Language is only useful for communication because the sentences we utter, write or think have meaning. As a semanticist, I am interested in how speakers systematically, and largely unconsciously, build up the meaning of a sentence from the meaning of its parts and how these are put together. I am also interested in how speakers figure out contextual aspects of meanings that go beyond what the sentences literally say. Topics that I have worked on include negation, focus, quantification, and conditionals. Most of the data I work from drawn are drawn from English, Spanish and German.
