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Marie-Eve Ritz
DEUG, BA (English Language and Literature), MA
(Linguistics): University of Metz
DEA (Semantics), PhD (Linguistics): University of
Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV
Linguistics, School of Humanites (M258)
Applied Linguistics, Graduate School of Education
(M428)
The University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley, WA 6009
Telephone +61 8 6488 3513
Fax +61 8 6488 1052
Email
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Research Interests
My research interests lie in the broad areas of formal
semantics, the semantics/pragmatics interface, semantic change,
semantic creativity and variation in meaning. I wrote my PhD
thesis on vagueness in natural language and its consequences for
a formal approach to the representation of meaning. I then
started work on tense and aspect for a post-doctoral project,
which subsequently led me to a series of projects funded through
ARC small grants. The two most recent projects have investigated
innovative uses of the present perfect in Australian English as
well as a cross-linguistic comparison of the development of
perfects in a sample of Germanic and Romance languages. Besides
the new findings concerning perfect usage in English varieties,
the projects are significant in that they document semantic
creativity as it is naturally taking place, thus providing
information that historical linguists typically do not have
access to, given the nature of earlier language records. The
studies therefore offer useful data and analyses that can shed
light on historical development of grammatical categories and
their meanings; on the (little known) processes of semantic
change; on the semantics and pragmatics of the category 'perfect'
itself, and of tense and aspect more generally. I have published
articles on negation, French tenses and the English present
perfect.
Research Grants (2000- present)
The Use of the Present Perfect in Australian English.
2000. Australian Research Council small grant ($8,051.00 ) (with
Dr D. Engel,University of Wales, Swansea)
Understanding the meaning of the present perfect: a
comparative study of its uses in English dialects around the
world and in some Romance and Germanic languages. 2001. UWA
small grant ($11,289.00)
Publications
Ritz, Marie-Eve. 2007. “Perfect change: synchrony meets
diachrony.” In J. Salmons & S. Dubenion-Smith (Eds).
Historical Linguistics 2005. Amsterdam: John Benjamins:
133-147.
Ritz, Marie-Eve. 2002. "The semantics of the Passé
Composé in contemporary French: towards a unified
representation." Cahiers Chronos 9, Rodopi, Amsterdam:
31-50.
Engel, Dulcie & Ritz, Marie-Eve. 2000. "The use of the
Present Perfect in Australian English." Australian Journal of
Linguistics, Vol. 20, No. 2 :119–140.
Ritz, Marie-Eve. 1993. "La sémantique de la
négation en français" Langue
Française 98:67-78.
Ritz, Marie-Eve & Deirdre Wilson. 1992 "Irony and Universe of
Belief", translation of Martin, R. "Ironie et univers de
croyance". Lingua 87:77-90.
Forthcoming
Ritz, Marie-Eve & Engel, Dulcie,“Vivid narrative use
and the present perfect in spoken Australian English.”
Linguistics. (due 2008, Vol 46, no 1).
Ritz, Marie-Eve “Relationship between event, reference time
and time of utterance and the representation of present perfect
sentences in Australian English narratives.” to appear in
Cahiers Chronos.
In preparation
Engel, Dulcie & Ritz, Marie-Eve. ‘When perfects
become past: the case of French in a cross-linguistic comparison
with Spanish, German and Dutch.’ The Journal of French
Language Studies.
Under review
Ritz, Marie-Eve. ‘Police Perfect: a study of innovating
use of the present perfect in Australian police media
releases.’ [submitted to The Journal of
Pragmatics]
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