The Organising Committee
Petros Karatsareas
Petros joined the Department of Linguistics at Cambridge in 2006 after completing his undergraduate studies in Greek Philology and Linguistics at the University of Athens. He did an MPhil in Linguistics and is now writing his PhD dissertation on the nominal morphology of Cappadocian Greek focusing on developments in gender (non-)agreement, nominal inflections, and differential object marking from a diachronic and dialectological perspective. His research interests fall mainly within the area of historical linguistics and Modern Greek dialectology but he likes to flirt with morphological theory, sociolinguistics, and language contact, as well.
During his first years in Cambridge, he was also an active member of the Terpsichore Greek Dancing Society. In his spare time, he can be found keeping himself updated with the latest news from around the globe.
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Eleni Kapogianni
Eleni is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics. She has an undergraduate degree in Greek Philology and Linguistics from the University of Patras (Greece) and an MPhil in Linguistics from the University of Cambridge.
She is working on the Semantics/Pragmatics interface and her thesis focuses on meaning derivation processes and the literal/nonliteral distinction, with respect to the phenomenon of verbal irony. Her methodology includes experimental testing of speakers' intuitions, within the field of Experimental Pragmatics. Her further interests lie in areas such as Discourse Analysis, Sociology, Anthropology, and Philosophy.
Helen Engemann
Helen is a PhD student at the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics. Her main interest is in bilingual language acquisition with a particular focus on cross-linguistic influence and bilingual online production strategies. She is currently working on the developing expression of motion events in bilingual children growing up with French and English.
She has previously worked on the semantics of futurity when she completed her MPhil in Linguistics at Cambridge.
Before coming to Cambridge, Helen studied Classics and French as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford. She maintains an active interest in the French language and culture which she pursues by reading and travelling. Helen also enjoys her involvement in various college sports, especially Aerobics.
Minyao Huang
Minyao is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics. She holds an undergraduate degree in English from Sun Yat-Sen University (China) and an MPhil in Linguistics from the University of Cambridge.
She is working on linguistic vagueness and her thesis focuses on the indeterminacy in the lexicon and its implications for the semantics of vague expressions. Her methodology includes experimental testing of speakers' employments of vague terms in different settings. Her further interests lie in areas such as Cognitive Semantics, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics and Discourse Analysis."
Alastair Appleton
Alastair is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics. His main interest is syntactic theory, with a particular focus on word order and parametric variation. He has previously worked on subjects and subject positions within the clause (particularly in Icelandic) and his current research looks at different types of syntactic movement and the conditions under which they can co-occur.
Alastair completed his undergraduate degree in German and Linguistics at the University of Durham and took his MPhil in the Department of Linguistics in Cambridge.
When he is not working, Alastair plays saxophone with the Cambridge Unviersity Fitz Swing Band. He is also a keen photographer and has worked for the Cambridge student newspaper Varsity.