Linguist at Utrecht University, specialized in semantics (the study of meaning in language)
Research interests
Biblical metaphors: How does the Bible use imagery to shape its concepts? See Biblical metaphors for more information.
The formal semantics of collective categorization: as part of Yoad Winter's ERC Advanced Grant project ROCKY that studies "the linguistic ability to conceptualize collections".
Semantic maps and conceptual spaces: How are word meanings organized in semantic maps and conceptual spaces and how can such maps and spaces be visualized?
Prepositions and the language of space: How do we use small words (like in) to talk about spatial (and other) relations?
| Recent writings Zwarts, J. (in press). From “back” to “again” in Dutch: The structure of the “re” domain. Journal of Semantics. Zwarts, J. (2017). The meanings of μέλος: The polysemy of Paul’s member metaphor. Ms., Utrecht University. Le Bruyn, B., de Swart, H., & Zwarts, J. (2017). Bare nominals. In M. Aronoff (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zwarts, J. (2017). Spatial semantics: Modeling the meaning of prepositions. Language and Linguistics Compass, 11(5), 1–20. Matushansky, O., & Zwarts, J. (2017). Making space for measures. In A. Lamont & K. Tetzloff (Eds.), Proceedings of NELS 47 (Vol. 2). Amherst, MA: GLSA. | Upcoming talks The Louw-Nida lexicon as an extendable source of metaphors. Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Denver, November 17-20 2018. |