HEATHER SUSAN BURNETT
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Some Ongoing Projects....

A. Formal Models of Identity Construction Through Language.
  • Explores to what extent  Bayesian Game-Theoretic  Models are useful for  the formalization of  Penelope Eckert's  Third Wave  approach to sociolinguistic variation and identity construction.
Selected References:
Burnett, H. (2017). "Signalling Games, Sociolinguistic Variation and the Construction of Style." accepted pending revisions in  Linguistics & Philosophy.
Burnett, H. (2017). "Sociolinguistic Interaction and Identity Construction: The View from Game-Theoretic Pragmatics". Journal of Sociolinguistics. 22. in press.

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B.   Meaning-based Approaches to  Social  Stratification
  • Explores how  information concerning speaker identity and ideologies can be extracted from classic large-scale sociolinguistic corpora (for example, the Montréal 84 corpus of spoken Montréal French (Thibault & Vincent 1990) ,  which allows for a unified analysis of style shifting (intra-speaker variation) and social stratification (inter-speaker variation) within a  Third Wave  perspective.
Selected References:
Burnett, H. (2017).    A Meaning-Based Approach to Social Stratification:  Du tout vs Pantoute in Montréal 84. Paper to be presented at the Integrating Approaches to Social Meaning workshop at ESSLLI 2017,  Toulouse, France.


C. Compositionality in Gender Identity Construction
  • Investigates whether sociolinguistic styles  satisfy  some notion of compositionality (and if so, which one). In collaboration with Erez Levon (QMUL), we provide (weakly) compositional interpretations for styles constructing different gender and sexual identities for British men.
Selected References:
Burnett, H. & E. Levon. (2017). Gender/Sexuality Stereotypes and Functional Compositionality in Identity Construction.  Paper presented at the New Advances in Formal Pragmatics: From Scalar Implicatures to Social Meaning workshop. Département d'Études Cognitives. École normale supérieure, Paris. March 2017.
Burnett, H. & E. Levon. (2016). A more-or-less compositional semantics of style. Paper presented at the Meaning, Optimization and Interaction (MOI) workshop. Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle. Université Paris Diderot, Paris. September 2016.




​D.  The Relationship between Vagueness, Context-Sensitivity and Scale Structure
  • Explores to what extent a theory of adjectival and nominal gradability  and scale structure can be constructed from existing theories of adjectival/nominal context-dependence and vagueness.
Selected References
Burnett, H. (2016). Gradability in Natural Language: Logical and Grammatical Foundations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burnett, H. (2014).  A Delineation Solution  to the Puzzles of Absolute Adjectives. Linguistics & Philosophy.  37:1-39.
Burnett, H. (2012). The Grammar of Tolerance: On Vagueness, Context-Sensitivity and the Origin of Scale Structure. PhD Thesis, UCLA.



E.  Vagueness, Ideology and the Interpretation  of Grammatical Gender in French
  • Investigates the role that pragmatic imprecision and speaker ideologies play in the use and interpretation of grammatical gender in French (in collaboration with Olivier Bonami (Paris Diderot).
Selected References
Burnett, H. & O. Bonami. (in prep.). Madame  le/la ministre:  The role of speaker ideologies and pragmatic slack in the use of grammatical gender in the debates of the Assemblée Nationale.


F. Description of  Categorical and Variable Patterns of Gallo-Romance Dialects
  • Empirical studies of negation and quantification structures in  varieties of French spoken in France and Québec (in collaboration with Mireille Tremblay (U. Montréal) and Hélène Blondeau (U. Florida).
  • Empirical studies of negation structures in endangered GR dialects spoken in France (esp. Normand and Picard, in collaboration with J. Auger (Indiana) and A. Dagnac (Toulouse)).
Selected References
Burnett, H. M. Tremblay & H. Blondeau. (2015). "The Variable Grammar of Montréal French Negative Concord." Selected papers from NWAV43. Penn Working papers in linguistics.
Burnett, H. & A. Dagnac. (2016).  "Concordance négative optionnelle: contrastes forts et faibles entre picard et québécois". Pre-proceedings of the  5th Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française. Université François Rabelais. Tours, France.
Auger, J. & H. Burnett. (2016).  "Syntax, Semantics and Affect in Picard Secondary Negation." Paper presented at LSRL 46.

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  • Home
  • Publications
  • Teaching
    • Potsdam Summer School
    • Outils formels 2018
    • Sémantique Computationnelle
    • Avancement du memoire (2018)
    • Avancement du memoire (2017)
  • Projects
  • Contact
  • Conference Slides