Dr. Ivona Kučerová is the current ARiEAL Director, and her 5-year term started on July 1, 2021. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Languages, and the director of the Syntax Lab at McMaster University. She received her PhD in Linguistics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2007 and held a postdoctoral appointment at the Division of Psychology at University College London, UK.
Dr. Kučerová’s research focuses on phenomena that shed light on the division of labour between narrow syntax and its interfaces, especially the syntax-semantics interface. In particular, Dr. Kučerová is interested in the question of whether semantic information can modulate syntactic derivation, and if so, how exactly the information is passed on to the narrow syntax module. This overarching question comprises several subquestions: (i) is the mapping between syntax and semantics isomorphic, or is it subject to some form of computational economy? (ii) what units of syntactic structure may directly access information from the semantic module? (iii) how do we define these syntactic units? (iv) once we isolate the semantic input, do syntactic operations obey locality and other deterministic restrictions hypothesized to hold of syntactic computations? In addition to theoretical linguistics work, Dr. Kučerová engages with experimental syntax research (she has recently been awarded CFI JELF funding to build an EEG and eye-tracking lab) and Indigenous research in the context of language revitalization (a new Partnership Development Grant). In her free time, she dubs as a computational linguist.
Expandable List
LRW Wilson Hall, Room 4021
Togo Salmon Hall, Room 509
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Email: kucerov@mcmaster.ca
Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics & Languages, McMaster University
Director, Syntax Lab, Department of Linguistics & Languages, McMaster University
Kucerova, I., & A. Szczegielniak. (2023). Underspecification of nominal functional categories in semitic and slavic. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 30(FASL 29 extra issue), 1-18.
Kucerova, I., & A. Szczegielniak. (2023). Remnant licensing and structural economy in VP ellipsis: Evidence from Czech. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 31(FASL 30 issue), 1-20.
Kučerová, Ivona & Adam Szczegielniak. (2022). (equal contribution). Between pronouns and R-expressions: Pronoun-like lexical noun phrases. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 67(3), 302–327.
Bartošová, J., Chapman, C., Kučerová, I., & Service, E. (2021). Making semantic commitments can be delayed: Evidence from aspectual processing. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 75(1), 77–92.
Kučerová, Ivona & Adam Szczegielniak. (2021). (equal contribution). Polish Politeness Markers As a Window into Person-Feature Valuation. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, vol. 29, no. FASL extra issue, Dec. 2021, http://ojs.ung.si/index.php/JSL/article/view/152.
Kučerová, I. (2020). Labeling as two-stage process: Evidence from semantic agreement. In Jeroen van Craenenbroeck, Cora Pots, and Tanja Temmerman (eds.), Recent Developments in Phase Theory. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 183-212.
Kučerová, I. (2019). On the role of person in the mapping of syntactic features onto their interpretable counterparts. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 64(4), 649–672.
Kučerová, I., & Szczegielniak, A. (2019). Roots, their structure and consequences for derivational timing. Linguistic Review, 36(3), 365–387.
Kučerová, I. (2018). ɸ-Features at the Syntax-Semantics Interface: Evidence from Nominal Inflection. Linguistic Inquiry, 49(4), 813–845.
Kučerová, I. (2018). The double life of gender and its structural consequences: A case study from Standard Italian. In Eric Mathieu (ed.) Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DeClaire, R., Johns, A., & Kučerová, I. (2017). On optionality in Mohawk noun incorporation. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics, 39 (A special issue on indigenous languages), 1–10.
Johns, A. & Kučerová, I. (2017). On the morphosyntactic reflexes of information structure in the ergative patterning of the Inuit language. In Coon, J., Massam, D., & Travis, L. D. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Ergativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 397–418.
Kučerová, I. (2017). On labeling of DP coordinations and the lack of φ-feature resolution in syntactic Agree. In Lamont, A & Tetzloff, K (eds.) NELS 47: Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society. Amherst: University of Massachusetts.
Kučerová, I. (2017). Beyond Russian: On Dnom, Person and Case. In Halpert, C., Kotek, H., & Urk, C. van (eds.) A Pesky Set: Papers for David Pesetsky. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Bartošová, J. & Kučerová, I. (2015). Instrumental Situations: On Case Marking in Copular Clauses in Czech. In Oseki, Y., Esipova, M., & Harves, S. (eds.) Proceedings of the 24th Meeting of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1–21.
- Kurtis Commanda, Doctoral, Fields: Indigenous language revitalization; Indigenous governance
- Dr. Alina Dochu, Postdoctoral Fellow, Fields: Language policies and their impact on Indigenous languages
- Emily Hampson, BA Honours, Fields: Syntactic theory; object shift; definiteness effects
- Yi Cheung Audrey Ho, Masters, Fields: Syntax; Chinese languages
- Meagan Nuculaj, Doctoral, Fields: Experimental syntax; gender markedness
- Ethan Stollar, Masters, Fields: Experimental syntax and syntactic theory
- Aya Zarka, Doctoral, Fields: Syntax; Differential Object Marking in Levantine Arabic