Professor of Linguistics
The Ohio State University

My main areas of specialization within linguistics are formal semantics and pragmatics. Within these fields, my principal research interests are:

• Anaphora, definiteness, and specificity
• How to formally model the role of context in interpretation: Presupposition, focus, implicature, perspective, and domain restriction
• The semantics and pragmatics of modality, mood, tense, and aspect

As a student I studied formal semantics under Barbara H. Partee at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I then held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford, where I was exposed to interdisciplinary work on pragmatics in the tradition of Paul Grice, and work on Planning Theory in AI. Like many linguists, part of my motivation in studying human language is a compelling interest in the nature of the human mind. My work on pragmatics is driven by that orientation, and it has resulted in a deepening dialogue with colleagues in computer science, logic, philosophy, and psychology. In this vein, I am involved in an interdisciplinary Pragmatics Initiative, involving not only scholars and graduate students from the relevant disciplines at OSU, but also other scholars from the U.S. and Europe. Recently I've been collaborating with David Beaver, Mandy Simons, and Judith Tonhauser to study presupposition, conventional implicature, and other non-assertoric aspects of utterance meaning.

Office Hours: Thursdays 12:30-1:30 and by appointment

Contact Information:
Email: croberts@ling.ohio-state.edu
Phone: (614) 292-8302
210 Oxley Hall
Columbus, OH 43210