil.) at the University of Vienna resulted in an MA Thesis (Diplomarbeit) on the syntax and semantics of German discourse particles, focusing on the strong, weak and clitic variants of "denn" in Austrian German.
Before joining the PhD program at MIT, I carried out joint research on Long Distance Agreement in Kutchi Gujarati (Indo-Aryan) with Pritty Patel (Spring 2006).
In my first year in the PhD program at MIT, I carried out research on the syntax of valency change, the typology of diphthong inventories and the semantics of pseudoclefts (Fall 2006); furthermore, I carried out research on the syntax and semantics of "bao-gio" ('when') in Vietnamese and on the treatment of opacity in Optimality Theory (Spring 2007).
In Fall 2007, Pritty Patel and I co-organized the MIT Ergativity Research Seminar.
Downloadable papers:
-- 2008, "A Different View on Ergativity in German Nominalizations", talk given at ECO5, University of Connecticut. [handout]
-- 2007, "Raising from the Right Node?", ms., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [pdf]
-- 2006 (with Pritty Patel) "Long Distance Agreement and Restructuring Predicates in Kutchi Gujarati", talk given at the University of Venice. [presentation notes]
-- 2006, "German Discourse Particles are Weak Sentence Adverbs", talk given at the IGG32, University of Florence. [handout]
-- 2005, 'dn' in Viennese German. The Syntax of a Clitic Version of the Discourse Particle 'denn', MA thesis, University of Vienna. [complete version][contents] [introduction] [chapter 1] [chapter 2] [chapter 3] [chapter 4] [chapter 5] [references]
Publications:
-- 2007, "German Discourse Particles are Weak Sentence Adverbs", in: M. Cecilia Picchi and Alan Pona (eds.): Proceedings of the "XXXII Incontro di Grammatica Generativa". Firenze, 2-4 March 2006. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 79-91.
