Wataru Uegaki
Lecturer

- Linguistics and English Language
- School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
Contact details
- Tel: 0131 651 1839
- Email: w.uegaki@ed.ac.uk
- Web: http://www.wataruuegaki.com
Address
- Street
-
[I am currently working from home]
Room 2.10, Dugald Stewart Building - City
- 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9AD
Availability
Please email me to schedule an appointment.
Background
I am a Lecturer in Semantics at in the Department of Linguistics and English Language (LEL) within the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences (PPLS). I also serve as the leader of the NWO international collaboration project '’Searching for semantic universals in the modal domain’’. I completed my PhD at MIT Linguistics in 2015, and was previously at Leiden University.
I teach semantics in various pre-honours, honours, and MSc courses within LEL. In my research, I investigate issues in natural language semantics and pragmatics, as well as in syntax-semantics interface. Please click on the Research tab below to learn more about my research.
Undergraduate teaching
- Course Organiser, pre-honours "Linguistics and English Language 1B"
- Contributor, "Linguistics and English Language 2A" (semantics block)
Postgraduate teaching
- MSc "Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics" (not offered in 2020-21)
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Current PhD students supervised
- Takanobu Nakamura
Research summary
I am a researcher of formal semantics and pragmatics. That is, I study how humans draw various inferences from conversations in natural language, and I try to understand systems governing such human behaviors using theoretical tools made available by linguistics, logic and cognitive science.
Specifically, I am interested in the relationship between word meanings and grammatical rules. My MIT PhD dissertation "Interpreting questions under attitudes" addresses a family of puzzles concerning how the meanings of the so-called propositional attitude verbs (such as "believe", "know", "surprise" and "wonder") are related to the types of complement clauses they can combine with (for example, whether the verb can combine with a question or not).
Current research interests
I am interested in the distinction between ‘logical’ words (such as "every" and "or") and ‘non-logical’ words (such as "walk" and "bird"). Is there a fundamental distinction between how these two kinds of word meanings are represented in our mind? I try to address this question by investigating the manifestation of this distinction in syntax-semantics interface (i.e., the relationship between meaning and grammar) and cross-linguistic universals in word meanings (i.e., what kind of common properties hold for word meanings across languages).-
The existential/uniqueness presupposition of wh-complements projects from the answers
In:
Linguistics and Philosophy, vol. n/a, pp. 1-41
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-020-09309-4
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
The *hope-wh puzzle
(34 pages)
In:
Natural Language Semantics, vol. 27, pp. 323-356
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-019-09156-5
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Question marker drop in Japanese and Generalized Factivity
(6 pages)
In:
ICU Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 7, pp. 57-62
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
The semantics of question-embedding predicates
(17 pages)
In:
Language and Linguistics Compass, vol. 13, pp. 1-17
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12308
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Distributive ignorance inferences with wonder and believe
In:
Semantics and Pragmatics, vol. 12, pp. 1-60
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.12.5
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Japanese alternative questions and a unified in-situ semantics for ka
Research output: › Conference contribution (Published) -
The distributive ignorance puzzle
Research output: › Conference contribution (Published) -
Do modals take propositions or sets of propositions? Evidence from Japanese `darou'
(21 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v28i0.4427
Research output: › Conference contribution (Published) -
A unified semantics for the Japanese Q-particle `ka' in indefinites, questions and disjunctions
(45 pages)
In:
Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, vol. 3, pp. 1-45
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.238
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
On the projection of the presupposition of embedded questions
(20 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v28i0.4411
Research output: › Conference contribution (Published) -
Predicates of relevance and theories of question embedding
(8 pages)
In:
Journal of Semantics, vol. 34, pp. 547-554
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffx008
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
The anti-rogativity of non-veridical preferential predicates
Research output: Contribution to Conference › Conference contribution (Published) -
Content nouns and the semantics of question-embedding
(38 pages)
In:
Journal of Semantics, vol. 33, pp. 623-660
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffv009
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Cross-linguistic variation in the derivation of alternative questions: Japanese and beyond
(24 pages)
Research output: › Chapter (Published) -
Japanese alternative questions are disjunctions of polar questions
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v24i0.2423
Research output: › Conference contribution (Published)