FITT lab: Research

The FITT lab came into being in Fall 2022!

Some new and ongoing topics of research are: 

Deontic necessity modals (obligation, prohibition) and complementation: 

In our studies on the semantic interaction of deontic modal verbs and their types of complements, we present a two-pronged approach: (i) a formal analysis of the interaction of two distinct domains -- modal semantics (specifically prohibition and obligation, comparatively) and non-finite structures (infinitives and gerunds, comparatively); (ii) a typological picture of how such complementation patterns occur across linguistic areas, with a focus on South Asia, while drawing essential comparisons with historical and current empirical trends in English. 

Epistemic indefinites and their modifiers:

Some particles in South Asian languages like the Bangla jyano combine with epistemic indefinites to yield an effect of 'forgetting' the witness of an existential claim that was previously known. Examining such discourse particles and their behavior across different speech acts reveals insightful details about the spectrum of knowledge and ignorance. 

Evidentiality and epistemic modality: 

A huge majority of the literature on evidentiality focuses on propositional evidentiality, where an evidential scopes over a proposition. In this research, I study different forms of propositional evidentiality and compare them to nominal evidentiality, or rarer systems of the world where evidentials scope over nominals -- either via "nominal tense" or in the demonstrative/determiner system. Further theoretical and typological comparisons arise with epistemic modality, which do not seem to have nominal counterparts. 

Mirativity

Verb roots and morpho-semantics 

Methodology: Fieldwork: 

These topics and more are investigated through in-person fieldwork by Diti Bhadra or through virtual surverys and online or in-person follow-up interviews. The NSF grant guiding this project includes fieldwork across the 4 major language families in the Indian sub-continent -- Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman -- to uncover, describe and analyze underlying semantic typological patterns and how they affect or shape extant formal theories in semantics and pragmatics.
Languages worked on so far:

Bangla
Assamese
Odia
Hindi
Nepali

Khasi

Meiteilon

Chungli Ao

Lepcha

Dhundari
Braj

Santali

Kurukh

Mahasui (Mahasu Pahari)

Sylheti

Bagri