I’m a fourth year graduate student in linguistics at UCLA. I’m primarily interested in semantics and intonation, and especially their interface.
The broad aim of my research is to find ways to more formally integrate intonation (whether whole tunes or smaller prosodic features) into the semantic representation of the utterance. Right now, I’m investigating the intonation associated with exclamation in English (e.g. Julian makes beautiful paintings!) as well as subclausal quotation (e.g. Larry challenged an “alarming rule” at the board meeting). I tackle my research questions using a combination of experimental methods and corpus analysis. I’m also interested in the theory of both intonation and semantics more broadly.
Around the department, I served as president of the Graduate Linguistics Circle during my third year. I co-founded the Prosody-Semantics reading group (with Maura O’Leary) and the Contour Club (with Adam Royer; a space to practice intonation skills and share intonation data).
Outside of linguistics, you can probably find me drinking tea, watching Minnesota sports teams, or playing a board game.
You can reach me at bsturman at ucla dot edu.
