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Publication

• Carlos Cisneros and Anqi Zhang (2021) "Floating Numeral Phrases and Event Measurements in Guaymí" In Proceedings of the 37th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. D. K. E. Reisinger and Marianne Huijsmans, 116-126. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
• Carlos Cisneros (2019) "Definiteness in Cuevas Mixtec" Studies in Diversity Liguistics: Definiteness Across Languages. Berlin: Language Science Press.
• Ivano Caponigro, Harold Torrence, and Carlos Cisneros (2013) "Free Relative Clauses in two Mixtec languages" International Journal of American Linguistics 79(1): 41-96.

Talks

• Carlos Cisneros (2017) "Anti-episodicity as a General Constraint on even just" Implicatures or domain restriction/domain widening? Theoretical and experimental approaches (IoD), Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, June 19-20.
• Carlos Cisneros (2016) "Definiteness in Cuevas Mixtec" Definiteness Across Languages Workshop (DAL), Mexico City, June 22-24.
• Carlos Cisneros (2015) "El numeral flotante guaymí no es adjetivo" XIV Simposio Internacional de Comunicación Social, Centro de Lingüística Aplicada, Santiago de Cuba, January 19-23.
• Carlos Cisneros (2015) "Two analyses of floating numerals in Guaymí" Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA), Portland, January 8-11.

Current Projects

• Mandarin wh-indefinites:
  I am collaborating with Dr. Anqi Zhang at Nanjing University to develop a novel semantic analysis of Mandarin wh-indefinites that predicts their epistemic quality and polarity sensitivity to epistemic expressions. Our analysis differs considerably from current approaches in that it is non-scalar.
• Quantifier Float in Chibchan:
  I have teamed up with Dr. Anqi Zhang to model the syntax and semantics of Quantifier Float in a Panamanian Chibchan language called Guaymí (aka Ngäbe, Ngäbere). Our analysis takes an adverbial approach by analyzing floating numerals as event measurement expressions.
• Free Choice readings on nominal expressions:
  Part of my dissertation develops an account of the semantics of free choice items as consisting of two key ingredients: reference to the bottom value of a scale, and an underdescribed implicature called Minimal Sufficiency Evaluation, which is a comparison of scalar alternatives in the sufficiency of their associated scalar values for satisfaction of a description. I am working to expand on this idea to generalize it for free choice expressions broadly.
• Indiscriminative readings:
  My dissertation develops an account of indiscriminative readings of free choice items as their inherent readings, with free choice readings being secondary, applied with minimal sufficiency evaluation. I use a Krifka (1995) style approach to derive polarity sensitivity in the semantics, while David Beaver and colleagues's semantics for exclusive particles under negation derives the characteristic meaning and discourse effect of indiscriminative readings. I am testing the explanatory adequacy of this model across languages.
• Mixtec Language Course:
  I am a native language advocate and involve myself in some native language revitalization activities. This has included the creation of a Mixtec language course for a non-profit org in Fresno, CA. I have helped develop lesson plans and trained native speakers teaching speech and writing to adults and children. The worksite is usually the Centro Binacional, and often the teacher is trilingual rapper Miguel Villegas (aka Una Isu, Bolígrafo).