Overview
Murray's primary research is in the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, specifically what sorts of formal representations are needed to analyze a variety of linguistic structures across grammatically diverse languages. Topics she has worked on include evidentiality, modality, plurality, connectives, sentential mood, and speech acts.
Murray's research combines formal theories of meaning and discourse with documentation and analysis of understudied languages. She is interested in language documentation, methodology for elicitation, community-based language work, and collaboration for language revitalization and reclamation. She has worked with the Cheyenne community in Southeastern Montana since 2006 on a variety of language projects. She is also the director of the Cornell Language Documentation Lab.
Research Focus
Crosslinguistic semantics and pragmatics, dynamic semantics, philosophy of language, cognitive science, language documentation, methodology for semantic elicitation, Cheyenne and other Algonquian languages
Affiliations
In the news
- Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫˀ Speakers Work to Restore Language Among Cornell, Nation Communities
- Klarman Fellow Skilton studies language development across cultures
- Arts and Sciences welcomes eight new Klarman Fellows
- Cornell to host Semantics and Linguistic Theory conference virtually
- Linguistics grad student receives award for indigenous language presentation
- Grants seed social science research, conferences
- Grants create engagement opportunities for students
- Linguistics grad student partners with Mayan speaker for preservation research
- Symposium addresses role of truth in universities, society
- Cheyenne, how meaning is coded in language
LING Courses - Spring 2025
- LING 2248 : Native American Languages
- LING 3390 : Independent Study in Linguistics
- LING 4425 : Pragmatics
- LING 4494 : Honors Thesis Research
- LING 6248 : Native American Languages
- LING 6425 : Pragmatics
- LING 7702 : Directed Research