Varieties Of DISjunctions

Objective

Understanding how languages encode disjunction sheds light on fundamental aspects of human reasoning and communication. Across languages, disjunction is expressed by diverse and specialized constructions with distributions that differ from the uniform “or” in English. Yet the field lacks a systematic cross-linguistic description of this diversity and a formal model that explains it. VODIS addresses that gap by (i) building the first open cross-linguistic database that documents the forms and distributions of disjunction markers across genealogically and geographically diverse languages, (ii) developing a unified formal semantic model that predicts this variation, and (iii) empirically testing its predictions in psycholinguistic experiments. Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) provides the ideal setting: it integrates strengths in formal semantics, psycholinguistics, and typology. The fellowship, under the supervision of Prof. Jacopo Romoli, will offer direct training and equip the fellow with the methodological breadth needed to become an independent cross-disciplinary researcher. VODIS will advance linguistic theory, support language documentation, promote awareness of linguistic diversity, and potentially enhance multilingual natural language processing systems that rely on precise meaning representations.