Hi, I’m Rafa

I am a final-year PhD student in Formal Linguistics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where I am supervised by Louise McNally, and a member of GLiF. My PhD thesis explores the semantics of words derived from proper names (which I refer to as “WDPs”) from formal and probabilistic perspectives. More specifically, I investigate how the information contributed by the proper name and that contributed by morphology are integrated in the formation and interpretation of these words.

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.

News

• October, 2026. Our paper, “Entity representations shed light on the variable felicity of outbound anaphora” (co-authored with Louise McNally), has been accepted for poster presentation at the 25th Amsterdam Colloquium.
• October, 2026. Starting on October 15, I will undertake a two-month research stay at the University of Potsdam. During this time, I will be joining the Semantics Group, headed by Malte Zimmermann, and working with Peter Sutton.
• October, 2026. I am serving on the organizing and scientific committees of the Semantics and Word Formation workshop, organized by Ivan Lacić and Louise McNally.
• August, 2026. I am delighted to have received the Best Oral Presentation Award at the ESSLLI 2026 Student Session for my paper, “Towards a probabilistic semantic account of words derived from proper names”.
• August, 2026. Another summer, another two fantastic weeks at ESSLLI, filled with learning, stimulating discussions, new ideas, and new friendships. This year, I also had the opportunity to participate in the Student Session, where I presented my paper, “Towards a probabilistic semantic account of words derived from proper names”.
• March, 2026. Our paper “Mental files, causal chains, and belief reports” have been accepted for presentation at the 8th Philosophy of Language and Mind Network Conference (PLM8) (with David Rey and Andrés Rubio Krohne).
• February, 2026. I gave a talk titled “Words derived from proper names: data, theory, and analysis” at a GLiF seminar.
• January, 2026. I have been invited to give a talk at a seminar organized by the ROLLING research group (Universidad Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona), to be held in the spring.
• October, 2025. David Rey and I are working on the organization of the third edition of the online conference Philosophy and Generative Grammar, which will take place on May 6–8, 2026. The conference will be preceded by the online workshop Attitude Reports, Unarticulated Constituents, and Mental Files.
• 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.
• 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.