Hi, I’m Rafa
I am a second year PhD student in Formal Linguistics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where I am advised by Louise McNally, and a member of GLiF. In my PhD thesis, I explore the semantics of words derived from proper names (which I usually refer to as “WDPs”) from formal and probabilistic perspectives. Specifically, I deal with the problem of developing a semantic account that explains how the integration of the information from the proper name and the information from morphology is achieved when a word of this kind is derived.
My research interests lie in the interface between philosophy and linguistics. In Bogotá, I did a B.A. in Philosophy (2017), a B.A. in Linguistics (2019) and a M.A. in Philosophy (2022). In my M.A. thesis, I explored the nature of spatial concepts (a problem from the philosophy of mind) using semantic descriptions of spatial terms as a tool to carry out the conceptual analysis. In Barcelona, I studied a M.A. in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (2023). In my second M.A. thesis, I started approaching the semantics of words derived from proper names and the problems that come with it. Some of these problems are different instantiations of the traditional issues (well known by philosophers and linguists) concerning the content of proper names.
Recent News
- August, 2025. I participated in another edition of ESSLLI. It was a fantastic experience to gain firsthand insight into the latest work from philosophers, formal linguists, logicians, and computational linguists. I am grateful for the experience and for the wonderful friends I made during these two weeks in Bochum.
- August, 2025. Nuo Xu and I have completed our term as GLiF seminar coordinators. It was a pleasure working alongside Nuo, and I wish Katerina Thomopoulou, Emanuela Pinna, and Xiaomeng Sun, the new coordinators, the best of luck with their new role.
- July, 2025. My paper “The morphological properties of words derived from proper names” was accepted for presentation at the Fifth International Symposium of Morphology (ISMo 2025).
- June, 2025. My essay “Proper names in complex words: towards a dual semantics for proper names” was accepted for presentation at the XI Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Filosofía Analítica (SEFA 2025).
- June, 2025. I gave a talk entitled “Proper names in complex words: towards an indexical approach to the meaning of WDPs” in one of the sessions of the Graduate Reading Group (GRG) of LOGOS (Research Group in Analytic Philosophy).
- May, 2025. My paper “A formal semantic analysis of the Spanish quantifier prefixes multi- and pluri-” was accepted for presentation at Sinn und Bedeutung 30 (SuB30).
- March, 2025. My abstract entitled “Word Formation Processes in Proper Names and Common Nouns” was accepted for presentation at the 58th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2025).
- January, 2025. My essay “The semantics of proper names and their derivatives” was accepted for presentation at the XXII Taller d’Investigació en Filosofia. I congratulate and thank Daphne Bernues Moss and Pol Herrero i Castillo for the wonderful organization of this conference.
- November, 2024. I was invited to give a presentation in one of the sessions of the Morphology Reading Group (Université Paris Cité).
- October, 2024. On the 21st of this month, I will start a two-month research stay at the Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle (Université Paris Cité), where I will work under the supervision of Olivier Bonami. The purpose of this stay is to advance in the analysis of the morphological properties of words derived from proper names.
- October, 2024. I have started the second year of my PhD. The goals for this year are: to complete the corpus study of words derived from proper names that I started in the first year, to formulate hypotheses about the semantic and morphological properties of these words, and to test these hypotheses by means of experiments.
- September, 2024. Nuo Xu and I have taken on the task of running the organization of the GLiF seminars (a task we will be undertaking throughout this year). I am excited to work hand in hand with Nuo and to contribute to my research group in carrying out this task.
- August, 2024. I participated in the 35th European Summer School on Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI). I was delighted to learn about very interesting developments in formal linguistics and to engage in dialogue with inspiring scholars.
- May, 2024. I successfully defended my research plan. I thank Katrin Erk, Olivier Bonami and Thomas Brochhagen for reading my project and offering valuable comments and suggestions.
- February, 2024. David Rey and I are working on the organization of the online conference Philosophy and Generative Grammar 2, which will take place in May. The videos of the talks are available through this link.
- January, 2024. Abstract accepted at Non-Bare Proper Names: Proper Names with Determiners and Modifiers in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective.
- September, 2023. I started my PhD at Univesitat Pompeu Fabra.