Title

Assistant Professor of Language and Linguistics in the Department of Computer Science

Anthropology
Computer Science

Expertise

Linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, impersonals and passives, mathematical linguistics, game and decision theory, language acquisition

Profile

Sophia Malamud is a theoretical linguist, specialising in the study of language meaning.
This includes research in formal semantics, formal pragmatics, discourse functions of syntax, and semantics-pragmatics interface. After earning a BA (summa cum laude) from University of Pennsylvania in mathematics and linguistics, she stayed on for graduate studies, earning her M.A. in mathematics and Ph.D. in linguistics in 2006.
Her dissertation focuses on the semantics and pragmatics of impersonals and passives, proposing a meaning-driven cross-linguistic typology of impersonal and passive constructions. The dissertation data is drawn from English, Russian, German, Italian, French, Amharic, and Yiddish. In exploring context-dependent aspects of interpretation of definite plurals, she proposes a Decision Theory-based framework that builds the speaker’s and hearer’s awareness of each other’s conversational goals into the interpretation. The new framework allows the meaning of plurals to incorporate the notion of relevance based on the goals of conversational participants, while maintaining the elegance and flexibility of previous purely semantic accounts.
In her publications, Sophia has explored a wide variety of topics in semantics and pragmatics, such as the relationship between discourse coherence and word order in Russian, relationship between indexicality, context-dependence and reference de se, indexical-like readings of impersonal pronouns, influence of passives and impersonals on subsequent discourse, and semantics of plurals. Her mathematics masters thesis explores several basic notions in statistical decision theory. In her current research, Sophia is expanding into the area of language acquisition and attrition, in particular, the study of heritage language knowledge. (Heritage speakers are those who start learning their first language, before becoming dominant in another language before they finished acquiring the first - a frequent situation in immigrant communities).
The courses she teaches at Brandeis include “Introduction to Linguistics”, “Formal Semantics”, "Mathematical Methods in Linguistics", and “Pragmatics and Discourse.” Before coming to Brandeis, she has also taught mathematics (elementary-school level through Calculus III) at various venues.


Selected Publications

Malamud, Sophia A. (in revision) “Impersonal indexicals: you and man, on” Accepted with revisions for publication in the Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics.
Pre-revision draft at

Malamud, Sophia A. (2006) '(Non)-maximality and distributivity: a Decision Theory approach.' Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 16 in Tokyo, Japan
Online publication at

Malamud, Sophia A. (2004) “Arbitrariness: a definite account.” WCCFL 23 Proceedings, eds. G. Garding and M. Tsujimura. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press
Final draft at

Malamud, Sophia A. (in print) “(In)definiteness-driven typology of arbitrary items.” Book chapter in Passives and Impersonals in European Languages. eds. Manninen, S., K. Hietaam, E. Keiser & V. Vihman. John Benjamins.
Final draft at

Malamud, Sophia A. (2001) “Centering in Russian.” Penn Working Papers in Linguistics (Volume 7.2: Current Work in Linguistics), ed. Elsi Kaiser. Philadelphia, PA.
Final draft at

Malamud, Sophia A. (2000) “Centring and Scrambling: towards a pragmatic motivation for Russian word order.” The Ninth Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: the Indiana Meeting. eds. Franks, S., T.H. King, and M. Yadroff. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications
Final draft at