Lisa Matthewson
Biographic Data
| ID | 613209 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lisa Matthewson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lisa |
| FAMILY NAME | Matthewson |
| SIGNATURE | MATTHEWSON L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of British Columbia |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5157-6470 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 291 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Aren’t Gitksan Negative Polar Questions Biased
This paper investigates the semantics and pragmatics of polar questions (PQs) in Gitksan. Four types of PQ are examined: PQs formed using the sentence-final clitic aa; PQs that contain aa plus the negation marker nee; PQs that contain aa, nee, and the focus marker dii; and PQs that contain aa plus verum marking. I show that PQs formed only with aa are the preferred option when the speaker believes the addressee will commit to the proposition in t…
Polar questions in nɬeʔkepmxcín: Monopolar, Bipolar, and Exhaustive
There is debate about whether polar questions (PQs) have bipolar semantics (e.g., denoting a set of propositions {p, ¬p}), monopolar semantics (a singleton set {p}), or both. The issue is difficult to settle using English data alone. In this paper I bring new data to bear on the debate from nɬe ʔkepmxcín (Salish). I argue that natural language has both bipolar and monopolar questions, and that nɬe ʔkepmxcín morphosyntactically distinguishes the t…
Prosodic realization and interpretation of English imperatives
Imperative clauses can communicate a number of speech acts, and differences in intonation have been argued to prompt different interpretations. So far, however, limited phonetic evidence has been presented for such proposals. The focus in the current work is on maximally strong imperatives (commands) and weaker imperatives (mainly involving advice) in English. We report on a series of phonetic experiments intended to address whether listeners rel…
The Bantu-Salish connection in determiner semantics
This paper provides a semantic analysis of the D(eterminer)-system in Nata (Eastern Bantu), and compares it with the strikingly similar D-system of St’át’imcets (Salish). Our core proposal is that in both languages, the major distinction encoded by Ds correlates with the presence vs. absence of speaker commitment to the existence of a referent for the noun phrase.We show that neither Nata nor St’át’imcets Ds encode well-known distinctions like de…
Future time reference and viewpoint aspect: Evidence from Gitksan
In many languages, future time reference can be conveyed in more than one grammaticized way. An example is English, which uses will and be going to. These two forms make different semantic and pragmatic contributions, and the source of the contrast is a matter of debate. For example, Copley (2009) argues that both will and be going to have a modal component, but be going to also contains progressive aspect. Klecha et al. (2008) and Klecha (2011) …
Why Plain Futurates are Different
In English, simple present (plain) and present progressive constructions can make reference to the future, in constructions known as futurates. In previous literature, these two types of futurate have often been discussed separately or treated as more or less equivalent. This squib argues that they convey different meanings: plain futurates presuppose the existence of a schedule, while progressive futurates do not. We propose a formal definition …
St’át’imcets frustratives as not-at-issue modals
This paper provides an analysis of the ‘frustrative’ marker séna7 in St’át’imcets (Lillooet Salish), and compares it to similar elements cross-linguistically. Séna7 appears in a range of discourse contexts, including when events have an unexpected outcome, fail to continue, or fail to take place optimally. We argue that séna7 felicitously applies to a proposition p only if there is a salient true proposition q and the speaker did not expect p and…
Nobody's Perfect
This paper challenges the cross-linguistic validity of the tense-aspect category 'perfect' by investigating 15 languages from eight different families (Atayal, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, English, German, Gitksan, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Mandarin, Niuean, Québec French, St'át'imcets, Swahili, and Tibetan). The methodology involves using the storyboard 'Miss Smith's Bad Day' to test for the availability of experiential, resultative, recent-pa…
Evidential-temporal interactions do not (always) come for free
Evidentials are usually assumed to encode the speaker's evidence source. However, some authors propose that evidence source can be derived from temporal information elsewhere in the sentence (e.g., Chung, 2007, Lee, 2013, Koev, 2017, Bowler, 2018, Speas, 2021). We argue that evidence source cannot always be derived from temporal information. Using data from five languages, we propose that evidentials can lexically restrict the time the evidence w…
Verum in Gitksan
This article provides an analysis of verum marking in the Tsimshianic language Gitksan. Original fieldwork data are provided to show that Gitksan verum is very similar in its distribution and discourse effects to English verum, but displays two interesting differences. First, Gitksan verum is not marked by focal stress, but by a dedicated particle ( k 'ap ). Second, Gitksan verum does not require givenness of the core propositional material. I ar…
The ‘experiential’ as an existential past: Evidence from Javanese and Atayal
Recent literature has debated the nature and robustness of distinctions between pronominal tenses and existential tenses, between absolute tenses and relative tenses, and between perfect aspects and relative tenses. In this paper, we investigate anteriority markers in Javanese and Atayal, two distantly related Austronesian languages. On the basis of a range of empirical diagnostics, we propose that the markers tau in Javanese and - in - in Atayal…
Verum focus is verum, not focus: Cross-linguistic evidence
The accent pattern known as verum focus is commonly understood as an ordinary alternative focus on the truth of a proposition. This standard view, which we call the focus accent thesis (FAT), can be contrasted with the lexical operator thesis (LOT), according to which the accent pattern that looks like focus in languages like German or English is actually not an instance of focus marking, but realizes a lexical verum predicate, whose function is …
Techniques in Complex Semantic Fieldwork
The main goal of semantic fieldwork is to accurately capture the contribution of natural language expressions to truth conditions and to pragmatic felicity conditions, by interacting with native speakers of the language under investigation. Most semantic fieldwork tasks (including, for example, acceptability judgment tasks, elicited production tasks, and translation tasks) require the researcher to present a discourse context to the consultant. T…
Towards a theory of modal-temporal interaction
A compositional analysis is provided of temporal perspective and orientation (Condoravdi 2002) of modals in Dutch, English, Gitksan (Tsimshianic), and St‘át'imcets (Lillooet Salish). Modals interact freely with the tense-aspect architecture in each language. Temporal perspective is determined by an operator scoping over the modal, usually tense, while temporal orientation is determined by aspectual operators below it (and further restricted by th…
Introducing the Infant Bookreading Database (IBDb)
Studies on the relationship between bookreading and language development typically lack data about which books are actually read to children. This paper reports on an Internet survey designed to address this data gap. The resulting dataset (the Infant Bookreading Database or IBDb) includes responses from 1,107 caregivers of children aged 0–36 months who answered questions about the English-language books they most commonly read to their children.…
Semantics in Indigenous American Languages: 1917-2017 And Beyond
Over the 100 years since IJAL's inaugural issue, research on semantics in indigenous languages of the Americas has advanced the field in at least three major ways. It has greatly expanded our empirical knowledge of semantics in non-European languages, it has provided methodological breakthroughs, and it has had significant impact on linguistic theory. This paper provides an overview of contributions and progress in these three areas over the past…
Diversity driven but cognitively constrained: Boas meets Chomsky (Response to commentators)
Diversity driven but cognitively constrained:Boas meets Chomsky (Response to commentators) Henry Davis, Carrie Gillon, and Lisa Matthewson 1. Introduction We would like to begin by thanking de Reuse, Dryer, and Haspel-math for their thoughtful and constructive replies to our target article (Davis et al. 2014) on how best to uncover linguistic diversity. All three of our respondents point out that there is a considerable amount of common ground be…
Inchoativity meets the Perfect Time Span: The Niuean perfect
How to investigate linguistic diversity: Lessons from the Pacific Northwest
On the basis of five case studies from languages of the American Pacific Northwest, we argue that, at least in the areas of syntax and semantics, a scientific approach to the study of linguistic diversity must be empirically grounded in theoretically informed, hypothesis-driven fieldwork on individual languages. This runs counter to recent high-profile claims that large-scale typology based on the sampling of descriptive grammars yields superior …
A familiar definite article in Akan
Gitksan Modals
This paper provides a description of the modal system of Gitksan (Tsimshianic) and places the Gitksan system within an emerging formal typology of modality. I show that Gitksan encodes distinctions both of modal strength and of modality type. It has one strong circumstantial modal (sgi) and two weak circumstantial modals (da'aḴhlxw and anooḴ), the second of which is specialized for deontic possibility (permission). Within the epistemic domain, mo…
Cross-linguistic variation in modality systems: The role of mood
The St'át'imcets (Lillooet Salish) subjunctive mood appears in nine distinct environments, with a range of semantic effects, including weakening an imperative to a polite request, turning a question into an uncertainty statement, and creating an ignorance free relative. The St'át'imcets subjunctive also differs from Indo-European subjunctives in that it is not selected by attitude verbs. In this paper I account for the St'át'imcets subjunctive us…
The prism of grammar: How child language illuminates humanism
Reviewed by: The prism of grammar: How child language illuminates humanism Lisa Matthewson The prism of grammar: How child language illuminates humanism. By Tom Roeper. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Pp. xviii, 354. ISBN 9780262512589. $18.95. At the end of The prism of grammar (PoG), Tom Roeper suggests that the book may have been 'a real roller-coaster ride' (303). The metaphor is apt, at least for those who enjoy roller coasters: PoG is exhil…
The lexical category debate in Salish and its relevance for Tagalog
We review some morpho-syntactic contexts where, parallel to data in Tagalog, Salishan languages famously fail to distinguish the categories noun and verb. Nevertheless, we then show that Salish languages do distinguish noun from verb, both lexically and syntactically, and suggest how similar analyses might perhaps be applicable to Tagalog
Issues in Salish Syntax and Semantics
The Salish language family is of special interest for syntactic and semantic theory because it has been argued to differ radically from Indo‐European languages in both structure and interpretation (see, e.g., ; ; ; ; ; ). In this article, we survey four theoretical debates in the syntactic and semantic literature on Salish, one from each of the areas of lexical semantics, super‐lexical syntax, semantics and pragmatics, with an eye to pinning down…
On the Methodology of Semantic Fieldwork
This paper presents and motivates a methodology for conducting semantic fieldwork on languages of the Americas. I first argue that one cannot gather adequate information about meaning from spontaneous discourse alone. Thus, direct elicitation (including asking consultants for judgments) is an indispensable methodological tool. I then present more detailed methodological suggestions. I offer techniques for eliciting translations and discuss how on…
Evidentials as epistemic modals: Evidence from St'át'imcets
This paper argues that evidential clitics in St'át'imcets (a.k.a. Lillooet; Northern Interior Salish) must be analyzed as epistemic modals.We apply a range of tests which distinguish the modal analysis from the main alternative contender (an illocutionary operator analysis, as in Faller 2002), and show that the St'át'imcets evidentials obey the predictions of a modal analysis. Our results support the growing body of evidence that the functions of…
On The Interpretation of Wide-scope Indefinites
Modals as distributive indefinites
A familiar definite article in Akan
Gitksan Modals
This paper provides a description of the modal system of Gitksan (Tsimshianic) and places the Gitksan system within an emerging formal typology of modality. I show that Gitksan encodes distinctions both of modal strength and of modality type. It has one strong circumstantial modal (sgi) and two weak circumstantial modals (da'aḴhlxw and anooḴ), the second of which is specialized for deontic possibility (permission). Within the epistemic domain, mo…
Grammar and Pragmatics in the Acquisition of Article Systems
Techniques in Complex Semantic Fieldwork
The main goal of semantic fieldwork is to accurately capture the contribution of natural language expressions to truth conditions and to pragmatic felicity conditions, by interacting with native speakers of the language under investigation. Most semantic fieldwork tasks (including, for example, acceptability judgment tasks, elicited production tasks, and translation tasks) require the researcher to present a discourse context to the consultant. T…
Towards a theory of modal-temporal interaction
A compositional analysis is provided of temporal perspective and orientation (Condoravdi 2002) of modals in Dutch, English, Gitksan (Tsimshianic), and St‘át'imcets (Lillooet Salish). Modals interact freely with the tense-aspect architecture in each language. Temporal perspective is determined by an operator scoping over the modal, usually tense, while temporal orientation is determined by aspectual operators below it (and further restricted by th…
How to investigate linguistic diversity: Lessons from the Pacific Northwest
On the basis of five case studies from languages of the American Pacific Northwest, we argue that, at least in the areas of syntax and semantics, a scientific approach to the study of linguistic diversity must be empirically grounded in theoretically informed, hypothesis-driven fieldwork on individual languages. This runs counter to recent high-profile claims that large-scale typology based on the sampling of descriptive grammars yields superior …
On the absence of tense on determiners
Inchoativity meets the Perfect Time Span: The Niuean perfect
Nobody's Perfect
This paper challenges the cross-linguistic validity of the tense-aspect category 'perfect' by investigating 15 languages from eight different families (Atayal, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, English, German, Gitksan, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Mandarin, Niuean, Québec French, St'át'imcets, Swahili, and Tibetan). The methodology involves using the storyboard 'Miss Smith's Bad Day' to test for the availability of experiential, resultative, recent-pa…
The ‘experiential’ as an existential past: Evidence from Javanese and Atayal
Recent literature has debated the nature and robustness of distinctions between pronominal tenses and existential tenses, between absolute tenses and relative tenses, and between perfect aspects and relative tenses. In this paper, we investigate anteriority markers in Javanese and Atayal, two distantly related Austronesian languages. On the basis of a range of empirical diagnostics, we propose that the markers tau in Javanese and - in - in Atayal…
Issues in Salish Syntax and Semantics
The Salish language family is of special interest for syntactic and semantic theory because it has been argued to differ radically from Indo‐European languages in both structure and interpretation (see, e.g., ; ; ; ; ; ). In this article, we survey four theoretical debates in the syntactic and semantic literature on Salish, one from each of the areas of lexical semantics, super‐lexical syntax, semantics and pragmatics, with an eye to pinning down…
Evidential-temporal interactions do not (always) come for free
Evidentials are usually assumed to encode the speaker's evidence source. However, some authors propose that evidence source can be derived from temporal information elsewhere in the sentence (e.g., Chung, 2007, Lee, 2013, Koev, 2017, Bowler, 2018, Speas, 2021). We argue that evidence source cannot always be derived from temporal information. Using data from five languages, we propose that evidentials can lexically restrict the time the evidence w…
Diversity driven but cognitively constrained: Boas meets Chomsky (Response to commentators)
Diversity driven but cognitively constrained:Boas meets Chomsky (Response to commentators) Henry Davis, Carrie Gillon, and Lisa Matthewson 1. Introduction We would like to begin by thanking de Reuse, Dryer, and Haspel-math for their thoughtful and constructive replies to our target article (Davis et al. 2014) on how best to uncover linguistic diversity. All three of our respondents point out that there is a considerable amount of common ground be…
On The Interpretation of Wide-scope Indefinites
Is the meta-language really natural
1. On the status of the primitives It is interesting and surely non-coincidental that the semantic primitives proposed by NSM researchers include some of the most hotly-debated topics in the formal semantics literature. There is a large body of formal semantic research (too large to be cited here) on each of the following NSM primitives: indexical pronouns such as I and you , demonstratives like this , quantifiers such as something, all, many , a…
On the Methodology of Semantic Fieldwork
This paper presents and motivates a methodology for conducting semantic fieldwork on languages of the Americas. I first argue that one cannot gather adequate information about meaning from spontaneous discourse alone. Thus, direct elicitation (including asking consultants for judgments) is an indispensable methodological tool. I then present more detailed methodological suggestions. I offer techniques for eliciting translations and discuss how on…
Grammar and Pragmatics in the Acquisition of Article Systems
On the absence of tense on determiners
Temporal semantics in a superficially tenseless language
Evidentials as epistemic modals: Evidence from St'át'imcets
This paper argues that evidential clitics in St'át'imcets (a.k.a. Lillooet; Northern Interior Salish) must be analyzed as epistemic modals.We apply a range of tests which distinguish the modal analysis from the main alternative contender (an illocutionary operator analysis, as in Faller 2002), and show that the St'át'imcets evidentials obey the predictions of a modal analysis. Our results support the growing body of evidence that the functions of…
Universals in semantics
This article surveys the state of the art in the field of semantic universals. We examine potential semantic universals in three areas: (i) the lexicon, (ii) semantic “glue” (functional morphemes and composition principles), and (iii) pragmatics. At the level of the lexicon, we find remarkably few convincing semantic universals. At the level of functional morphemes and composition principles, we discuss a number of promising constraints, most of …
Modals as distributive indefinites
The lexical category debate in Salish and its relevance for Tagalog
We review some morpho-syntactic contexts where, parallel to data in Tagalog, Salishan languages famously fail to distinguish the categories noun and verb. Nevertheless, we then show that Salish languages do distinguish noun from verb, both lexically and syntactically, and suggest how similar analyses might perhaps be applicable to Tagalog
Issues in Salish Syntax and Semantics
The Salish language family is of special interest for syntactic and semantic theory because it has been argued to differ radically from Indo‐European languages in both structure and interpretation (see, e.g., ; ; ; ; ; ). In this article, we survey four theoretical debates in the syntactic and semantic literature on Salish, one from each of the areas of lexical semantics, super‐lexical syntax, semantics and pragmatics, with an eye to pinning down…
Cross-linguistic variation in modality systems: The role of mood
The St'át'imcets (Lillooet Salish) subjunctive mood appears in nine distinct environments, with a range of semantic effects, including weakening an imperative to a polite request, turning a question into an uncertainty statement, and creating an ignorance free relative. The St'át'imcets subjunctive also differs from Indo-European subjunctives in that it is not selected by attitude verbs. In this paper I account for the St'át'imcets subjunctive us…
The prism of grammar: How child language illuminates humanism
Reviewed by: The prism of grammar: How child language illuminates humanism Lisa Matthewson The prism of grammar: How child language illuminates humanism. By Tom Roeper. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Pp. xviii, 354. ISBN 9780262512589. $18.95. At the end of The prism of grammar (PoG), Tom Roeper suggests that the book may have been 'a real roller-coaster ride' (303). The metaphor is apt, at least for those who enjoy roller coasters: PoG is exhil…
A familiar definite article in Akan
Gitksan Modals
This paper provides a description of the modal system of Gitksan (Tsimshianic) and places the Gitksan system within an emerging formal typology of modality. I show that Gitksan encodes distinctions both of modal strength and of modality type. It has one strong circumstantial modal (sgi) and two weak circumstantial modals (da'aḴhlxw and anooḴ), the second of which is specialized for deontic possibility (permission). Within the epistemic domain, mo…
How to investigate linguistic diversity: Lessons from the Pacific Northwest
On the basis of five case studies from languages of the American Pacific Northwest, we argue that, at least in the areas of syntax and semantics, a scientific approach to the study of linguistic diversity must be empirically grounded in theoretically informed, hypothesis-driven fieldwork on individual languages. This runs counter to recent high-profile claims that large-scale typology based on the sampling of descriptive grammars yields superior …
Diversity driven but cognitively constrained: Boas meets Chomsky (Response to commentators)
Diversity driven but cognitively constrained:Boas meets Chomsky (Response to commentators) Henry Davis, Carrie Gillon, and Lisa Matthewson 1. Introduction We would like to begin by thanking de Reuse, Dryer, and Haspel-math for their thoughtful and constructive replies to our target article (Davis et al. 2014) on how best to uncover linguistic diversity. All three of our respondents point out that there is a considerable amount of common ground be…
Inchoativity meets the Perfect Time Span: The Niuean perfect
Introducing the Infant Bookreading Database (IBDb)
Studies on the relationship between bookreading and language development typically lack data about which books are actually read to children. This paper reports on an Internet survey designed to address this data gap. The resulting dataset (the Infant Bookreading Database or IBDb) includes responses from 1,107 caregivers of children aged 0–36 months who answered questions about the English-language books they most commonly read to their children.…
Semantics in Indigenous American Languages: 1917-2017 And Beyond
Over the 100 years since IJAL's inaugural issue, research on semantics in indigenous languages of the Americas has advanced the field in at least three major ways. It has greatly expanded our empirical knowledge of semantics in non-European languages, it has provided methodological breakthroughs, and it has had significant impact on linguistic theory. This paper provides an overview of contributions and progress in these three areas over the past…
Towards a theory of modal-temporal interaction
A compositional analysis is provided of temporal perspective and orientation (Condoravdi 2002) of modals in Dutch, English, Gitksan (Tsimshianic), and St‘át'imcets (Lillooet Salish). Modals interact freely with the tense-aspect architecture in each language. Temporal perspective is determined by an operator scoping over the modal, usually tense, while temporal orientation is determined by aspectual operators below it (and further restricted by th…
Techniques in Complex Semantic Fieldwork
The main goal of semantic fieldwork is to accurately capture the contribution of natural language expressions to truth conditions and to pragmatic felicity conditions, by interacting with native speakers of the language under investigation. Most semantic fieldwork tasks (including, for example, acceptability judgment tasks, elicited production tasks, and translation tasks) require the researcher to present a discourse context to the consultant. T…
Verum focus is verum, not focus: Cross-linguistic evidence
The accent pattern known as verum focus is commonly understood as an ordinary alternative focus on the truth of a proposition. This standard view, which we call the focus accent thesis (FAT), can be contrasted with the lexical operator thesis (LOT), according to which the accent pattern that looks like focus in languages like German or English is actually not an instance of focus marking, but realizes a lexical verum predicate, whose function is …
Verum in Gitksan
This article provides an analysis of verum marking in the Tsimshianic language Gitksan. Original fieldwork data are provided to show that Gitksan verum is very similar in its distribution and discourse effects to English verum, but displays two interesting differences. First, Gitksan verum is not marked by focal stress, but by a dedicated particle ( k 'ap ). Second, Gitksan verum does not require givenness of the core propositional material. I ar…
The ‘experiential’ as an existential past: Evidence from Javanese and Atayal
Recent literature has debated the nature and robustness of distinctions between pronominal tenses and existential tenses, between absolute tenses and relative tenses, and between perfect aspects and relative tenses. In this paper, we investigate anteriority markers in Javanese and Atayal, two distantly related Austronesian languages. On the basis of a range of empirical diagnostics, we propose that the markers tau in Javanese and - in - in Atayal…
Linguistics (29 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (29 works) · Computer Science (27 works) · Philosophy (27 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (14 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (11 works) · Artificial Intelligence (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Verb (9 works)