About

My name is Anastasia Tsilia and I am a fourth year PhD student at MIT Linguistics. Before that, I did a M.Sc. in Cognitive Science (Cogmaster), co-hosted by École Normale Supérieure and École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. There, I double-majored in linguistics and philosophy and my M.Sc. thesis, entitled Embedded Tense: Insights from Modern Greek, was co-supervised by Philippe Schlenker and Amir Anvari. Even before that, I did my B.A. in Philosophy & Logic at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. 

My broad research interests are semantics, the syntax-semantic interface, pragmatics, iconicity and gestures. I am also interested in experimentally testing predictions of theories.

More narrowly, I am interested in tense semantics,  and specifically in the typology and the cross-linguistic aspect of sequence of tense, shiftable tense, future markers, and temporal pronouns. I also work on the syntax-semantic interface, investigating the semantics of proleptic constructions, and definiteness in clausal subjects. Finally, I am interested in negation, especially its pleonastic or expletive uses, as well as in its interaction with co-speech gestures. 

Outside of linguistics, I like watching movies, visiting exhibitions, and traveling.