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IPA[guide]Jos Tellings

Ph.D. in Linguistics (2016, UCLA)

I have left academia, I now work at Achmea on the development of conversational AI.

Until November 2021 I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Time in Translation project at Utrecht University.

My academic interests are in semantics and its interfaces with syntax, intonation, and mathematics. ORCID logo 0000-0002-4259-8202

Recent news:

'Still' as an additive particle in conditionals

This paper analyzes the behavior of still in subjunctive conditionals. It presents a novel three-way empirical distinction that shows that in certain counterfactual contexts, still behaves like an additive particle. I provide a unified analysis for aspectual still, still in semifactuals, and a third use newly introduced here. I propose a revision of the standard event-based semantics of aspectual still (Ippolito 2007) in order to make it embeddable under modal operators.

Dissertation

My dissertation "Counterfactuality in discourse" (UCLA, June 2016) investigates the effect of discourse on counterfactual inferences in conditionals. I provide novel data that illustrate the focus-sensitivity of counterfactual inferences: in combination with certain focus particles, and when pronounced with certain intonation contours, counterfactual conditionals do not trigger some counterfactual inferences that would otherwise arise. In the analysis I propose, the link between the topic-focus structure of conditionals and the generation of counterfactual inferences lies in the pragmatic phenomenon of conditional perfection (the strengthening of conditionals into biconditionals).