Negation
I am currently working on non-negative uses of negation in exclamatives as well as in instances of double negation (different than negative concord), mostly focusing on Modern Greek.
I am also interested in the interaction between negation and iconic gestures. As part of the Meaning & Modality Lab at Harvard, Kathryn Davidson and I experimentally investigated whether co-speech gestures can license complement anaphora (e.g. Few students came to class. They stayed home) with upward monotone quantifiers (e.g. most, some). This project was motivated by the behaviour of non-default loci in ASL, which license complement anaphora with upward monotone quantifiers (Schlenker 2012). We found that iconic co-speech gestures can have the same effect, suggesting that the ASL facts are modality-independent and that there is a common cognitive mechanism interpreting iconicity both in loci and in gesture. We suggest that iconic co-speech gestures trigger iconic inferences of existence, just like iconic loci in sign language (Kuhn 2020).
How does negation interact with the iconic use of space?
Talk at the Meaning & Modality Lab at Harvard. 2023
Effects of iconicity and monotonicity on licensing complement anaphora (with Kathryn Davidson) [paper] [slides] [BibTeX citation]
Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 28 (SuB 28), Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, pp. 924-942. 2024
Invited talk at the NYU Meaning after the Multimodal Revolution Seminar, NYU. 2023
Talk at Sinn und Bedeutung 28 (SuB 28). 2023
Invited talk at UC Berkeley Syntax & Semantics Circle. 2023
Talk at the Meaning & Modality Lab at Harvard. 2023
Tense
I have worked on the semantics of embedded tense, and more specifically sequence of tense cross-linguistically. I also worked on the then-present puzzle, namely the incompatibility of 'then' with a present tense, even when it is shifted.
I also did fieldwork on Colloquial Jakartan Indonesian, where I investigated the use of mau 'want' as a future marker. I argued that mau resembles the dispositional 'will', and I identified a puzzle with negation, since negating mau necessarilly amounts to negating 'want' rather than 'will'. Cross-linguistically future morphemes are often diachronically derived from desire verbs, a change which is synchronically attested in Indonesian.
Dispositional 'will' is 'want' in Colloquial Jakarta Indonesian [paper] [BibTeX citation]
Special volume of Studia Linguistica (forthcoming)
Talk at 30th annual meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association (AFLA 30), Lund University (Sweden). 2023
(In)direct evidential futures in Colloquial Jakartan Indonesian
Paper at the proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 55), Yale University. 2025
Poster at Sinn und Bedeutung 29 (SuB 29) in Sicily, Italy. 2024
Poster at the 55th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 55) at Yale University. 2024
The future in desire: the case of Colloquial Jakartan Indonesian [handout] [slides] [BibTeX citation]
Talk at the 48th Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC 48) at UPenn. 2024
Talk at the Southern New England Workshop in Semantics (SNEWS) at Harvard University. 2024
Invited talk at the Syntax and Semantics Babble at UC San Diego. 2023
Talk at the Logical Form Reading Group (LFRG) at MIT. 2023
Proceedings of the 42nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 42), UC Berkeley. 2024+
Talk at the 42nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 42). 2024
Poster at the 60th meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS 60). 2024
Poster at the 15th International Conference on Actionality, Tense, Aspect, Modality/Evidentiality (CHRONOS 15). 2024
What the incompatibility of 'then' with the present teaches us about perspectives in tense (with Zhuoye Zhao) [ResearchGate slides] [Dropbox slides]
Talk at the MIT's Ling-Lunch. 2023
Talk at the NYU Semantics Group. 2023
Tsilia, A. (2022), How many roads are there to a simultaneous reading? ConSOLE XXX: Proceedings of the 30th Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. [paper] [Dropbox paper] [BibTeX citation]
Tsilia, A. (2022), A mixed tense system: Two roads to the simultaneous reading in Modern Greek, Proceedings of the 45th Penn Linguistics Conference, The University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL), vol. 28.1, Article 22, pp. 194-203. [paper] [BibTeX citation]
Tsilia, A. (2021), Embedded Tense: Insights from Modern Greek, Cogmaster M.Sc. Thesis, PSL Research University. [thesis] [BibTeX citation]
Embedded Tense in Modern Greek and beyond, invited talk at the Reference across Modalities and Domains Seminar, NYU. 2021. [handout] [BibTeX citation]
A mixed tense system: Two roads to the simultaneous reading in Modern Greek, talk at PLC 45. 2021. [slides]
Sequence of Tense in Modern Greek, invited talk at the Linguæ research seminar, Institut Jean Nicod, ENS. 2021. [slides] [BibTeX citation]
Syntax-semantics interface
I worked on a Modern Greek causal construction, where a proleptic object, despite syntactically being outside the intensionalized argument of the attitude verb, can be read opaquely. I outlined two different proposals, one solving the puzzle with the machinery of semantic lowering (SuB proceedings), and one arguing for a covert CAUSE verb introducing a hidden clause (NLS paper). I thus proposed a solution to the syntax-semantic mismatch either by allowing for high intensional types, or by introducing a hidden clausal layer, which also explains the causal semantics of the construction.
I am also interested in clausal subjects, and more specifically in the semantic contribution of a determiner on top of an IP. In a CLS paper with Katya Morgunova, we show that, at least for some speakers, the D-layer (definite article to) in clausal subjects in Greek is optional, and can only be preferred/dis-preferred in certain environments. We argue that its distribution is governed by semantic and pragmatic considerations rather than syntactic ones, contrary to previous claims in the literature. We propose that the D-layer in clausal subjects introduces a presupposition that the proposition it modifies is consistent with the beliefs of the speaker. I am also interested in agreement in clausal subjects, and I have ongoing work with Nikos Angelopoulos on the question of whether Modern Greek clausal subjects have phi-features.
Hidden Causality in Modern Greek [paper]
paper in Natural Language Semantics Natural Language Semantics (accepted, to appear in Sept issue, NLS 33:3). 2025
talk at MIT's Logical Form Reading Group (LFRG). 2023
Proleptic constructions in Modern Greek, Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 27 (SuB 27), Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, pp. 655-673. 2023 [paper] [BibTeX citation]
"Quasi-ECM'' constructions in Modern Greek: Evidence for semantic lowering [handout / poster] [BibTeX citation]
poster at Sinn und Bedeutung 27 (SuB 27), Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. 2022
poster at the 4th Creteling Summer School of Linguistics, University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece. 2022
talk at MIT's Logical Form Reading Group (LFRG). 2022
Why would you D that? On the D-layer in Greek clausal subjects (with Katya Morgunova) [ResearchGate paper] [Dropbox paper] [handout / poster] [BibTeX citation]
Proceedings of the 59th meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS 59), University of Chicago, pp. 367-378. 2024
Poster at the 59th meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS 59). 2023
Poster at the 47th Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC 47). 2023
Exclusivity of disjunction
In a series of experiments accross five languages led by Andreea Nicolae, we investigated whether natural language morphologically simplex and complex disjunctions received exclusive interpretations. We found variation accross languages, with complex disjunctions usually having a more exclusive interpretation than simplex ones. However, crucially, we found that even exclusive disjunctions are ambiguous between an inclusive and an exclusive interpretation.
Exclusivity and exhaustivity of disjunction(s): a cross-linguistic study (with Andreea C. Nicolae, Aliona Petrenco, and Paul Marty). Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 28 (SuB 28), Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, pp. 1098-1113. 2025 [paper]
Do Languages Have Exclusive Disjunctions? (with Andreea C. Nicolae, Aliona Petrenco, and Paul Marty). Open Mind Journal, 8, pp. 1469-1485. 2024 [paper]
Exclusivity of Disjunction(s): A Cross-Linguistic Study (with Andreea Nicolae, Aliona Petrenco, and Paul Marty). Talk (presented by A. Nicolae) at Sinn und Bedeutung 28 (SuB 28), Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. 2023 [slides]