Jamie Yates Findlay

Postdoctoral Fellow - Lingvistiske og nordiske studier

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Email j.y.findlay@iln.uio.no

Room 246

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Visiting address Niels Henrik Abels vei 36 Henrik Wergelands hus 0313 Oslo

Postal address Postboks 1102 Blindern 0317 Oslo

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Academic interests

The main focus of my work is on using computational and mathematical tools to explore syntax and semantics, and especially apparent mismatches between the two. My recent work has focussed on idioms and other ‘multiword expressions’, and in particular their representation in the lexicon. Currently, I am working on the Universal Natural Language Understanding project, which seeks to establish a maximally general procedure for connecting Universal Dependencies syntactic parses with semantic representations in Discourse Representation Theory.

I am interested in all areas of grammatical theory (including meta-theory), and in all areas of linguistics more broadly: as well as syntax and semantics, my research has touched on sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and cognitive linguistics.

Much of my work is based in Lexical Functional Grammar and Glue Semantics, and I am also interested in other well-formalised theories of grammar, especially of the ‘constraint-based’ or ‘model-theoretic’ variety.

Beyond this, I also have an interest in sociolinguistics and language-in-use, and in corpus-based and discourse theoretic tools. Within this domain, I’m most interested in the interactions of language with gender and sexuality.

Background

I completed my doctoral studies at the University of Oxford, where I subsequently held various lectureships before coming to UiO.

Publications

For a detailed publications list and links to my papers, please see my personal website.

Tags: Linguistics, Syntax, Semantics, Computational linguistics, Sociolinguistics

Findlay, Jamie Yates; Taylor, Roxanne & Kibort, Anna (2023). Argument structure and mapping theory. In Dalrymple, Mary (Eds.), The Handbook of Lexical Functional Grammar. Language Science Press. ISSN 978-3-98554-082-2. p. 699–778. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.10185966. Show summary
This chapter presents the LFG view of two closely related areas of inquiry: argument structure, a level of structure which represents the syntactically realisable arguments of a predicate, and mapping theory, the theory of how those arguments are linked to grammatical functions at f-structure, as well as of alternations in this linking brought about by processes like passivisation. After introducing some preliminary concepts, the chapter explores various approaches within LFG: the earliest work using lexical rules to explain argument alternations, the “classical” version of Lexical Mapping Theory (LMT) developed in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and various subsequent modifications, extensions, and reimaginings of LMT, including contemporary work focussing on the formal status of argument structure and mapping theory, and their connection to the rest of the grammar.
Findlay, Jamie Yates (2023). LFG and Tree-Adjoining Grammar. In Dalrymple, Mary (Eds.), The Handbook of Lexical Functional Grammar. Language Science Press. ISSN 978-3-98554-082-2. p. 2069–2125. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.10186054. Show summary
This chapter gives an introduction to Tree-Adjoining Grammar (TAG) and draws some comparisons with Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). It is primarily aimed at those familiar with LFG who are looking to learn about TAG and see where the two formalisms differ/overlap, but the comparisons will also be of interest to those coming from a TAG background. After introducing TAG, the chapter considers questions of generative capacity, lexicalisation, and the factoring of redundancies from grammars. It then concludes by illustrating the potential for combining LFG and TAG, and discusses the theoretical implications of doing so.
Findlay, Jamie Yates (2023). Lexical Functional Grammar as a Construction Grammar. Journal of Language Modelling. ISSN 2299-856X. 11(2), p. 197–266. doi: 10.15398/jlm.v11i2.338. Full text in Research Archive
Findlay, Jamie Yates; Yildirim, Ahmet; Salimifar, Saeedeh & Haug, Dag Trygve Truslew (2023). Rule-based semantic interpretation for Universal Dependencies. In Grobol, Loïc & Tyers, Francis (Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Universal Dependencies. Association for Computational Linguistics. ISSN 978-1-959429-34-0. p. 47–57.
Haug, Dag Trygve Truslew; Findlay, Jamie Yates & Yildirim, Ahmet (2023). The long and the short of it: DRASTIC, a semantically annotated dataset containing sentences of more natural length. In Bonn, Julia & Xue, Nianwen (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Designing Meaning Representations. Association for Computational Linguistics. ISSN 978-1-959429-65-4. p. 89–98.
Kim, Yoolim & Findlay, Jamie Yates (2023). On the ‘subject’ honorific -si- in Korean. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America. 8(1). doi: 10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5534.
Haug, Dag Trygve Truslew & Findlay, Jamie Yates (2023). Formal semantics for Dependency Grammar. In Rambow, Owen & Lareau, Francois (Ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Dependency Linguistics. Association for Computational Linguistics. ISSN 978-1-959429-32-6. p. 22–31.
Findlay, Jamie Yates & Haug, Dag Trygve Truslew (2022). Managing scope ambiguities in Glue via multistage proving. Proceedings of the LFG-conference. ISSN 1098-6782. p. 144–163. Full text in Research Archive
Findlay, Jamie Yates & Haug, Dag Trygve Truslew (2021). How useful are Enhanced Universal Dependencies for semantic interpretation? In Osenova, Petya (Eds.), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling, SyntaxFest 2021). Association for Computational Linguistics. ISSN 9781955917148. p. 22–34. Full text in Research Archive
Findlay, Jamie Yates (2021). Meaning in LFG. In Arka, I Wayan; Asudeh, Ash & King, Tracy Holloway (Ed.), Modular Design of Grammar: Linguistics on the Edge. Oxford University Press. ISSN 9780192844842. p. 340–374.

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Butt, Miriam; Findlay, Jamie Yates & Toivonen, Ida (2023). Proceedings of the LFG'23 Conference. PubliKon. ISBN 0000000000. 266 p.
Butt, Miriam; Findlay, Jamie Yates & Toivonen, Ida (2022). Proceedings of the LFG'22 Conference. CSLI Publications. ISBN 0000000000. 404 p.
Butt, Miriam; Findlay, Jamie Yates & Toivonen, Ida (2021). Proceedings of the LFG’21 Conference. CSLI Publications. ISBN 0000000000. 352 p.

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Published Apr. 6, 2021 5:15 PM - Last modified Dec. 14, 2023 12:54 PM

Projects

Universal Natural Language Understanding