Mapping Possibilities

I am interested in working with a research partner whose main field is in cognitive psychology and has interest in the semantics of modal expressions, with a background of recent work in semantics, logic, and/or philosophy. The student would research and discuss with me relevant work that bears on the question of how linguistic and nonlinguistic knowledge interact in generating semantic properties of modal expressions—for example, "must,” "might,” "can,” "likely,” "desirable,” etc.

Through this partnership, I would be forced to present my research in a way that is understandable to an interdisciplinary audience and might attract the attention of a young researcher from a neighboring discipline. The student would gain first-hand experience with the kinds of struggles that come up when researchers from different disciplines try to explain to one other what they are excited about and what they find interesting, good, solid, or just plain boring work.