Gennaro Chierchia

About

Gennaro Chierchia is the Haas Foundations Professor of Linguistics and Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. His intellectual work centers on studying how meaning takes shape in human language. A central theme in his research is the idea that a natural logic, a way of drawing inferences, spontaneously develops and attaches to the syntactic structures generated by our capacity for recursive computation. This natural logic endows human language with a unique communicative and referential power not found in other species. Chierchia's research explores specific topics such as properties and predication, including control, raising, and de se attributions; noun phrase structure, distinguishing between quantified and bare nominals as well as mass and count nouns; anaphora and presuppositions; implicatures; and polarity phenomena. He is also interested in investigating these linguistic phenomena through experimental methods. Chierchia has been recognized as a Guggenheim Fellow in 2019 and has published extensively with prestigious presses including Oxford University Press, CSLI, MIT Press, Il Mulino, University of Chicago Press, and Kluwer/Reidel.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Natural Language Processing
• Linguistics
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Psychoanalysis
• Psychology
• Archaeology
• Programming language

Selected publications

• Topics in the Syntax and Semantics of Infinitives and Gerunds

  2016-11-10 · 378 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This title, first published in 1988, is an inquiry into the nature of predication in natural language. The study is based on the hypothesis that infinitives and gerunds are not clausal or propositional constructions and attempts to provide support for such a hypothesis, whilst also drawing from analysis of various anaphoric phenomena. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 10. Scalar implicature as a grammatical phenomenon

  2019-02-18 · 202 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This article develops various arguments for the view that scalar implicatures should be derived within grammar and not by a theory of language use (pragmatics). We focus primarily on arguments that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions, a conclusion incompatible with existing pragmatic accounts. We also briefly review additional observations that come from a variety of empirical domains, all incompatible with pragmatic accounts, yet predicted by the grammatical alternative.

  PublisherDOI

• Scalar Implicatures and Their Interface with Grammar

  Annual Review of Linguistics · 2016-09-13 · 25 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Scalar implicatures (SIs) and, more generally, quantity-based implicatures (QBIs) have been intensely investigated since Grice's seminal work. Recently, SIs and QBIs have been at the center of an intense debate. Some researchers, following Grice's original insight, argue that they should be captured solely in terms of principles of rational action (the pragmatic approach). Others argue that they cannot be analyzed in purely pragmatic terms but can only be properly understood in terms of a compos…

  PublisherDOI

• What we know about knowing: Presuppositions generated by factive verbs influence downstream neural processing

  Cognition · 2018-12-22 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mass vs. Count: Where Do We Stand? Outline of a Theory of Semantic Variation

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021 · 19 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  I will illustrate and discuss the extent to which grammars may vary vis-à-vis the mass/count distinction with three main phenomena and use this as a springboard for outlining a theory of semantic variation, with a universal logical basis. The first form of variation concerns the most widespread empirical test associated with the mass/count distinction, namely how noun phrases (NPs) combine with numerals. The second is that of the so called 'fake' mass nouns (like furniture). The third concerns a…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Maria Teresa Guasti

  University of Milano-Bicocca

  9 shared

• Einat Shetreet

  Tel Aviv University

  8 shared

• Claudio Luzzatti

  University of Milano-Bicocca

  8 shared

• Davide Crepaldi

  7 shared

• Lisa S. Arduino

  7 shared

• Graziella Ghirardi

  7 shared

• Andrea Gualmini

  Utrecht University

  6 shared

• Luisa Meroni

  Utrecht University

  6 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Linguistics

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2001

• B.A., Philosophy

  University of California, Berkeley

  1996

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Kevin Ryanh-84
• Jonathan David Bobaljikh-29
• Kathryn Davidsonh-28