Tim Hunter

About

Tim Hunter is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on formal and computational approaches to syntax and semantics, including the investigation of grammatical hypotheses through integration with language processing and acquisition models. Hunter has contributed to understanding the generative capacity of linguistic formalisms, the nature of syntactic variation, and the role of phonological and syntactic factors in sentence probability. His work also explores the semantics of quantificational words like 'most' and their cognitive underpinnings, as well as the properties of ellipsis and argument/adjunct distinctions in syntax. Hunter has developed formal methods in experimental syntax, examining the effects of derivational operations, and has engaged in theoretical work on the syntax-semantics interface, including the effects of remnant movement, adjuncts, and the argument/adjunct distinction. His research extends to the study of noise-tolerant language learning models, the interaction of phonological and syntactic constraints, and the integration of grammatical hypotheses into broader cognitive models. Hunter has also contributed to the understanding of linguistic meaning as cognitive instructions and has conducted experiments on language acquisition and the learnability of determiners. He has taught courses at various levels, including computational linguistics, syntax, and semantics, and has presented…

Research topics

• Computer Science
• History
• Artificial Intelligence
• Natural Language Processing
• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Mathematics
• Geography
• Cognitive science
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• Linguistic meanings as cognitive instructions

  Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 20 citations

  Natural languages like English connect pronunciations with meanings. Linguistic pronunciations can be described in ways that relate them to our motor system (e.g., to the movement of our lips and tongue). But how do linguistic meanings relate to our nonlinguistic cognitive systems? As a case study, we defend an explicit proposal about the meaning of most by comparing it to the closely related more: whereas more expresses a comparison between two independent subsets, most expresses a subset-super…

  PublisherDOI

• The Chomsky Hierarchy ¹

  2021-04-27 · 10 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding

  The classification of grammars that became known as the Chomsky hierarchy was an exploration of what kinds of regularities could arise from grammars that had various conditions imposed on their structure. Intersubstitutability is closely related to the way different levels on the Chomsky hierarchy correspond to different kinds of memory. This chapter deals with the general concept of a string-rewriting grammar, which provides the setting in which the Chomsky hierarchy can be formulated. An unres…

  PublisherDOI

• Left-corner parsing of minimalist grammars

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2019-09-26 · 9 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Much recent research in experimental psycholinguistics revolves around the resolution of long-distance dependencies, and the manner in which the human sentence processor “retrieves’” elements from earlier in a sentence that must be related in some way to the material currently being processed. At present there is no obvious way for the issues raised by this research to be framed in terms of an MG parser. Stabler’s 2013 top-down MG parser does not involve any corresponding notion of “retrieval’”:…

  PublisherDOI

• Variation in mild context-sensitivity

  Evolutionary Linguistic Theory · 2021 · 5 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Aravind Joshi famously hypothesized that natural language syntax was characterized (in part) by mildly context-sensitive generative power. Subsequent work in mathematical linguistics over the past three decades has revealed surprising convergences among a wide variety of grammatical formalisms, all of which can be said to be mildly context-sensitive. But this convergence is not absolute. Not all mildly context-sensitive formalisms can generate exactly the same stringsets (i.e. they are…

  PublisherDOI

• Linguistic meanings in mind

  Behavioral and Brain Sciences · 2023-01-01 · 2 citations

  letterSenior author

  Abstract The target article focuses on evidence from nonlinguistic faculties to defend the claim that cognition generally traffics in language-of-thought (LoT)-type representations. This focus creates needed space to discuss the mounting accumulation of nonclassical evidence for LoT, but it also misses relevant work in linguistics that directly offers a perspective on specific hypotheses about candidate LoT representations.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mihra S. Taljanovic

  University of Arizona

  49 shared

• Lee F. Rogers

  21 shared

• Joseph E. Sheppard

  19 shared

• Marci D. Jones

  University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School

  18 shared

• Daniel N. Switlick

  University of Arizona

  16 shared

• Jeffrey Lidz

  University of Maryland, College Park

  15 shared

• Justin Halberda

  Johns Hopkins University

  12 shared

• Paul M. Pietroski

  Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

  12 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Syntax and Semantics

  University of Maryland

  2010

• M.A., Linguistics

  University of Maryland

• B.A., Linguistics

  University of Maryland

Similar researchers at University of California, Los Angeles

• Megha Sundarah-22
• Jessica Retth-17
• Anoop Mahajanh-16