Christopher Potts
CURRICULUM VITAE

July 6, 2008

Full name:Christopher Gerard Potts
Employment:Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, UMass Amherst, Fall 2003-
Address:Department of Linguistics
University of Massachusetts
226 South College
150 Hicks Way
Amherst   MA   01003-9274
E-mail:
Website:http://people.umass.edu/potts/
Education:PhD, UC Santa Cruz, June 2003
MA, UCSC: Fall 2000
BA, summa cum laude, New York University (1995-1999)
Linguistics Major, German Minor

Professional experience

September 2003--present, Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

July 2007: Instructor, LSA Summer Institute, Stanford University.

September 2005: Visiting scholar, Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin, Germany.

July 2005: Instructor, New York Institute for Cognitive and Cultural Studies, St. Petersburg, Russia.

July 2004: Instructor, New York Institute for Cognitive and Cultural Studies, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Research

Specialization

model-theoretic semantics; formal pragmatics; computation; model-theoretic syntax

Recent research topics

conventional implicatures; conversational implicatures; expressive content; indexicality; parenthetical expressions; dialogue systems; computational phonology

Books

In preparation. Dimensions of Meaning. Oxford Studies in Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.

2005. The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics. Oxford University Press.

Grants

Principal Investigator. July 1, 2007--August 31, 2010. Expressive content and the semantics of contexts. National Science Foundation Grant No. BCS-0642752.

Co-PI for UMass Amherst. June 1, 2007--May 31, 2010. SUBTLE: Situation Understanding Bot Through Language and Environment. Army Research Office Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative. Mitchell Marcus, Norman Badler, Aravind Joshi, George Pappas, Fernando Pereira, and Maribel Romero (all UPenn); Andrew McCallum and Christopher Potts (UMass Amherst); and Holly Yanco (UMass Lowell).

Co-PI. June 2008--July 2008. Data-Rich Humanities Research. UMass Amherst Visioning Grant. John Kingston (Linguistics), Rajesh Bhatt (Linguistics), Stephen Harris (English), Julie Hayes (Languages, Literature and Cultures), Christopher Potts (Linguistics), and Rex Wallace (Classics).

Consultant. 2007--2010. Cross-Linguistic Pragmatics. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. PIs Lisa Matthewson and Hotze Rullmann.

Consultant. 2006--2009. Linguistic Applications of Linear Logic. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. PIs Ash Asudeh and Ida Toivonen.

Manuscripts

2008. Interpretive Economy, Schelling Points, and evolutionary stability. Manuscript.

2008. Pragmatic enrichment via expressive content. Manuscript.

2007. Harmonic Grammar with Linear Programming. [Joe Pater, Christopher Potts, and Rajesh Bhatt]. Submitted to Computational Linguistics.

2007. Linguistic optimization. [Joe Pater, Rajesh Bhatt, and Christopher Potts.] Submitted to Cognitive Science; presently under revision.]

Refereed publications

2008. Expressives and identity conditions. [Christopher Potts, Luis Alonso-Ovalle, Ash Asudeh, Rajesh Bhatt, Seth Cable, Christopher Davis, Yurie Hara, Angelika Kratzer, Eric McCready, Tom Roeper, and Martin Walkow]. Linguistic Inquiry. To appear in Linguistic Inquiry.

2008. Review Article: Hagit Borer's Structuring Sense, Vol I-II. Language 82(2):348--369.

2007. The pragmatics of conventional implicature and expressive content. To appear in Claudia Maienborn and Paul Portner, eds., Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

2007. The expressive dimension. Theoretical Linguistics 33(2):165--197.

2007. The centrality of expressive indices: Reply to the commentaries. Theoretical Linguistics 33(2):255--268.

2007. Into the conventional-implicature dimension. Philosophy Compass 4(2):665--679.

2007. The dimensions of quotation. In Chris Barker and Pauline Jacobson, eds., Direct Compositionality, 405--431. Oxford University Press.

2007. Conventional implicatures, a distinguished class of meanings. In Gillian Ramchand and Charles Reiss, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, 475--501. Oxford University Press.

2006. How far can pragmatic mechanisms take us? Theoretical Linguistics 32(3):307--320.

2006. The narrowing acquisition path: From expressive small clauses to declaratives. [Christopher Potts and Thomas Roeper]. In Ljiljana Progovac, Kate Paesani, Eugenia Casielles, Ellen Barton, eds., The Syntax of Nonsententials: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives, 183--201. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

2006. Review of Siobhan Chapman, Paul Grice: Philosopher and Linguist. Mind 115:743--747.

2006. Conversational implicatures via general pragmatic pressures. In Takashi Washio, Akito Sakurai, Katsuto Nakajima, Hideaki Takeda, Satoshi Tojo, and Makoto Yokoo, eds., Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence 2006, 205--218. Berlin: Springer.

2003. Model theory and the content of OT constraints. [Christopher Potts and Geoffrey K. Pullum]. Phonology 19(3):361--393.

2002. The syntax and semantics of As-parentheticals. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20(3):623--689.

2002. The lexical semantics of parenthetical-as and appositive-which. Syntax 5(1):55--88.

2000. (Only) some weak crossover effects repaired. Snippets 1:3.

Dissertation

2003. The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Cruz. Primary advisor: Geoffrey K. Pullum. Committee members: William A. Ladusaw and James McCloskey.

Other publications

2008. Formal pragmatics. To appear in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Pragmatics.

2007. The pragmatic values of evidential sentences. [Christopher Davis, Christopher Potts, and Peggy Speas]. To appear in Masayuki Gibson and Tova Friedman, eds., Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 17. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications.

2007. Semantics--pragmatics interactions. To appear in Patrick Colm Hogan, ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences. Cambridge University Press.

2005. Lexicalized intonational meaning. In Shigeto Kawahara, ed., University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers 30 (UMOP 30). Amherst, MA: GLSA.

2004. Japanese honorifics as emotive definite descriptions. [Christopher Potts and Shigeto Kawahara]. In Kazuha Watanabe and Robert B. Young, eds., Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 14, 235--254. CLC Publications: Ithaca, NY.

2003. Expressive content as conventional implicature. In Makoto Kadowaki and Shigeto Kawahara (eds.), Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society 33, 303--322. Amherst, MA: GLSA.

2002. Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 21. [Line Mikkelsen and Christopher Potts, eds.] Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

2002. NELS 33 conference report. Glot International.

2002. WCCFL 21 conference report. Glot International 5:5.

2001. No vacuous quantification constraints in syntax. Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society 32, 451--470. Amherst, MA: GLSA.

2001. Three types of transderivational constraint. In Séamas Mac Bhloscaidh (ed.), Syntax at Santa Cruz, Volume 3, 21--40. Linguistics Department, UC Santa Cruz.

2000. When even no's neg is splitsville. Jorge Hankamer's Web Fest:
http://ling.ucsc.edu//Jorge/index.html.

Conference presentations

2007. Evidential marking, interrogatives, and the maxim of quality. [Chris Davis, Christopher Potts, and Peggy Speas]. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 17, UConn, May 11-13.

2006. Constraint weighting as linear programming. [Joe Pater, Christopher Potts, Tim Beechey, and Rajesh Bhatt]. Paper and software presented at MathPhon I, Université d'Orl'eans, France, August 21--September 3.

2005. The narrowing acquisition path: From expressive small clauses to declaratives. [Christopher Potts and Thomas Roeper]. Paper presented at the Workshop on the (In)-Determinacy of Meaning, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, February 25, 2005.

2004. The performative nature of Japanese honorifics. [Christopher Potts and Shigeto Kawahara]. Paper presented at Semantics and Linguistic Theory 14, Northwestern University, May 16.

2003. Hidden imperatives. [James Isaacs and Christopher Potts]. Poster presented at the North East Linguistic Society 34. Stony Brook University, November 7--9.

2003. Model theory and output--output correspondence. [Christopher Potts and Geoffrey K. Pullum]. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America, Annual Meeting. Atlanta, GA, January 5--9.

2002. Expressive content as conventional implicature. North East Linguistic Society 33. MIT, November 8--10.

2001. No vacuous quantification constraints in syntax. North East Linguistic Society 32. New York University and the City University of New York, October 19--21.

2001. The lexical semantics of parenthetical-as and appositive-which. The 37th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. University of Chicago, April 18--21.

2001. A bit of the syntax and much of the semantics of As-parentheticals. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 20. University of Southern California, February 23--25.

2000. Parenthetical-As and propositionality. Linguistics at Santa Cruz. UC Santa Cruz, December.

Invited talks

2008. Pragmatic enrichment via expressive content. Stanford Linguistics, May 23.

2008. Interpretive Economy, Schelling Points, and evolutionary stability. Stanford Pragmatics Group, May 23.

2008. The coin of the expressive realm. Arizona Linguistics and Anthropology Symposium, The University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, May 9--11.

2008. The pragmatics of expressive content. Cornell Workshop on Philosophy of Language, April 26.

2008. The dynamics of apposition. Chris Barker's NYU Linguistics seminar on dynamics, February 25.

2007. The generality of pragmatic inference: Message enrichment in multi-agent interactions. U.S. Navy Research Laboratory, December 10.

2007. Interrogatives: Interpretation and resolution. Alumnus plenary speaker, SUNY-CUNY-NYU 9th Annual Mini-Conference, December 1.

2007. Questions. [Joint work with Maribel Romero and Jesse Aron Harris]. AAAI 2007 Workshop on Cognitive Approaches to NLP, Arlington, VA, November 9-11, 2007.

2007. The compositional independence of expressives. Fifth Barcelona Workshop on Issues in the Theory of Reference, June 5--8.

2007. Expressive content and semantic theory. University of Chicago Graduate Workshop in Semantics and Philosophy, April 6.

2007. An introduction to expressive content. Swarthmore, March 30.

2007. Pragmatic dimensions: Quality and expressivity. Penn Linguistics, March 29, and University of Chicago, April 5.

2006/7. Harmonic Grammar as Linear Programming. UMass Amherst Colloquium, September 22, 2006, Penn Phonetics Lab, March 29, 2007, and Chicago Language Modeling Lab, April 5, 2007.

2006. Pragmatic dimensions. Harvard University, September 29.

2006. Pragmatic intrusion of forward-looking utterance modifiers. Adverbes de Phrase Workshop, Université Paris 7, September 15.

2006. Performatives in the expressive dimension. Groupe Dialogue, GDR Sémantique et Mod'elisation, Paris, September 14.

2006. A system of pragmatic pressures. Language for Intelligent Machines Workshop, West Point, July 19--21.

2006. Conversational implicatures via general pragmatic pressures. Logic Engineering and Natural Language Semantics 2006, Tokyo, Japan, June 5.

2005/6. Integrated pragmatic values. Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin, September 21, at Georg-August University Göttingen, September 22, at Yale University, November 7, and at UCLA, December 1, OSU (February 24), and Brown (March 6).

2005. The expressive dimension. Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin, September 23, and Tohoku University, Sendai, June 2.

2005. Pragmatics from many perspectives. The Harvard Artificial Intelligence Reading Group, April 7.

2005. Lexicalized intonational meaning. Linguistics at Santa Cruz, March 5, 2005.

2005. Lexicalized intonational meaning. Workshop on the (In)-Determinacy of Meaning, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, February 23, 2005.

2004. The dimensions of quotation. The Harvard Workshop on Indexicality, November 20.

2004. The multidimensionality of expressive content. Rutgers University, November 5.

2004. Lexicalized intonational meaning. University of Maryland, October 1.

2004. Honorifics: Interpreted and interpretable. [Ash Asudeh and Christopher Potts]. The Phi Workshop, McGill University, August 29.

2003. The performative nature of expressive content. The Ling Lunch, University of Connecticut, November 17, 2003, and at the University of Rochester, November 18.

2003. Keeping world and will apart: A discourse-based semantics for imperatives. New York University Syntax/Semantics Lecture Series, October 17.

2003. A layered semantics for utterance modifiers. The Workshop on Direct Compositionality, Brown University, June 21.

2003. Conventional implicatures, a distinguished class of meanings. UMass, Amherst, February 10, and at USC, February 13, 2003.

2002. A new factual basis for conventional implicatures. The Ling Lunch, University of Connecticut, October 29.

2002. Model theory and output--output correspondence. [Christopher Potts and Geoffrey K. Pullum]. The Phonology Workshop, Stanford University, October 17.

2002. Comparative economy conditions in natural language syntax. The North American Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information 1, Workshop on Model-Theoretic Syntax, Stanford University, June 28.

2002. A description language for economy conditions. The Syntax Workshop, Stanford University, January 29.

Fellowships, nominations, awards, and honors

Nominated to stand for election to the LSA Executive Committee, 2008.

Lilly Teaching Fellowship, UMass Amherst Center for Teaching, 2007--2008 academic year.

Nomination: Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Dissertation research fellowship, UCSC Institute for Humanities Research, Winter 2003.

Teaching

Ling 753: Conversational Inference (graduate, UMass Amherst, Spring 2008).

Undergraduate independent study: Seth Garrison: Contextual understanding of denominal verbs (UMass Amherst, Spring 2008).

Undergraduate independent study: Yelena Pashchenko: Generalized conversational implicatures (UMass Amherst, Spring 2008)

Ling 390a: Controlling the Discourse (undergraduate, UMass Amherst, Fall 2007).

LSA.314: Dimensions of Meaning (LSA Summer Institute, Stanford University, July 2007).

LSA.374: Conversational Inference (LSA Summer Institute, Stanford University, July 2007; with David Beaver and Robert van Rooij).

LSA.108P: Logic for Linguists (LSA Summer Institute, Stanford University, July 2007).

Ling 620: Formal Semantics (graduate, UMass Amherst, Spring 2007).

Ling 201: Introduction to Linguistics (undergraduate, UMass Amherst, Spring 2007).

Ling 510: Introduction to Semantics (undergraduate, UMass Amherst, Spring 2006).

Ling 390a: Controlling the Discourse (undergraduate, UMass Amherst, Spring 2006; with Lyn Frazier).

Ling 496: Pragmatics (undergraduate, UMass Amherst, Spring 2006).

Ling 610: Semantics and Generative Grammar (graduate, UMass Amherst, Fall 2005).

Introduction to Pragmatics (two-week course at the New York Institute of Cognitive and Cultural Studies, St. Petersburg State University, July 2005).

Introduction to Semantics (two-week course at the New York Institute of Cognitive and Cultural Studies, St. Petersburg State University, July 2005)

Ling 394a: Controlling the Discourse (undergraduate, UMass Amherst, Spring 2005; with Lyn Frazier).

Ling 753: Seminar on Modes of Semantic Composition (graduate, UMass Amherst, Spring 2005).

Ling 610: Semantics and Generative Grammar (graduate, UMass Amherst, Fall 2004).

Ling 797A: Third-Year Seminar (graduate, UMass Amherst, Fall 2004).

Introduction to Pragmatics (two-week course at the New York Institute of Cognitive and Cultural Studies, St. Petersburg State University, July 2004).

Controlling the Discourse (two-week course at the New York Institute of Cognitive and Cultural Studies, St. Petersburg State University, July 2004).

Ling 401: Introduction to Syntax, undergraduate, UMass Amherst, Spring 2004.

Ling 620: Formal Semantics, graduate, UMass Amherst, Spring 2004.

Linguistics 401: Introduction to Syntax (undergraduate), UMass Amherst, Spring 2004.

Linguistics 620: Formal Semantics (graduate), UMass Amherst, Spring 2004.

Linguistics 720: Proseminar in Semantics and Formal Pragmatics (graduate), UMass Amherst, Fall 2003.

Writing I (undergraduate), Writing Program, UCSC, Spring 2003.

Semantics II (undergraduate), Department of Linguistics, UCSC, Spring 2002.

Professional service

2005--present: Editorial board, Journal of Semantics.

2005--present: Editorial board, Linguistics and Philosophy.

2006--present: Editorial board, Natural Language Semantics.

2007--present: Editorial board and technical advisor, Semantics & Pragmatics

2004--2006: Co-editor Linguistic Inquiry's Squibs and Discussion section.

Journal refereeing: Journal of Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation, Journal of East Asian Linguistics, Journal of Linguistics, Journal of Semantics, Language, Lingua, Linguistic Inquiry, Linguistics and Philosophy, Mind and Language, Natural Language Semantics, Philosophical Quarterly, Phonology, Syntax.

Conference refereeing: ACL, CLS, DGfS, ESSLLI, FASL, FIGS, GLOW, LENLS, LingO, LSA, NASSLLI, NELS, SALT, Sinn und Bedeuting, WCCFL, WECOL.

Co-organizer (with Rajesh Bhatt, Kyle Johnson, and Angelika Kratzer), Semantics and Linguistic Theory 18, UMass Amherst, March 21-23, 2008.

Co-organizer (with David Beaver and Robert van Rooij), Conversational Games and Strategic Inference, Stanford, July 11, 2007.

Co-organizer (with Line Mikkelsen), West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, UCSC, April 5--7, 2002.

Graduate Research Assistantship, Summer 2001 and 2002; principal investigator: Geoffrey K. Pullum.

Coordinator, Teaching Assistant Training Course, Departments of Linguistics and Philosophy, UCSC, Fall and Winter 2001-2002.

Completed Humanities 203, UCSC training course for teaching Writing I (expository writing), Spring 2001.

University service

Search committee for a CHFA Information Technology Officer (Fall 2007--Spring 2008).

CHFA Dean's Information Technology Task Force (Fall 2006--present).

Departmental service

General

Weekly department newsletter: What's Happening in South College (WHISC);
archived at http://www.umass.edu/linguist/about/whisc/.

Undergraduate Special Activities Coordinator (Fall 2003--present).

Library liaison (Fall 2004--present).

Personnel Committee (Fall 2003--present).

Semantics Search Committee (Fall 2006--Spring 2007).

Partee Visiting Professor Search Committee (Fall 2005--Spring 2006).

Syntax Search Committee (Fall 2003).

Graduate Admissions (Spring 2004).

Dissertation committees

Min-Joo Kim (2004) [Linguistics]

Luis Alonso-Ovalle (2006) [Linguistics]

Anna Verbuk (2007) [Linguistics]

Jan Anderssen (in progress) [Linguistics]

Shai Cohen (in progress) [Linguistics]

Florian Schwarz (in progress) [Linguistics]

Helen Stickney (in progress) [Linguistics]

Maziar Toosarvandani (in progress) [UC Berkeley Linguistics]

Youri Zabbal (in progress) [Linguistics]

Edward Abrams (in progress) [Philosophy]

Michael Rubin (in progress) [Philosophy]

Jayme Johnson (in progress) [Philosophy]

Generals papers

Shigeto Kawahara (defenses December 2003; June 5, 2004) [Linguistics]

Charles Sutton (Spring 2004) [Computer Science]

Helen Majewski (defense December 3, 2004) [Linguistics]

Amy Rose Deal (defense May 18, 2007) [Linguistics]

Michael Becker (defense June 15, 2005) [Linguistics]

Anna Verbuk (defenses May 27, 2004; October 5, 2005) [Linguistics]

Youri Zabbal (defense November 3, 2004) [Linguistics]

Florian Schwarz (defense December 12, 2005) [Linguistics]

Ilaria Frana (defense May 15, 2006) [Linguistics]

Matthew Wolf (defense August 20, 2006) [Linguistics]

Andrew McKenzie (defense November 16, 2007) [Linguistics]

Kathryn Pruitt (defense June 18, 2007) [Linguistics]

Maria Biezma-Garrido (defense December 3, 2007) [Linguistics]

Christopher Davis (defense May 14, 2008) [Linguistics]

Aynat Rubinstein (in progress) [Linguistics]

Pasha Siraj (in progress) [Linguistics]

Martin Walkow (in progress) [Linguistics]

Other skills

Proficiency with Web mark-up languages, JavaScript, LaTeXe, Perl, Ruby, Scheme, Java.

Forklift operation.

Sub-3:10 marathon.

This page was last updated on Sunday, 06-Jul-2008 10:53:42 EDT.