Michael McCourt

Department of Philosophy, Skinner Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7505

email: <mmccour2@umd.edu>

I am a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Maryland in College Park. My primary research interests are in the philosophy of language and its intersections with linguistics and cognitive science. I ask what the notion of modularity has to do with the distinction between semantics and pragmatics; how we can test hypotheses about covert linguistic material; and, more generally, how a theory of linguistic meaning relates to the psychology underlying language use. With co-authors in the linguistics departments at UMD and the University of Illinois, I'm also investigating the moment-by-moment processing of anaphoric expressions using behavioral measures (reading times and visual world eyetracking).

Before coming to Maryland, I earned Bachelor's degrees in English and Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, followed by a Master's degree in Philosophy at Northern Illinois University.

full cv

areas of specialization

philosophy of language & philosophy of linguistics; philosophy of mind & philosophy of cognitive science

areas of competence

logic; ancient philosophy; general philosophy of science

publications

McCourt, M., Green, J.J., Lau, E., and Williams, A. (2015). Processing implicit control: evidence from reading times. Frontiers in Psychology 6:1629. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01629.

in progress or under review

Modularity and the semantics/pragmatics distinction (under review)

Processing adjunct control: rapid use of structural information in reference resolution (under review). co-authored with Jeffrey J. Green (lead author), Ellen Lau, and Alexander Williams

'Said in many ways': Aristotle on polysemy versus homonymy (in progress)

courses instructed at UMD

philosophy 310 - ancient philosophy - fall 2019

philosophy 170 – introduction to logic – summer 2016 (online); fall 2018; spring 2019

philosophy 318C – curses, swears, and slurs: the emotive dimension of language – summer 2018 (online)

philosophy 309A – philosophy and neuroscience – winter 2017 (online)

philosophy 360/linguistics 350 – philosophy of language – fall 2016