Teaching

Trinity College Dublin
- Undergraduate
  - Semantics I
  - Semantics II
  - Semantics III
  - Pragmatics I
  - Pragmatics II
- Postgraduate
  - Linguistic Pragmatics
  - Describing Meaning
- 11-Week In-depth Courses
  - Scalar Implicature
  - Presuppositions
  - Model Theory and Indirect Semantics
  - Modality
Queen Mary University of London
- Undergraduate
  - Introduction to Semantics
  - Syntax II
  - Meaning in the Real World
- Postgraduate
  - Formal Semantics
  - Research Practicum
University of Edinburgh (as Lecturer)
- Undergraduate
  - Logic 1
  - Puzzles and Paradoxes
University of Edinburgh (as Tutor)
- Undergraduate
  - Logic 1
  - Mind, Matter, and Language
  - LEL 1A
  - LEL 1B
- Postgraduate
  - Introduction to Syntax
  - Semantic Theory

Summer School

37th European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information
Prague 2026
The Function of Composition – With Fausto Carcassi

This course introduces students to the formal tools and theoretical background to be able to formulate and address questions about universals of the composition function in natural language. A satisfactory evolutionary account of compositionality has to explain not just compositionality as such, but the specific set of observed operations or some tightly fitting empirical constraints on the observed variation in the composition operator, as in the successful tradition of Generalized Quantification Theory. Empirical observations have motivated a rich inventory of modes of composition, including function application, type shifting, predicate modification, and less widely accepted or theory-specific ones such as event identification, restriction, and intensional variants of each. Despite the wealth of empirical data and a few scattered attempts to address the issue, to date there has been little interest in formulating and explaining universals of natural language composition. In this course, we aim to address these topics directly by surveying the empirical landscape, describing the composition function as a single operation on meanings, introducing some richer type theories to formalize this operation, and formulating some universals that constrain the observed variation. Students will gain practice with these tools and explore how they can be applied to formulate hypotheses about universals of semantic composition.

Supervision

Bovin, Joshua. Research Practicum: Classes of Clause Embedding Predicates. MA thesis, Queen Mary University of London, 2024.
Pavlovic, Stefan. From Crisis to Convergence: Minimalist Syntax and the Search for a Neurolinguistic Linking Hypothesis. MPhil thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2025.
Liang, Mengzhu. Pragmatic Functions and Stance Orientations of the Sentence-Final Particles ha and sai in Southwestern Mandarin. MPhil thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2025.
Shan, Zeqi. From Syntax to Semantics: A Comparative Analysis of ChatGPT and Deepseek’s Explanation Styles on CEFR-Leveled Chinese Learner Sentences. MPhil thesis, Trinity College Dublin, in progress.
Tran, Thalia. A Corpus Analysis of the Manifestos of Violent “Incels” and Leaders of Destructive Cults. MPhil thesis, Trinity College Dublin, in progress.