Virginia Dawson
Linguist
Welcome
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Western Washington University. My research interests lie in semantics, pragmatics, morphology, syntax and language documentation. I approach questions in these areas primarily through the lens of Tiwa, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Assam, India.
My research interests include:
Disjunction and indefinites
Countability distinctions and number marking
Classifiers and numerals
Imperatives
Attitude reports
Case concord
Morpheme reordering and post-syntactic movement
Research
Papers
2024. The emergence of case matching in discontinuous DPs. With Emily Clem. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-023-09597-y.
2023. Describing definites and indefinites. With Peter Jenks. In Peter Jenks and Lev Michael (eds), Key topics in language documentation and description, Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication No. 26, 99-174. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
2022. Numeral modification and selection in a classifier language. In Özge Bakay, Breanna Pratley, Eva Neu and Peyton Deal (eds), Proceedings of NELS 52, Vol. 1, 221-234. Amherst: GLSA.
2022. The kinship system of Tiwa. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 45: 159-178. https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.21020.daw.
2022. Outscoping the directive force of imperatives. Linguistic Inquiry 53: 155-167. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00402.
2022. With Hannah Sande. Counting mass nouns in Guébie. In Galen Sibanda, Deo Ngonyani, Jonathan Choti and Ann Biersteker (eds), Descriptive and theoretical approaches to African linguistics: Selected papers from the 49th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 261-276. Berlin: Language Science Press.
2021. Disjunction as alternatives: evidence from phrasal comparatives. Proceedings of WCCFL 38, ed. Rachel Soo, Una Y. Chow and Sander Nederveen, 158-168. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
2019. Third readings by semantic scope lowering: Prolepsis in Tiwa. With Amy Rose Deal. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 23, Vol. 1, ed. M. Teresa Espinal, Elena Castroviejo, Manuel Leonetti, Louise McNally and Cristina Real-Puigdollers, 329-346. Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès): Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
2019. Lexicalizing disjunction scope. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 4(13): 1-13.
2018. A new kind of epistemic indefinite. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, Vol. 1, ZASPiL 60, ed. Uli Sauerland and Stephanie Solt, 349-366. Berlin: ZAS.
2017. Optimal clitic placement in Tiwa. Proceedings of NELS 47, Vol. 1, ed. Andrew Lamont and Katerina A. Tetzloff, 243-256. Amherst: GLSA.
to appear. Inclusive plural in a 'general number' language. Proceedings of TripleA 10, ed. Mira Grubic, Jeanne Lecavelier, Prarthanaa Manjunath Bharadwaj and Malte Zimmermann.
to appear. Disjunction in Ket. With Ilsa O'Rollins and Edward Vajda. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America.
to appear. Auxiliary verbs in Tiwa. For Monali Longmailai and Samir Debbarma (eds), Bodo-Garo Linguistics.
to appear. Tiwa indeterminates and NP restriction in a Hamblin semantics. Proceedings of FASAL 7 (Feb, 2017), ed. Sakshi Bhatia and Dustin Chacón.
under review. Displacement as a response to non-local allomorphy: Evidence from Tiwa. With Emily Clem and Nicholas Rolle. Morphology.
under review. In support of a choice functional analysis of Sinhala də. With Samantha Wathugala. [Invited submission for special issue of Journal of South Asian Linguistics. Submitted 2019.]
Dissertation
2020. Existential quantification in Tiwa: disjunction and indefinites. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Chapter 2 presents a grammar sketch of Tiwa.
Chapter 3 argues for an alternative approach to disjunction based on its behavior in unreduced phrasal comparatives. It also discusses how obligatory narrow scope disjunction in Tiwa can be captured on an alternative approach.
Chapter 4 argues for a choice functional approach to obligatory wide scope disjunction and indefinites in Tiwa, based on their failure to obey the Binder Roof Constraint. It also discusses the pragmatic ignorance affects found with these elements, situating them in the broader context of specific indefinites cross-linguistically.
Community-oriented descriptive material
2023. Introduction to Tiwa Grammar. Morigaon: Tiwa Mathonlai Tokhra.
Handouts, slides and posters (that aren't yet available as papers)
The pragmatics of optional plural in Tiwa. WCCFL, UC Berkeley, April 14, 2024. With Royce Gibson.
Slash as property disjunction with strengthening. LSA, January 9, 2021. With Peter Jenks.
In support of a choice functional analysis of Sinhala də. FASAL 9, Reed College, March 16, 2019. With Samantha Wathugala.
Countability and plurality in a classifier language. LSA, Salt Lake City, January 7, 2018.
Teaching
Courses taught regularly at Western Washington University
Ling201: Introduction to Language and Linguistics
Ling310: Linguistic Analysis
Ling331: Semantics and Pragmatics
Ling332: Formal Semantics
Ling431: Cross-linguistic semantic variation
Ling441: Field methods
CV
The latest version of my CV can be found here.
Contact
email:
virginia.dawson@wwu.edu
office:
Bond Hall 418E