Dr. Lisa Matthewson

Lisa Matthewson is a formal semanticist and a fieldworker. Her research seeks to discover what is universal to all languages in the areas of semantics and pragmatics, and how languages can vary in these areas. She has been working on St’át’imcets (Lillooet Salish) since the early 1990s, on Gitksan (Tsimshianic) since 2010, and on Niuean (Austronesian) since 2012. Lisa is the co-director of the UBC Gitksan Research Lab. Special areas of research focus include modality, tense, aspect, quantification, determiners, discourse particles, presupposition, and the methodology of semantic fieldwork. Lisa is committed to endangered language preservation and has been involved in various language documentation initiatives (including the production of annotated text collections) and in curriculum development for language teaching.

Research Interests

What is universal to all languages in the areas of semantics and pragmatics, and how languages can vary in these areas; St’át’imcets (Lillooet Salish); Gitksan (Tsimshianic); Niuean (Austronesian); modality, tense, aspect, quantification, determiners, discourse particles, presupposition, and the methodology of semantic fieldwork; language documentation; curriculum development for language teaching.