Matthijs Westera
Research
Anticipation and reconstruction of implicit questions
Which questions a discourse or percept evokes is a fascinating window into the human mind, on which discourse coherence and utterance interpretation both crucially depend.
M. Westera, J. Amidei & L. Mayol (2020). Similarity or deeper understanding? Analyzing the TED-Q dataset of evoked questions. In Proceedings of 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (CoLing).
M. Westera, L. Mayol & H. Rohde (2020). TED-Q: TED Talks and the Questions they Evoke. In Proceedings of Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC).
M. Westera (2018). Towards unsupervised language models for QUD prediction. Presented at 22nd workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue.
M. Westera & A. Brasoveanu (2014). Ignorance in context: the interaction of modified numerals and QUDs. In Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 24.
M. Westera (2021). Modelling implicit questions in discourse. Presented at SAILS lunch seminar, SAILS, Leiden Universiteit
M. Westera (2019). Predicting explicit and implicit questions. Presented at COLT kick-off workshop.
M. Westera (2019). Towards a quantitative model of 'Questions Under Discussion'. Presented at XIV International Symposium of Psycholinguistics.
M. Westera & H. Rohde (2019). Asking between the lines: Elicitation of evoked questions in text. In Proceedings of Amsterdam Colloquium 22.
M. Westera, H. Rohde & L. Mayol (2019). Studying the anticipation of QUDs and discourse relations by crowdsourcing a dataset of 'evoked questions'. Presented at GliF seminar, Grup de Lingüística Formal, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
M. Westera (2014). The QUD-guessing game: how to play it and how to avoid it. Presented at Questions in Discourse 5.
M. Westera (2014). Cancellation, underspecification and experimental pragmatics. Presented at SFB Kolloquium.
Formal and distributional/neural semantics
Language and cognition have both continuous aspects (e.g., concepts) and discrete aspects (e.g., reference to a particular entity). An adequate theory of language and communication will combine distributional semantics with pragmatics, and derive as a mere side-effect what formal semantics has put center stage.
C. Silberer, S. Zarrieß, M. Westera & G. Boleda (2020). Humans Meet Models on Object Naming: A New Dataset and Analysis. In Proceedings of 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (CoLing).
M. Westera, G. Boleda & S. Padó (2020). Representing a concept by the distribution of names of its instances. Presented at Computational Linguistics in The Netherlands 30.
M. Westera & G. Boleda (2020). A closer look at scalar diversity using contextualized semantic similarity. In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 24 (SuB).
L. Aina, C. Silberer, I. Sorodoc, M. Westera & G. Boleda (2019). What do Entity-Centric Models Learn? Insights from Entity Linking in Multi-Party Dialogue. In Proceedings of NAACL-HLT.
M. Westera & G. Boleda (2019). Don't blame distributional semantics if it can't do entailment. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computational Semantics (IWCS).
M. Westera & G. Boleda (2018). Formal and distributional semantics model different notions of meaning. Presented at Semantics and Philosophy in Europe 10.
M. Westera (2019). Some linguistic correlates of gradients and attention weights in BERT. Presented at BlackBoxNLP 2.
L. Aina, C. Silberer, I. Sorodoc, M. Westera & G. Boleda (2018). AMORE-UPF at SemEval-2018 Task 4: BiLSTM with Entity Library. In Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval).
Joint attention and closed-world reasoning (exhaustivity)
Answers are often interpreted as exhaustive, e.g., "Bert and Elmo" as implying "only Bert and Elmo". This doesn't derive from the standard Gricean maxims, nor from the pragmatic principles on which the so-called grammatical approach relies, but from a pragmatics of attention.
M. Westera (2021). Alternatives. In D. Altshuler (ed.), Linguistics meets philosophy (in press)
M. Westera (2020). Attentional Pragmatics: a new pragmatic approach to exhaustivity. Manuscript (under review)
M. Westera (2020). Hurford disjunctions: an in-depth comparison of the grammatical and the pragmatic approach. Manuscript (under review)
M. Westera (2019). Implying or implicating not both in declaratives and interrogatives. In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 24 (SuB).
M. Westera (2018). An attention-based explanation for some exhaustivity operators. In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21.
M. Westera (2017). QUDs, brevity, and the asymmetry of alternatives. In Proceedings of the Amsterdam Colloquium 21.
M. Westera (2017). Exhaustivity and intonation: a unified theory. PhD dissertation, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam
M. Westera (2014). Giving conversational implicatures the status they need and deserve. Presented at Semantics and Philosophy in Europe 7.
M. Westera (2018). Why exhaustivity is sometimes but not always part of what is meant. Presented at Semantics and Philosophy in Europe 10.
M. Westera (2017). How the symmetry problem solves the symmetry problem. Presented at DGFS AG2: Information structuring in discourse.
M. Westera (2017). On the possible pragmatic origins of inquisitiveness. Presented at Inquisitive Semantics Below and Beyond the Sentence Boundary.
M. Westera (2017). Explaining at-issueness contrasts between questions and assertions. Presented at Theoretical and Experimental Approaches to Presuppositions.
M. Westera (2016). Explaining exhaustivity in terms of Attentional Quantity. Presented at Logic and Language in Conversation.
M. Westera (2014). ''Yes'' and ''no'' according to attentive pragmatics. Squib
M. Westera (2014). Why semantics is the wastebasket. Presented at Research Seminar in Logic and Language, Tilburg University
M. Westera (2013). Exhaustivity is a conversational implicature. Presented at Leiden Utrecht Semantics Happenings
M. Westera (2013). Exhaustivity through the maxim of Relation. Presented at Tenth International Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation.
M. Westera (2013). Attention, exhaustivity and non-cooperativity. Presented at Georg-August-Universität
M. Westera (2013). Exhaustivity implicatures and attentive content. Presented at Investigating semantics: Empirical and philosophical approaches.
M. Westera (2013). Attention, exhaustivity and non-cooperativity. Presented at Logic and Interactive Rationality seminar
M. Westera (2013). Exhaustivity is a conversational implicature. Presented at Semantics Research Group, Keio University
M. Westera (2013). Exhaustivity without the competence assumption. Presented at Semantics/Pragmatics Colloquium
M. Westera (2013). Exhaustivity through the Maxim of Relation. In Proceedings of Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics 10.
M. Westera (2013). Inquisitive pragmatics: entailment as relatedness. Presented at Sixth Philosophy and Semantics in Europe Colloquium.
M. Westera (2013). Where the air is thin, but the view so much clearer. In The dynamic, inquisitive, and visionary life of phi, ?phi and diamond phi: a festschrift for Groenendijk, Stokhof and Veltman
M. Westera (2013). An attentive approach to exhaustivity. Presented at International Congress of Linguists.
M. Westera (2013). Exhaustivity, relatedness and the final rise. Presented at Semantics Circle, University of California, Santa Cruz
M. Westera (2013). The inquisitive semantics and pragmatics of modified numerals. Presented at University of California, Santa Cruz
M. Westera (2013). Grice can do it (but he was wrong about cancellability). Presented at LEGO seminar, Universiteit van Amsterdam
M. Westera (2013). Modified numerals in inquisitive pragmatics. Presented at Undergraduate Get-toGether on Semantics and pragmatics (UGGS), University of California, Santa Cruz
M. Westera (2012). Meanings as proposals: an inquisitive approach to exhaustivity. Presented at NAP-day, ACLC, University of Amsterdam
M. Westera (2012). Inquisitive pragmatics: ignorance, possibility and exhaustivity. Presented at Workshop on Questions and Inquisitive Semantics.
M. Westera (2012). Meanings as proposals: an algebraic inquisitive semantics. In Proceedings of the 10th Conference on Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory (LOFT).
M. Westera (2012). Meanings as proposals: a new semantic foundation for a Gricean pragmatics. In Proceedings of the 16th workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (SemDial).
The meaning of intonation
Speakers of English and related languages use rises and falls in various places to convey (non-)compliance with the conversational maxims. It's a simple idea, but if you plug in a precise set of maxims you get fine-grained predictions and insightful explanations.
M. Westera, D. Goodhue & C. Gussenhoven (2020). Meanings of tones and tunes. In C. Gussenhoven & A. Chen (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody
M. Westera (2019). Rise-fall-rise as a marker of secondary QUDs. In D. Gutzman & K. Turgay (ed.), Secondary content: the linguistics of side issues
M. Westera (2019). Intonational Compliance Marking: a theory of English intonational meaning. Presented at Séminaire Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Laboratoire Parole et Langage
M. Westera (2018). Rising declaratives of the Quality-suspending kind. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3(1), 121
M. Westera (2015). Ideal and actual cooperativity. Presented at Semantics and Philosophy in Europe 8.
M. Westera (2014). Grounding topic and focus in biological codes. In Proceedings of Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL).
M. Westera (2013). 'Attention, I'm violating a maxim!' - a unifying account of the final rise. In Proceedings of SemDial.
M. Westera (2018). Rise-fall-rise: a prosodic window on secondary QUDs. Presented at Workshop on Prosody and Meaning.
M. Westera (2017). Rise-fall-rise intonation and secondary QUDs. Presented at DGFS AG3: Secondary information and linguistic encoding.
M. Westera (2017). The pragmatics and prosody of declarative 'questions' (and interrogative questions). Presented at Fachbereichskolloquium linguistics, Universität Konstanz
M. Westera (2017). English rising declaratives of the Quality-suspending kind. Presented at GliF seminar, Grup de Lingüística Formal, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
M. Westera (2017). A unifying understanding of RFR, topics and non-at-issue meaning. Presented at GLOW workshop 2: Compositionality at the interfaces.
M. Westera (2014). A pragmatics-driven theory of intonational meaning. Presented at Heinrich Heine Universität
M. Westera (2014). A pragmatics-driven theory of intonational meaning. Presented at MIT
M. Westera (2014). A pragmatics-driven theory of intonational meaning. Presented at Yale University
M. Westera (2014). A pragmatics-driven theory of intonational meaning. Presented at McGill University
M. Westera (2013). Not sure if this is relevant.... Presented at Discourse Expectations: Theoretical, Experimental and Computational Perspectives.
M. Westera (2013). Exhaustivity, relatedness and the final rise. Presented at Semantics Circle, University of California, Santa Cruz
M. Westera (2013). Attentive pragmatics: an account of exhaustivity and the final rise. In Proceedings of ESSLLI Student Session.
M. Westera (2013). The Rise and Fall of Cooperativity. Presented at Discourse Coherence.
M. Westera (2013). A compositional account of contrastive topic in terms of non-cooperativity. Presented at Questions in Discourse.
Verb semantics, conceptual structure and language evolution
M. Warglien, P. Gärdenfors & M. Westera (2012). Event structure, conceptual spaces and the semantics of verbs. Theoretical Linguistics 38(3-4)
M. Westera (2011). Freistaat Flaschenhals, or How the Language Acquisition Bottleneck Shaped the Lexicon-Syntax Interface. MSc thesis, Department of Philosophy, Utrecht University
M. Westera (2008). Action representations and the semantics of verbs. BSc thesis, Department of Philosophy, Utrecht University
M. Westera (2011). How, what for and since when does word meaning influence syntactic composition?. Presented at Seminar AI, Department of Philosophy, Utrecht University
![[slides]](downloads/2011-11_InevitableActiveLexicon.pdf,downloads/2011-11_InevitableActiveLexicon.svg){kind=link}
M. Westera (2011). The inevitable active lexicon. Presented at 8th Workshop of Syntax and Semantics.
M. Westera (2010). Reconsidering the code model of communication for simulations of language evolution. Presented at 8th International Conference on the Evolution of Language.
Miscellaneous
M. Aloni, V. Kimmelman, G. Weidman Sassoon, F. Roelofsen, K. Schulz & M. Westera (2011). Proceedings of the 18th Amsterdam Colloquium 2011. Edited volume.
M. Westera (2011). Existential inquisitive semantics. Term paper for the course on Inquisitive Semantics, University of Amsterdam.
M. Westera, J. Boschloo, J. van Diggelen, L. Koelewijn, M. Neerincx & N. Smets (2010). Employing Use-cases for Piecewise Evaluation of Requirements and Claims. In Proceedings of the 28th European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics (2010).
