I'm a linguist, specializing in formal semantics and pragmatics, and their interfaces with the grammar.

I'm a Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. 
 

I got my PhD in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019. Before coming to Edinburgh, I was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Konstanz and a member of the Questions at the Interfaces research unit.

My work looks at how different dimensions of meaning interact and are represented in the grammar and lexicon. When we construct and interpret a complex sentence, how do lexical, grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic factors interact and give rise to the global inferences and form-meaning mappings that we find in natural language. How do languages differ in terms of the semantic, pragmatic, and grammatical strategies they employ to express different kinds of meanings. My research explores these topics particularly with respect to the question of how we use language to represent thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, and facts.

Current and recent projects include:

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• Research showing that knowledge and belief-reports differ syntactically and semantically in terms of how they combine with clauses vs DPs: believe combines directly with propositions and with individuals through additional strategies; know makes reference to individuals as part of their argument structure: they describe complex relations anchored in acquaintance with (abstract or concrete) individuals in the world. [Djärv, 2023. Journal of Semantics: Knowing and believing things: What DP-complementation can tell us about the meaning and composition of (factive) attitudes .]

 

• Research showing that the licensing effects on embedded main clause declaratives are fundamentally pragmatic and can occurr in a wider range of contexts and with a wider range of discourse functions than previously thought. The paper shows that a matrix predicate may license an embedded main clause declarative, to the extent that the matrix clause as a whole can frame the discourse move represented by the embedded clause. [Djärv, 2022. Glossa: On the interpretation and distribution of embedded main clause syntax: new perspectives on complex discourse moves.]

 

• A project with Luke Adamson (Leibniz-ZAS) on clausal complementation across lexical categories.

 

• A project with Deniz Özyıldız (University of Konstanz) on argument-structure alternations and variable factivity inferences with preferential predicates.

 

• A project with  Donka Farkas  (UC Santa Cruz) on the licensing conditions on embedded questions and declaratives with main clause syntax.

Topics I have worked on include:
 

syntax-semantics interface ∙ syntax-discourse interface ∙ morpho-semantics ∙ attitude reports and clausal complementation ∙ factivity ∙ nominals with propositional interpretations ∙ speech acts ∙ presupposition ∙ main clause phenomena ∙ copular sentences ∙ argument structure ∙ island effects ∙ exhaustivity ∙ focus and at-issueness

 

I'm also interested in how experimental and quantitative methods can be used to inform theoretical and empirical questions about structure and meaning in language.

For a full list of publications, see Research Output. 

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[To learn about my work on how lexical and pragmatic cues can interact to give rise to variable factivity inferences, check out the slides from the course Intonation and Meaning, which I co-taught with Deniz Özyıldız at ESSLLI 2024.]

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Helpful note for referring to me: the "aj" cluster in Kajsa is pronounced like the English PRICE vowel [aɪ], and my pronouns are she/her/hers.

 

Collaborators: Luke Adamson, Akiva Bacovcin, Spencer Caplan, Donka Farkas, Caroline Heycock, Deniz Özyıldız, Hannah Rohde, Maribel Romero, Florian Schwarz, Jeremy Zehr.
 

I'm also an affiliate member of the project MECORE: Cross-linguistic investigation of meaning-driven combinatorial restrictions  restrictions in clausal embedding.

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