Maura O'Leary
Semanticist, Field Researcher, & Teacher
I am a Visiting Assistant Professor at Swarthmore College.
My dissertation (defended December 9th, 2021, at UCLA) 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 moleary1@swarthmore.edu.
News
2022
December 2022: Both of my RAs - Rainey Williams and Mario Peng Lee - were awarded Travel Grants from the UCLA Undergraduate Research Center for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences for our upcoming presentation at the LSA in January 2023.
November 2022: Both of my RAs - Rainey Williams and Mario Peng Lee - were awarded Undergraduate Research and Travel Awards by the UCLA Linguistics Department for our upcoming presentation at the LSA in January 2023.
November 2022: I was awarded the Swarthmore Faculty Research Support Grant for work on the Hän Revitalization Project.
October 2022: My chapter SemanTasks and SemanTricks: Using Linguistic Knowledge to Your Advantage was accepted for publication in Games for Students of Linguistics.
September 2022: I will be competing in the Five Minute Linguist Competition at the LSA annual meeting in January.
September 2022: My RAs - Rainey Williams and Mario Peng Lee - and I will be presenting out work on the Diverse Names Generator at the LSA in January.
September 2022: We have completed the First Annual Hän Language Camp! Three days of teaching and learning the Hän language in Eagle Village, AK, and we got to debut our Hän language learning materials: textbook, phrasebook, flashcards, and bingo cards. Pictures coming soon!
August 2022: I began my position as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Swarthmore College, teaching Semantics and Introduction to Language and Linguistics.
June 2022: I got a grant from the UCLA Center for the Advancement of Teaching for the Diverse Names Generator project (page coming soon).
June 2022: I graduated with my doctorate from UCLA!
May 2022: I have accepted a 3-year Visiting Assistant Professorship at Swarthmore College!
May 2022: I have filed my dissertation!
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.