Research

My research interests lie somewhere in the constellation of syntax, semantics and psycholinguistics. I’m puzzled by BIG questions like figuring out how syntactic phenomena (Binding, Agree and locality relations) interact with semantics (definiteness, variables, Binding again!) and spell out context-dependent utterances. This is apparent through most of my work, and definitely self-evident in my research on pronouns & reference, clitics, fake indexicals, definiteness (of various kinds) and illusorily licensed polarity items.  Below you will find a list of presentations and papers (which you may also find in my CV). If no link is provided, please do get in touch with me and I’ll happily send you older handouts/slides or paper drafts!

My dissertation in Syntax and Psycholinguistics on pronominal reference in Romanian was supported by an NSF DDRI grant awarded to me and Brian Dillon (PI), for which (and to whom) I am very grateful.

I’ve also been very fortunate to delve into the acquisition of African American English as a Research Assistant for Lisa Green in Spring 2018 and Fall 2018, under the NSF grant EAGER: Collaborative Research: Variation and the Grammar of Child African American English. 



PUBLICATIONS

Ivan, Rodica & Brian Dillon. Under Review. Ambiguity avoidance in reflexive dependencies: Evidence from Romanian. Pre-Print @PsyArXiv

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica and Thuy Bui. 2019. Vietnamese Anaphora: Binding Principles and the Lack Thereof. In Ryan Bochnak, Erlinde Meertens, and Mark- Matthias Zymla (eds.), Proceedings of TripleA 5: Fieldwork Perspectives on the Semantics of African, Asian, and Austronesian Languages. University of Tübingen.

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2019. “Wh-phrases and context restriction in Yalalag Zapotec”. In Alex Goebel & Kimberly Johnson (eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Meeting of the Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas. Amherst: GLSA.

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica & Deniz Özy?ld?z. 2018. “The temporal presuppositions of Somali definite determiners”. In Robert Truswell, Chris Cummins, Caroline Heycock, Brian Rabern, and Hannah Rohde (eds.), SuB 21: Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21. University of Edinburgh.

Özy?ld?z, Deniz & Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. 2017. “Pronouns under the Somali microscope”. In Vera Hohaus and Wanda Rothe (eds.), Proceedings of TripleA 3: Fieldwork Perspectives on the Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages. Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen, Publikationssystem.

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2016. “Wonder if embedded, know whether semi-question”. In Kate Bellamy, Elena Karvovskaya and George Saad, (eds.), ConSOLE XXIV: Proceedings of the 24th Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe. Leiden: Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2013.  “Wondering about Oare: is it a Q-particle for Romanian?”. In Balázs Surányi (ed.), Proceedings of the Second Central European Conference in Linguistics for Postgraduate Students. Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest.


THESES

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2020. Talking about her(self): Ambiguity Avoidance and Principle B. A Theoretical and Psycholinguistic Investigation of Romanian Pronouns. PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Committee: Brian Dillon (cochair),  Kyle Johnson (co-chair), Lyn Frazier, Adrian Staub, Marcel den Dikken

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2013. On The Syntax of Complementation Types, MA thesis, University of Bucharest. Advisor: Alexandra Cornilescu

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2011. Multiple Questions and Wh-Movement in English and German, BA Thesis, University of Bucharest. Advisor: Alexandra Cornilescu

BOOK CHAPTERS

Ivan, Rodica. In preparation. “Binding” in A Reference Grammar of Romanian: Volume 2, eds. Carmen-Dobrovie Sorin & Ion Giurgea. Language Science Press.

MANUSCRIPTS

Ivan, Rodica & Zahra Mirrazi. In Preparation. Farsi Fake Indexicals & embedded T Agreement: Predication Matters!  UMass, Amherst.

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. In Preparation. Romanian loves Me: Clitic Clusters, Ethics & Cyclic AGREE. UMass, Amherst.


EDITED VOLUMES

Ivan, Rodica. 2018. UMOP 40: The Leader of the Pack: A Festschrift in Honor of Peggy Speas. Amherst: GLSA

Bui, Thuy and Rudmila-Rodica Ivan, eds. 2016. SULA 9: Proceedings of the 9th Meeting of the Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas. Amherst: GLSA.



INVITED PRESENTATIONS

Ivan, Rodica. Ambiguity Avoidance and Principle B. University of Delaware, USA. November 2020.

Ivan, Rodica. Talking about her(self): Ambiguity Avoidance in Romanian Anaphora Production. Oakland University, USA. January 2020.

Ivan, Rodica. Talking about her(self): Ambiguity Avoidance in Romanian Anaphora Production. University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. January 2020.

Mirrazi, Zahra & Rodica Ivan. Farsi Fake Indexicals: Reconciling Kratzer (2009) and Wurmbrand (2017). University of Tehran, Iran. June 2018.




REFEREED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

Binding 

[poster] Ivan, Rodica, Brian Dillon, & Kyle Johnson. (Bound) Pronouns in Competition: Evidence from Romanian Comprehension. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 39 (WCCFL 39). University of Arizona, USA. April 2021. [Abstract]

[short talk] Ivan, Rodica, Brian Dillon, & Kyle Johnson. Choosing a Referring Expression: Intrasentential Ambiguity Avoidance in Romanian. CUNY 34. University of Pennsylvania, USA, March 2021.

Ivan, Rodica & Brian Dillon. (Bound) Pronouns in Competition: Evidence from Romanian Production. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 38 (WCCFL 38). UBC, Vancouver, Canada. March 2020.

[poster] Bui, Thuy and Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. Vietnamese Anaphora: An Argument for Binding Theory Competition-Based Accounts . The 2019 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2019). New York, NY. January 2019.

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica and Thuy Bui. Vietnamese Anaphora: Binding Principles and the Lack Thereof. The 5th Meeting of the Semantics of African, Asian, and Austronesian Languages (TripleA 5). University of Konstanz, Germany. June 2018.

Ivan, Rodica. No condition B? Context-dependent surface-form preference! Pronouns in Competition Workshop. UC Santa Cruz, CA. April 2018

[poster] Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. No interpreted features? No Principle B!. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 36 (WCCFL 36). UCLA, April 2018.

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica.  Absent Condition B effects: the case of Romanian PPs. The 19th Annual Conference of the English Department of the University of Bucharest (AICED 19). University of Bucharest, Romania. June 2017.

Pronouns & Agreement

Ivan, Rodica & Zahra Mirrazi. Minimal pronouns & T-Agreement effects: the case of Farsi Fake Indexicals. The 42nd Annual Meeting of Generative Linguistics in the Old World: Workshop 1: Anaphora at the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface in endangered and understudied languages (GLOW 42). Oslo, Norway. May 2019.

Ivan, Rodica & Zahra Mirrazi.  Farsi Fake Indexicals & embedded T Agreement: Predication Matters! The 2019 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2019). New York, NY. January 2019.

[poster] Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. Romanian loves Me: Clitic Clusters, Ethics & Cyclic AGREE. The 49th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 49). Cornell, NY. October 2018.

[poster] Mirrazi, Zahra & Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. Farsi Fake Indexicals: Reconciling Kratzer (2009) and Wurmbrand (2017)The 5th Meeting of the Semantics of African, Asian, and Austronesian Languages (TripleA 5). University of Konstanz, Germany. June 2018.

NPI Illusions

[poster] Ivan, Rodica & Brian Dillon. When NPI illusions fail: the case of strict NPIs and neg-words in Romanian. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 36 (WCCFL 36). UCLA, CA. April 2018.

[poster] Ivan, Rodica & Brian DillonWhen NPI illusions fail: the case of strict NPIs and neg-words in Romanian. The 31st Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference (CUNY 31). UC Davis, CA. March 2018.

Pronouns & Definiteness

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. Wh-phrases and context restriction in Yalalag Zapotec. Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas 10 (SULA 10). University of Toronto, Canada. May 2018.

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica & Deniz Özy?ld?z. The temporal presuppositions of Somali definite determiners. Sinn und Bedeutung 21 (SuB 21). University of Edinburgh, Scotland. September 2016.

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica & Deniz Özy?ld?z. The temporal presuppositions of Somali definite determiners. The 3rd Meeting of the Semantics of African, Asian, and Austronesian Languages (TripleA 3). University of Tübingen, Germany. July 2016.

Özy?ld?z, Deniz & Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. Pronouns under the Somali microscope. The 3rd Meeting of the Semantics of African, Asian, and Austronesian Languages (TripleA 3). University of Tübingen, Germany. July 2016.

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica & Deniz Özy?ld?z. The temporal presuppositions of Somali definite determiners. Definiteness Across Languages Workshop (DAL). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México & El Colegio de México, Mexico. June 2016.

[poster] Özy?ld?z, Deniz & Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. The Somali microscope: Personal pronouns, determiners, possession. Definiteness Across Languages Workshop (DAL). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México & El Colegio de México, Mexico. June 2016.

Özy?ld?z, Deniz & Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. The Somali microscope: Personal pronouns, determiners, possession. Annual Conference on African Linguistics 47 (ACAL 47). UC Berkeley, CA. March 2016.

wh-phenomena

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. Wh-phrases and context restriction in Yalalag Zapotec. Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas 10 (SULA 10). University of Toronto, Canada. May 2018.

[best poster award] Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. Wonder if embedded, know whether semi-question. The 24th Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE XXIV). York, UK. January 2016.

[poster] Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. Grammaticalization in the Making: Romanian wh-words and their complementizer counterparts. CECILS 3, Peter Pazmany Catholic University. Budapest, Hungary. August 2013.

Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica.  The Relativity of ‘CARE’.  Student Conference of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures. University of Bucharest, Romania. May 2013.

[poster] Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica.  Wondering about Oare: is it a Q-particle for Romanian?. CECILS 2, Peter Pazmany Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary. August 2012.