Maura O'Leary
Semanticist, Field Researcher, & Teacher
I am a graduate student and teaching assistant at UCLA and a lecturer at SDSU. My dissertation (defended Dec. 9th, 2021) provides a formal model of nominal evaluation times, including nominal lexical aspect, interaction with scopal tense, interactions with the evaluation times of nominal modifiers, and the dynamic effects of novelty on evaluation times. I additionally do both morphosyntactic and revitalization work with the critically endangered Alaskan Dene (Athabaskan) language Hän. Recently, I have also been working on equitable and inclusive pedagogical methods for teaching and evaluation in university-level linguistics courses.
Get in touch at mauraoleary@g.ucla.edu
News
2022
March 2022: My manuscript "Implementing Skills-Based Grading in a Linguistics Course" (with Richard Stockwell) was accepted for publication in this year's edition of Teaching American Speech.
March 2022: The UCLA Department of Linguistics has hired me to edit the materials for their course Ling 1: Introduction to the Study of Language for equitability and inclusivity.
March 2022: I presented a talk on Skills-Based Grading at the UCLA Center for Education Innovation & Learning in the Sciences' (CEILS) Journal Club for STEM Education Research
January 2022: I have accepted an offer to teach Semantics and Pragmatics at San Diego State University for the Spring 2022 term.
2021
December 9, 2021: I successfully defended my dissertation! See the defense handout here.
November 2021: Richard Stockwell and I submitted a manuscript "Implementing Skills-Based Grading in a Linguistics Course" for publication. Learn more about our work with Skills-Based-Grading here.
June 2021: I received a $2000 grant from Native Languages of the Americas for the Hän Revitalization Project.
May 2021: I presented a talk on the benefits of Skills-Based Grading at the first Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) Workshop on Inclusive Teaching in Semantics.
April 2021: My paper "Locality constraints in nominal evaluation times" was published.
March 2021: The Hän Revitalization Project just celebrated our first printing! Check out our flashcards and phrasebook here.
March 2021: My paper "Skills-Based Grading: A novel approach to teaching formal semantics" (with Richard Stockwell) was published. Learn more about my pedagogical work here.
February 2021: Invited talk at the University of Oklahoma - "Revitalizing a pronominal system." Slides available on this page.
February 2021: Invited talk at UCSD - "Three Facets of Nominal Temporal Information." Handout available on this page.
January 2021: Talks presented at the LSA - "Skills-Based Grading: A novel approach to teaching formal semantics" & "Locality constraints in nominal evaluation times." Handouts, slides, and associated papers available on this page.
2020
December 2020: Invited talk at UC Berkeley - "Hän Pronominal Prefixes." Slides available on this page.
November 2020: My pedagogy abstract on Skills-Based Grading (with Richard Stockwell) won the LSA's Student Abstract Award! Learn about our project here.
Nominal Evaluation Times
My dissertation, which provides a formal analysis that can predict the available nominal property times for any given noun in any given sentence.