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I am 5th year PhD student in Linguistics at MIT. Before doing linguistics, I studied theoretical Computer Science and a couple other unrelated topics in my home country, France. My current areas of interest are experimental linguistics (with a focus on acquisition), the syntax-semantics interface, and pragmatics. I am also have a few NLP projects on the side, with the general goal of evaluating statistical models of language w.r.t. fine-grained linguistic phenomena. In my spare time I love to tinker with old bikes, collect and repair vintage handheld consoles, watch stupid animes, hunt for free food on campus, and play with my two darling cats Sacha and Pixel.

Education

• 2019--    : PhD, MIT, Linguistics
• 2018--2019: MS (="Master 2"), HEC & ENS, Cognitive Science (CogMaster)
• 2017--2018: MS (="Master 2"), Paris 7 & ENS & IPP, Theoretical computer science (MPRI)
• 2014--2018: Remote BA (="Master 1"), Paris 3, Modern & Comparative Literature
• 2014--2017: Joint BEng (="Master 1") Télécom Paris & HEC Paris, Computer Science & Management
• 2012--2014: Preparatory classes, Lycée Saint Louis, Physics & Engineering Sciences (PSI)

Ongoing projects

• Experimental
  • Adults' statistical understanding of "Around" vs "Between", with Paul Égré (ENS), Benjamin Spector (ENS) and Steven Verheyen (Erasmus University Rotterdam).
  • Acquisition of tough-construction vs gapped-degree phrases, with Athulya Aravind (MIT), and Rachel Stacey (MIT).
• Computational
  • Can word embeddings distinguish denominal and root-derived verbs in Semitic?, with Ido Benbaji (MIT) and Omri Doron (MIT). [Colab]
  • Do word embeddings encode a notion of morphological blocking in English? [Colab]

Talks & Publications

• 2024
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2024, January 26). The French demonstrative paradigm: structurally transparent but semantically intricate [Poster]. 54rd Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 54), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, uUnited States.
• 2023
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2022, September 23). Morpho-semantics of the French diminutive suffix -et(te) [Talk]. 16th Conference on Syntax, Phonology and Language Analysis (SinFonIJA 16), Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2022, September 15). Morpho-semantics of the French diminutive suffix -et(te) [Talk]. International Symposium of Morphology (ISMo) 2023, Université de Lorraine & CNRS, Nancy, France.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2023, September 11). Do Language Models discriminate between relatives and pseudorelatives? [Poster][Proceeding]. Learning with Small Data (LSD) 2023, The Centre for Linguistic Theory and Studies in Probability (CLASP), University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2023, September 7). Shallowly accurate but deeply confused -- how language models deal with antonyms [Talk][Code][Data][Proceeding]. Special Session "Big Data in Semantics and Pragmatics" of the 28th Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB), Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2023, September 2). Do Language Models discriminate between relatives and pseudorelatives? [Poster]. Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing 2023 (AMLaP 29), Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2023, September 1). Shallowly accurate but deeply confused -- how language models deal with antonyms [Poster]. Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing 2023 (AMLaP 29), Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2023, August 31). Do Large Language Models learn the specificity of parasitic gaps? [Talk]. Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing 2023 (AMLaP 29), Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2023, August 18). Do Language Models discriminate between relatives and pseudorelatives? [Talk]. The 4rd International Conference on Theoretical East Asian Psycholinguistics (ICTEAP-4), Dongguk University, Seoul, South Korea.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2023, August 15). "Bridging the gap" between French tough-constructions and pseudorelatives [Poster]. 25th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar (SICOGG 25), Dongguk University, Seoul, South Korea.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2023, May 25). Versatile presuppositions in counterfactual conditionals [Talk]. Rencontres Autour de la Linguistique Formelle 2023 (RALFE 2023), Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2023, March 18-19). Superiority effects and the French Plural Pronoun Construction [Talk]. The 47th Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC 47), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
• Benbaji, I., Doron, O., Hénot-Mortier, A. (2023, January 12). Distinguishing levels of morphological derivations in word-embedding models [Talk]. 53rd Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 53), University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
• 2022
• Egré, P., Spector, B., Hénot-Mortier, A., & Verheyen, S. (2022, December 19) An experimental investigation of the around / between contrast [Poster][Lightning]. Amsterdam Colloquium 2022 (AC2022), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2022, September 24). An Agree-based account of the gap distribution in tough-constructions vs gapped-degree phrases [Talk]. 15th Conference on Syntax, Phonology and Language Analysis (SinFonIJA 15), University of Udine, Udine, Italy.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2022, September 16). A dynamic alternative-pruning account of asymmetries in Hurford disjunctions [Talk]. 27th Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB), Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2022, September 7). Evidence for an encoding of morphological blocking effects within two English word embedding models [Poster]. Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing 2022 (AMLaP 28), University of York, York, UK.
• Hénot-Mortier, A., Stacey, R., Torma, C., Aravind, A. (2022, September 7). Two kinds of adjective-infinitive constructions in acquisition [Talk]. Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing 2022 (AMLaP 28), University of York, York, UK.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2022, August 18). A dynamic alternative-pruning account of asymmetries in Hurford disjunctions [Lightning][Poster][Proceeding]. ESSLLI 2022, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland.
• Benbaji, I., Doron, O., Hénot-Mortier, A. (2022, August 15-16). Word-embeddings distinguish denominal and root-derived verbs in Semitic [Talk][Proceeding]. End-to-End Compositional Models of Vector-Based Semantics Workshop (E2ECOMPVEC@ESSLLI 2022), National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2022, August 12-14). An Agree-based account of the gap distribution in tough-constructions vs gapped-degree phrases [Talk]. 24th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar (SICOGG 24), Online.
• Hénot-Mortier, A., Egré, P., Spector, B., & Verheyen, S. (2022, July 21). Precisifying approximation: Around vs Between [Poster]. CreteLing 2022, University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece.
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2022, April 28). It's tough to be pretty: semantic relatedness between tough and pretty predicates [Talk]. 45th Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW), Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.
• 2020
• Egré, P., Spector, B., Hénot-Mortier, A., & Verheyen, S. (2020). On the Optimality of Vagueness: "Around", "Between", and the Gricean Maxims. arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.11841.
• 2019
• Hénot-Mortier, A. (2019). Semantics and pragmatics of approximation expressions [Master's Thesis, École normale supérieure]. Paris.
• 2015
• Kabanikhin, S., Krivorotko, O., Hénot-Mortier, A., Voronov, D., & Yermolenko, D. (2015, October). A numerical algorithm of parameter estimation for dynamic model for HIV infection of CD4+ t cells. In 2015 International Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Computational Technologies (SIBIRCON) (pp. 180-185). IEEE. [Paper]

Teaching

• Spring 2023: TA for Introduction to Linguistics (24.900), with Prof. Donca Steriade.
• Spring 2022: TA for Undergraduate Language Acquisition (24.904), with Prof. Athulya Aravind.
• Fall 2020: TA for Introduction to Linguistics (24.900), with Prof. Adam Albright.

Hobbies

Contact

• Zoom: here
• Email:
• LinkedIn: here
• Scholar: here
• ORCID: here