Achievement

The program witnessed this year a veritable explosion of trainee research in semantics. IGERT visiting faculty member Kyle Rawlins brought semantics into the expertise of program faculty for the first time, with dramatic results (he has now been hired as a regular faculty member). Five trainees (Lilia Rissman, Erin Zaroukian, Monica Lopez-Gonzales, Michael Oliver, and Charley Beller) and two associates (Ozge Gurcanli and Kristen Johannes) are already conducting research under his supervision, studying a wide range of topics including the semantics of instruments, of epithets, of approximate number, of spatial language, of compositionality in neural networks, and of the two different Spanish counterparts of the English verb "to be". A new Semantics Laboratory has been constructed to house this burgeoning research area within the IGERT program; new courses and seminars have been developed for training both students who will specialize in semantics and students working in related fields.