Near Ibirapuera park, in São Paulo
I am a 5th-year PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics of the University of Maryland, in College Park. My advising committee is formed by Valentine Hacquard, Paolo Santorio, Fabrizio Cariani and Aron Hirsch.
I specialize in formal semantics and its interface with syntax and pragmatics. I am particularly interested in non-trivial interactions between modal and temporal language, with an empirical focus on Romance. My dissertation looks into the nature, meaning and distribution of non-scheduled, future-oriented uses of the present ('If John gets a new job, he's very luck').
I'm a member and former organizer of Meaning at Maryland, a research group with members from the departments of philosophy and linguistics.
Before coming to Maryland, I completed a Master's in Linguistics and a Bachelor's in Linguistics and Portuguese Language/Literature at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil, with Marcelo Ferreira as my advisor.
You can reach me at jmendes@umd.edu
Papers & manuscripts
TL;DR: Future-oriented uses of the present include a layer of modality, which I argue comes from a (covert) subjunctive morpheme. This modal element displays the exceptional scope properties of an indefinite.
TL;DR: Would is morphologically, but not semantically, the past of will.
TL;DR: Some polarity sensitive items are banned under negation. The most prominent approach to this problem relies on competition with negative concord items. I show that this approach undergenerates.
TL;DR: Future reference without will or going to is only possible in certain environments. These environments closely resemble those that license certain polarity-sensitive items.
TL;DR: Their interaction with almost and barely suggests that the LF of bare habitual sentences involves existential quantification.
Teaching
As instructor of record
Meaning & Grammar (Fall 2022, University of Maryland)
Undergraduate introduction to semantics and pragmatics
LaTeX, R & Markdown (Winter 2024, University of Maryland)
Winter course [handout: LaTeX for semanticists]
As teaching assistant
Language & Mind (Spring 2023, University of Maryland, instructor: Dr. Peggy Antonisse)
Introduction to linguistics for non-majors
Guest lecture: Why LLMs are not good models of cognition
Philosophy of Language (Spring 2022, University of Maryland, instructor: Dr. Alexander Williams)
Introduction to philosophy of language for linguistics and philosophy students
Meaning & Grammar (Fall 2022, University of Maryland, instructor: Dr. Valentine Hacquard)
Undergraduate introduction to semantics and pragmatics
Guest lecture: Introduction to modality
African Linguistics II (Fall 2018, Universidade de São Paulo, instructor: Dr. Alexander Yao Cobbinah)
Detailed description and analysis of an African language (Baïnounk Gubëeher)
Introduction to Linguistics I (Spring 2018, Universidade de São Paulo, Dr. Ana Paula Scher)
Introduction to linguistics for non-majors
Guest lecture: Introduction to phonetics
