Bert Le Bruyn

Biography

I’m a formal semanticist. I’ve presented at all major conferences in my field (SALT, SUB, NELS, GLOW, CSSP) and published 20 papers, of which 9 in A journals (NLLT, Lingua) and edited volumes of first rank publishers (CUP, OUP, John Benjamins). I’ve brought together researchers in 4 national and 8 international workshops. I’ve edited 5 volumes and one journal special issue. Highlights include a volume on Weak Referentiality (John Benjamins), a special issue on possession (Lingua) and a volume on SLA and Learner Corpus Research (CUP). I regularly give invited talks internationally (Mexico, France, UK, Germany) and count as an authority on (in)definiteness and possession (keynote at Definiteness across Languages in Mexico City (2016) and invited organization of a special session on possession at GLOW 2014). My research is formally and theoretically oriented but I care about detailed natural language data and use corpus mining techniques to bring cross-linguistic comparison in formal semantics to the next level. Recognition for this contribution to the field comes from a recently awarded grant from NWO (750k) for TinT. I’m also a semantics ambassador in the field of SLA, a role I’ve been able to develop through another NWO grant (250k). Recognition for my role in SLA comes from the trust I got from CUP to co-edit the volume on SLA and Learner Corpus Research I mentioned before. My aim in research is to use my semantics expertise to develop the young subfield of SLA that focuses on the syntax/semantics interface.

Research Interest

language acquisition