Ryan Walter Smith
@ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
280 followers 90 following 35 posts
Assistant professor of Linguistics at Rutgers University. Semantics (states and changes of state, abstract nouns, memory, plurals) and Iranian languages. Animal lover, classical guitarist, plant mom, Bollywood fan, Balkans stan.
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Reposted by Ryan Walter Smith
daveexmachina.bsky.social
normal person: i just want a place to hang out with my friends
tech weirdo: and shitheads
np: no just my friends
tw: but what about hearing alternative views on race and gender?
np: we just want to hang out and goof around
tw: so where do the shitheads fit in then
np: no shitheads
tw: not following
Reposted by Ryan Walter Smith
haspelmath.bsky.social
Interested in Balkan languages? The definitive reference work has arrived – on 1000 pages, in open access. www.cambridge.org/core/books/b...
Reposted by Ryan Walter Smith
nocontroller.bsky.social
You have more in common with the average Iranian citizen than you do with the people that run this country
Reposted by Ryan Walter Smith
avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social
Sanskrit speakers were calling their leaders “the goat”, it appears.
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
I didn't have a smartphone when I started grad school, so I did exactly this for both my time in Chicago for the LSA institute in 2015 and my first trip to Europe with Simin at the end of that year.
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
I'd be surprised if there is un Chien Andalusia among them.
Reposted by Ryan Walter Smith
fintanmallory.com
Kit Fine is the Steve Reich of analytic philosophy (no, I will not be elaborating)
This suggests that the semantic connection on the sequence
D1, D2 . . . Dp, ft1t2 . . . tn, E1, E2, . . . , Eq should be determined on the
basis of the semantic connection on D1, D2 . . . Dp, f, t1, t2, . . . tn, E1,
E2, . . . , Eq (with ft1t2 . . . tn giving way, as before, to f, t1, t2, . . . , tn);
and d1, d2, . . . dp, b, e1, e2, . . . , eq will belong to the semantic
connection on D1, D2 . . . Dp, ft1t2 . . . tn, E1, E2, . . . Eq, i.e. ft1t2 . . . tn
will be capable of taking the value b when D1, D2 . . . Dp, E1, E2, . . . ,
Eq take the values d1, d2, . . . dp, e1, e2, . . . , eq, just in case,
for some individuals a1, a2, . . . , an for which b = f(a1, a2, . . . an),
t1, t2, . . . tn are capable of taking the values a1, a2, . . . an when
D1, D2 . . . Dp, E1, E2, . . . , Eq take the values d1, d2, . . . dp, e1,
e2, . . . , eq, i.e. just in case, for some individuals a1, a2, . . . an for which
b = f(a1, a2, . . . an), the tple d1, d2, . . . dp, f, a1, a2, . . . , an, e1, e2, . . . ,
eq belongs to the semantic connection on D1, D2 . . . Dp, f, t1, t2, . . . tn,
E1, E2, . . . , Eq.
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
Big news! I am very excited to announce that I will be starting as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Rutgers University this fall! I'm beyond thrilled to be joining such a fantastic department and very much looking forward to everything to come.
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
"North African" is what I would say too (
South Asian" as well). I think "Eastern European" is the exception, but it tracks with the fact that I call Eastern Europe, well, "Eastern Europe."
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
Can't claim to represent *most* native English speakers, but I always say "Eastern European." That term feels much more natural to me than "East European."
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
Happy to share my collaborative work with Vera Hohaus, "Scope, monotonicity and maximal informativity cannot be underestimated! A compositional analysis of an apparent linguistic illusion," which has just been published in the Proceedings of SALT34!

journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/...
Scope, monotonicity and maximal informativity cannot be underestimated! A compositional analysis of an apparent linguistic illusion | Semantics and Linguistic Theory
journals.linguisticsociety.org
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
Happy to announce that my paper with Jens Hopperdietzel and Andrew Koontz-Garboden on a type-shifting approach to state/change-of-state lability has been accepted–pending minor revisions–at Natural Language Semantics! Happy this will be out soon!
Reposted by Ryan Walter Smith
lingdustin.bsky.social
Anyways I had a genuine scientific need to find/recall/google dad jokes in Spanish so please disfrutádlos
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
Hooray!!! See you there!!! Looking forward to catching up!!!
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
Happy to announce I'll be presenting a talk at NACIL4 in Toronto, as well as a poster at WCCFL43 in Seattle! The NACIL talk is about the form and semantics of memory reports in Persian and Sorani Kurdish, and the WCCFL poster is about an understudied use of re- in English. Fun!
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
Sad I couldn't make it this year!
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
Happy to report I'll be giving a talk and a poster presentation at this year's Sinn und Bedeutung! Looking forward to Sicily in September!
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
Off to Nantes for TripleA 11! Very much looking forward to the conference, which was my favorite last year, as well as checking out a city in France other than Paris!
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
Awesome! Thanks so much! I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts on it! We'd definitely love to look into further connections with other phenomena as well.
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
If you're at SALT, feel free to come here the whole story at our lightning talk + poster on Wednesday!
ryanwaltersmith.bsky.social
"no head injury is too trivial to ignore," the intuitive reading of which has also been argued to be illusory. We thus get a semantic treatment of both types of alleged illusion that are intimately related, both involving an interaction of negation, monotonicity, and maximal informativity.