Edinburgh Meaning Science Lab combines theories and methodologies from cross-linguistic formal semantics and evolutionary linguistics to investigate questions such as: ‘How are meanings expressed in natural language?’, ‘Are there universal patterns in the way meanings are encoded in different languages?’; ‘What are the principles that underlie such universal patterns (if there are any)?’; ‘How are language-internal and language-external factors interact in such principles?’.
Currently, the lab is running the following two research projects:
- AHRC/DFG project: MECORE: A cross-linguistic investigation of meaning-driven combinatorial restrictions in clausal embedding (2021-2024)
- UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship: LiSU: Logic in Semantic Universals (2022-2025)
Members
- Wataru Uegaki, Principal Investigator
- Anne Mucha, Postdoctoral Fellow (LiSU)
- Ciyang Qing, Postdoctoral Fellow (MECORE)
- James Engels, Research Assistant (LiSU)
- Esther Lam, PhD student
- Fred Whibley, PhD student
- Keyu Dong, Undergraduate intern
- Kuromitsuto, Research Distractor
Collaborators
- Jennifer Culbertson (Edinburgh)
- Kajsa Djärv (Edinburgh)
- Mora Maldonado (Nantes)
- Deniz Özyıldız (Konstanz)
- Floris Roelofsen (Amsterdam)
- Maribel Romero (Konstanz)
- Shane Steinert-Threlkeld (Washington)
- Jakub Szymanik (Trento)
- Malte Zimmermann (Potsdam)
Alumni
- Takanobu Nakamura (PhD 2022; Currently postdoc at ILLC Amsterdam)
- Tim Jantarungsee (MScR 2023; Currently PhD student at UCL Linguistics)
- Mingyang Bian (MSc 2022; Currently PhD student at UPenn Linguistics)
- Sophia Nauta (MECORE RA 2020-2021; currently PhD student at Leiden Linguistics)
- Yingyu (Sue) Su (MECORE RA 2020-2022; currently PhD student at USC)
- Neng Wan (MSc 2022)
- Ella Hannon (LiSU RA 2022; currently PhD student at UBC Linguistics)
- Victoria-Elliot Bush (LiSU Intern 2022; currently student at QMUL Linguistics)
- Bao Di (MSc 2021; currently at European Masters Program in Language & Communication Technologies, Saarland University)
- Jenny Wu (MSc 2020; currently PhD student at UCLA Philosophy)
- Yunchong Huang (MSc 2020; currently MSc student at ILLC Amsterdam)
Talk series
Jointly with Brian Rabern (Edinburgh Philosophy), we organise a talk series by external and internal speakers who work on issues in meaning. See here for the current schedule of the talk series.