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About Me

About Me

Research interests

I am a syntactician and a semanticist. I am also a fieldworker. The big questions that interest me concern cross-linguistic variation: How much variation is there in syntax? How much is there in semantics? What sorts of abstract universals can be found in the midst of this variation, and what types of theoretical tools are most useful in modeling them?

For much of my career, my research on these questions has largely drawn from findings in the syntax and semantics of Nez Perce, a Sahaptian language of the Columbia River Plateau. Some of the particular topics I have worked on in Nez Perce grammar are

In recent years, most of my interests have revolved around two topics, agreement and attitude reports.

You can find papers on these and other topics over on the papers page.

Academic history

I am professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley, and affiliated faculty in the philosophy department. I serve as editor-in-chief of Natural Language Semantics and am a founding co-editor of Berkeley Papers in Formal Linguistics. I previously served as an associate editor at Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.

Before coming to Berkeley in 2015, I held tenure-track positions at UC Santa Cruz and at Harvard; before that, I was a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. My dissertation was co-advised by Angelika Kratzer and Rajesh Bhatt. You can read about the Kratzer side of the academic genealogy here and here, thanks to Kai von Fintel. My academic ancestors on the Bhatt side can be found here.

Before that, I was an undergrad at Brandeis University, where I majored in linguistics and in philosophy. And still further back, I grew up in Fairfax County, VA, where I attended TJHSST (motto "today is tomorrow'').

Contact information

Dwinelle 1223, UC Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94720

ardeal@berkeley.edu

My name

If we're on a first-name basis, please call me "Amy Rose." Relatedly, my name is alphabetized like this:

Deal, Amy Rose

With the Berkeley crew (Hannah Sande, Virginia Dawson, Emily Clem, and Peter Jenks) at NELS 47, Amherst, October 2016

My cats Nori and Gari

The view from Lewiston Hill, Nez Perce County, Idaho