Jessica Rett

About

Jessica Rett is a Professor of Linguistics at UCLA, specializing in semantics, pragmatics, and the philosophy of language. She earned her BA in Linguistics from the University of Michigan and her PhD in Linguistics from Rutgers University. In 2026, she was appointed the Inaugural Bye & Bohne Endowed Chair of Public Linguistics at UCLA. Her research focuses on using logic to model the knowledge people have when they understand the meaning of language. She aims to expand the traditional boundaries of compositional semantics to include context-sensitivity, illocutionary content, and semantic entities beyond individuals. Recently, she has worked on applying formal semantics and pragmatics tools to public engagement, including media and consulting projects, as well as a large-scale investigation into semantic variation in medical diagnoses, particularly the term "cancer."

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Psychology
• Linguistics
• Epistemology
• Physics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Mathematics
• Medicine

Selected publications

• The Semantics of Evaluativity

  2014-12-04 · 134 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The simplest form in which gradable adjectives are used—positive constructions, like John is tall—carry an additional semantic component, evaluativity, that is not part of the adjective’s lexicalized meaning. Evaluative constructions require that an entity instantiate a gradable predicate to a significantly high degree. This property holds of John is tall, but it fails to hold of some other adjectival constructions, like John is taller than Bill or John is 6 ft tall. The source of evalu…

  PublisherDOI

• Manner implicatures and how to spot them

  International Review of Pragmatics · 2020 · 29 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The goal of this paper is to help develop a general picture of conversational implicature (Grice, 1975) by looking beyond scalar implicature to see how the phenomenon behaves in a general sense. I focus on non-scalar Quantity implicatures and Manner implicatures. I review canonical examples of Manner implicature, as well as a more recent, productive one involving gradable adjective antonym pairs (Rett, 2015). Based on these data, I argue that Manner implicatures—and conversational impli…

  PublisherDOI

• A comparison of expressives and miratives

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2021 · 21 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  There is a strong and vocal tradition of expressives being characterized as denoting conventional implicatures (Potts 2005 <italic>et seq.</italic>), and some have taken the category of expressives to include exclamation (Zimmermann 2007). But there’s also a tradition of analyzing exclamations and other mirativity markers at the illocutionary or speech-act level (Sadock and Zwicky 1985; Faller 2002; Rett 2011). In this chapter, I address two related questions: What, if any, are the empirical dif…

  PublisherDOI

• Separate but Equal: A Typology of Equative Constructions

  2020-06-17 · 20 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Degree Account of Exclamatives

  Proceedings from Semantics and Linguistic Theory · 2015-04-03 · 17 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  No abstract.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel Altshuler

  2 shared

• Rajam Raghunathan

  2 shared

• Sarah E. Murray

  2 shared

• Frederick C. Eilber

  1 shared

• Margaret Grant

  Simon Fraser University

  1 shared

• Nina Hyams

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1 shared

• Sonia Michniewicz

  Northwestern University

  1 shared

• William B. Starr

  Cornell University

  1 shared

Education

• PhD, Linguistics

  Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

  2008

• BA, Linguistics

  University of Michigan

  2001

Similar researchers at University of California, Los Angeles

• Tim Hunterh-29
• Megha Sundarah-22
• Anoop Mahajanh-16