[THIS WEBSITE IS OUTDATED. MY NEW WEBSITE IS AT https://itaibassi.github.io]
----------------------------
I work on semantics and its interfaces with syntax and pragmatics. I graduated from the department of linguistics at MIT in September 2021, and now I am a post-doctoral researcher as part of the LeibnizDream project in the Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS).
My dissertation offers a new model of the syntax-semantics mapping of nominal phi-features (number, gender, person), in light of empirical problems with current models. The thesis can be found here: https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/006181.
I also have work on other domains, including Scalar Implicatures and their interaction with presuppositions. For example: https://semprag.org/article/view/sp.14.11.
Ph.d Thesis
- (2021) Fake Features and Valuation From Context (MIT Thesis).
Journal Publications
- (2021) Presuppositional Exhaustification (with Guillermo Del Pinal and Uli Sauerland). In Semantics and Pragmatics.
- (2019) Against Tanglewood by Focus Movement: a Reply to Erlewine and Kotek (2018) (with Nicholas Longenbaugh). In Press, Linguistic Inquiry.
Submitted Manuscripts
- (2021) Free choice and presuppositional exhaustification (with Guillermo Del Pinal and Uli Sauerland). Submitted.
- (2021) A prosodic theory of possible ellipsis remnants (with Justin Colley). Submitted.
Proceedings Papers
- (2021) Composing CPs: Evidence from Disjunction and Conjunction (with Tanya Bondarenko). In Proceedings of SALT 30
- (2019) Fake Indexicals and their Sensitivity to Focus. To be published in: Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistics Society (NELS) 49.
- (2018) Features on bound pronouns: an argument against syntactic agreement (with Nicholas Longenbaugh). Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistics Society (NELS) 48.
- (2017) Equational-intensional relative clauses with syntactic reconstruction (with Ezer Rasin), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21, 2016.
- (2016) A Unified Existential Semantics for Bare Conditionals (with Moshe E. Bar-Lev). Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21, 2016.
- (2020) P-word Integrity (with Justin Colley). Poster to be presented at the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) meeting, January 2020. [handout]
- (2020) Relativized Anaphor Agreement Effect (with Rafael Abramovitz). Poster to be presented at the LSA meeting, January 2020. [abstract]
- (2019) Fake Indexical Licensing in Relative Clauses is Sensitive to Focus: Implications for the Theory of Binding. Handout of a talk given in DISCO workshop, Leipzig University, April 16-17, 2019.
- (2018) Fake Indexicals are Not so Fake: On the Grammar of Variable Binding. Handout of a talk given in NELS 49, Cornell University, October 5-7, 2018.
- (2017) Features on Bound Pronouns: An Argument for a Semantic Approach (with Nicholas Longenbaugh). Talk, NELS 48, University of Iceland, October 27-29, 2017.
- (2017) Fake Indexicality in Focus. Talk, IATL 33, Tel Aviv University, October 15-16, 2017.
- (2017) Intensional-Functional Relative Clauses with Syntactic Reconstruction (with Ezer Rasin). Talk, Sinn und Bedeutung 22, University of Potsdam, September 7-10, 2017.
- (2016) Binding, Focus, Extraction. Handout for a talk given in SNEWS, Brown University, November 2016.
- (2016) A Unified Existential Semantics for Bare Conditionals (with Moshe E. Bar-Lev). Poster, NELS 46, UMass Amherst, October 14-16, 2016.
- (2016) A Unified Existential Semantics for Bare Conditionals. (with Moshe E. Bar-Lev). Talk, Sinn und Bedeutung 21, University of Edinburgh, September 4-6, 2016.