I’m currently a visiting faculty member in the linguistics & philosophy department at MIT.
I’m a theoretical linguist, which means that my work involves developing formal models of what we know when we know a language. Mostly, I work on semantics and pragmatics; I’m also interested in computational approaches to meaning and the syntax-semantics interface.
When I’m not doing linguistics, I code, read, and scale vertical walls. Reach me at pdell@mit.edu, or via encrypted chat.
Recent and upcoming
- February, 2021. I’ll be giving an invited talk at the workshop On the nouniness of propositional arguments at DGfS 43, Freiburg. Topic TBC.
- December 8, 2020: I’ll be giving a talk at MIT CompLang entitled What linguists can learn from functional programmers: A study in opacity and environment sensitivity.
- November 2020: I have a new ms. on lingbuzz entitled Towards a principled logic of anaphora, which can be found here.
- November, 2020: I gave an invited talk at Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics 17, entitled Classical negation in a dynamic alternative semantics. Slides.
- October 27, 2020: I gave at the Rutgers SURGE meeting, entitled Coreference, negation, and modal subordination.
- October 9, 2020: I gave a talk at the NYU semantics group, entitled Crossover and the dynamics of negation.
- September, 2020: I a new ms., to appear as a commentary in a special issue of Theoretical Linguistiics, entitled A plea for equality: remarks on Moltmann’s semantics for clausal embedding, which can be found here.
- August, 2020: I gave a talk at SALT with Yasu Sudo, entitled Generalized crossover - you can find the slides here.
- July 2020: I have a new ms. (in prep) entitled Coreference, negation, and modal subordination. Contact me directly for a draft.
- July 2020: I have a new ms. on lingbuzz entitled Exceptional de re in continuation semantics, which can be found here.
- June 2020: I have a new ms. on lingbuzz entitled Crossover and accessibility in dynamic semantics, which can be found here.
- March 2020: I have a new manuscript entitled A flexible scope theory of intensionality, which can be found here.
- January 2020: I uploaded a corrected version of my PhD dissertation Elements of Clausal Embedding to semantics archive and lingbuzz. It can be downloaded from here.
- Spring semester 2020: I taught a semantics seminar at MIT with Martin Hackl, entitled Getting high: scope, projection, and evaluation order. The class web page can be found here.