The central research questions of linguistic semantics include the nature of meaning and the human knowledge of meaning, the relations of meaning to linguistic form (both in the lexicon and in the combination of phrases), and the interaction between form and context in ongoing linguistic communication. Forming the basis for research at USC and elsewhere, it is supposed that meaning is closely related to conditions on truth known to native speakers. One asks of a human language how a speaker grasps the truth conditions of its linguistic structures, or given assumptions about the meaning, what is the nature of the structures triggering these meanings. USC faculty with a primary interest in semantics or pragmatics include Elena Guerzoni, Martin Hackl, James Higginbotham, Elsi Kaiser, Roumyana Pancheva and Barry Schein, whose research interests have included negative expressions and interrogatives; tense and aspect; anaphora and pronouns; demonstrative and indexical reference and definite description; plurals and reciprocals; conjunctive, conditional, comparative and relative clauses; and the syntax and semantics of reference to events. In recent years, semantics has acquired an exciting comparative dimension, raising new questions about linguistic variation, especially at the interface between syntax and semantics. USC benefits from the presence of a strong comparative syntax group, among which are faculty working on the syntax-semantics interface, Hagit Borer, Hajime Hoji, Audrey Li, Andrew Simpson, Jean-Roger Vergnaud, and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta. At USC, research on meaning is a joint project between the Department of Linguistics and the School of Philosophy under the auspices of the Center for the Linguistics/Philosophy Interface. Collaborating faculty from the School of Philosophy include James Higginbotham, Jeffrey King, David Manley and Scott Soames.

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