Patricia L. Irwin

Welcome!

I am a linguist who works on the interface of syntax with semantics, information structure, and discourse. I also work on syntactic and semantic variation in dialects of English. My most recent academic appointment was Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Swarthmore College.

For a high level description of my research interests, see the Research tab
Go to Output for writing and talks, with links to manuscripts and slides

News

Thanks to the American Dialect Society (ADS) who let me tell them about "Sassy I mean and the conversational scoreboard" at the 2022 meeting of the ADS in January! [slides here]. Feedback welcome!
New paper on syntax and lexical semantics: Semantic primitives at the syntax-lexicon interface (with Itamar Kastner). Draft of July 2020 is on LingBuzz. Comments welcome!!
Accepted: Unaccusativity and theticity (for Thetics and categoricals, ed. Abraham, et al.).
Poster from the 2020 LSA (co-authored with Itamar Kastner): Type theoretic lexical semantics and the roots of verbs in syntax. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the poster and gave their feedback!
Slides from OASIS2 in Nantes (co-authored with Itamar Kastner): Formalizing the syntax-lexical semantics interface: A type-theoretic approach.
Now out: How do you smile along a path? (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2019-2021) It's in a special 2019 issue of Linguistic Review, Roots in Context (ed. by Noam Faust and Andrew Nevins).
Back from June in Berlin, working at RUESHeL at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Pedagogy: a big meta-analysis on self-explanation and learning shows that "it is better to ask a student to see if they can explain something to themselves, than for a teacher or book to always explain it to them" -- summary from the BPS Research Digest.
Back from SLE 2018, held at the very cool Tallinna Ülikool in Estonia. Thanks to all those who attended our workshop (WS 11), Preverbal indefinite subjects. Here are the slides from my talk.
My Glossa paper is finally out: Existential unaccusativity and new discourse referents
Talk in April at Princeton's inaugural Princeton Symposium on Syntactic Theory (which has the fun acronynm PSST) -- handout here
Back from Unergative predicates: architecture and variation in the Basque country -- here is the handout from my talk, Bodies, motion, and the semantic content of unergative roots
Back from Roots V, hosted by QMUL and UCL in London. The conference was wonderful despite the intense heatwave that weekend. Here's the program, and here's the poster I presented: How do you smile along a path?
We had an inspiring visit here at Swarthmore from Walt Wolfram. In addition to meeting with students from my class on Dialects of American English AND giving a lecture on dialect diversity on campus, Walt showed us the almost-final cut of an NSF-funded documentary on African American Language that he is executive producer of:

Considering TROLLing..., which I learned about from the post Highlights from the LSA Panels on the awesome blog allthingslinguistic:

Just back from Tübingen where I attended a workshop on existentials -- here are the slides from my talk (and here is the equally important chocolate market that we all went to after the workshop)
This happens to me pretty frequently, yet it never gets old:

Just gave the syntax brownbag talk at NYU: Verb vs. Structure: Who's the boss?
Back from DGfS 2016 at Universität Konstanz where I participated in The syntax of argument structure: empirical advancements and theoretical relevance. Here's the link to my slides.
We can now watch (or re-watch) John Rickford's 2016 LSA Presidential Address on Language and Linguistics on Trial: Hearing Vernacular Speakers in Courtrooms and Beyond on YouTube.
- The Stanford News has a writeup of the talk that we can share with friends and family.

Singular, gender-neutral they is the American Dialect Society's 2015 Word of The Year!
- Here is Ben Zimmer's writeup
- The Time Magazine writeup also has some choice quotes in it
I'll upload my slides from the Hornucopia shortly!
Getting ready for the Hornucopia next month, a workshop in honor of Larry Horn
"What's the big deal about vocal fry?" Lisa Davidson from NYU discusses the drama that people have about certain phonation types.
I'm totally psyched to teach a course on English Dialects this semester--Raffaella and Jim give some reasons why:

Just back from learning a ton at Roots IV, hosted at NYU. It was a great workshop with a terrific lineup of speakers!
More on "so [totally]" and language change -- this time in a piece by the language blogger John E. McIntyre from theBaltimore Sun. It includes this observation:
- "You would think that the ability to appreciate the variety and inventiveness of English in the past would translate into a recognition of the variety and inventiveness displayed in current language, an eagerness to see what fresh richness of expression may be springing up." check it out...
so [totally] is in the news! --specifically, it's in Raffaella Zanuttini's recent Op-Ed on language change in Pacific Standard: "Don't fear our totally changing language." [emphasis added...]
- Now available! My paper on the syntax and semantics of an AAE attributive construction -- Language Sciences v. 50, 2015.
- Yes, that photo was of me in the NYT Style section piece on the American Dialect Society's WOTY vote.
- Talk on argument structure and existential propositions at the syntax-discourse interface -- at the NYU Syntax Brownbag series. more...

Basic info

Education

Ph.D., New York University, 2012

Dissertation

Unaccusativity at the Interfaces [lingbuzz]

Contact

Email

irwp.ling symbol gmail

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