2011-2012: A distributional semantic model for fully recursive phrasal meaning (MICINN, FFI2010-09464-E). No existing theory of how meaning is expressed via human language takes into account both the full richness of conceptual content and the recursive, structural aspects of meaning. The goal of this project is to take a qualitatively different step towards accomplishing this task by combining in a novel way the insights of two radically different approaches to meaning: that of formal semantics and the growing field of distributional semantics. Since the two paradigms have complementary strengths and weaknesses, in drawing on both of them the aim is to overcome their individual limitations. This is a pilot project whose empirical focus is on combining the semantics of nouns, adjectives and determiners.
2009-2013: Experimental Pragmatics in Europe (EURO-XPRAG). EURO-XPRAG is an ESF-funded network proposed by Ira Noveck (CNRS/Lyon), Richard Breheny (UCL), Bart Geurts (Nijmegen) and Uli Sauerland (ZAS-Berlin), with participants from 12 countries. The network aims to support Experimental Pragmatic research through collaborations, workshops and conferences in order to provide leadership for this field. Topics of interest include implicature, metaphor, conditionals, and the expression of quantity, among others. EURO-XPRAG organizes yearly workshops and biennial conferences. UPF will host the 2011 conference. See http://www.euro-xprag.org for more information.
2007-2010: Natural language ontology and the semantic representation of abstract objects (MEC, HUM2007-60599/FILO). An essential part of human communication involves reference to abstract objects such as facts, propositions or situations. The goal of OntoSem is to develop a natural language ontology, together with a system of lexical semantic representations and compositional semantic rules, which will permit a semantic analysis of nominalizations and other nouns referring to these abstract objects. In addition to contributing to semantic theory, the project also aims to improve our understanding of the relation between the semantics of nouns and morphologically related verbs and adjectives, as well as of nominal complementation and modification. This project has received additional funding for continuation through 2013 (MICINN, FFI2010-15006).
2003-2007: Semantic composition with enriched lexical representations (Generalitat de Catalunya, Programa Distinció de la Generalitat per a la Promoció de la Recerca Universitària, 2003-2007). The goal of this project was to work on semantic composition problems that involve finer-grained aspects of lexical semantics than are usually paid attention to in semantic theory, mainly in the area of adjectival and adverbial (degree and manner) modification. I was (and am) interested is the consequences of these problems both for the way lexical semantic information is represented and for the inventory of composition rules that are developed to exploit it.
I'm also a member of the consolidated research group UR-Ling (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2009SGR00763).